Quotes

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

It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.

It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.

He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.

Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.

Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.

Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.

Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.

I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.

Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.

The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.

If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.

It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.

Vices are not crimes.

A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!

Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.

The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.

Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.

Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.