Quotes

Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

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

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.

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

I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.

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.

Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.

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.

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.

I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.

A sick person is a prisoner.

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

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

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.

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.

We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.

There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.

Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.

When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.

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