Quotes

He who profits by a crime commits it.

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.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.

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.

I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.

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.

There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.

The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.

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

The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

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

Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.

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.

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

If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.

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.

There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.

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.

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

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

What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.