Quotes

To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.

Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.

In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.

The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.

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.

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

No crime has been without a precedent.

I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.

Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.

Crimes generally punish themselves.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.

While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.

Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.

Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.