Quotes

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

We are prisoners of ideas.

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

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.

When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.

Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.

The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

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

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.

America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!

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

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.