Quotes

It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

Justice renders to every one his due.

If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.

No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.

I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.

Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.

The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.

The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.