Quotes

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

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

The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.

Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.

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

What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.

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%.

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.

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

Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.

By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.

I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

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.

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

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

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

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

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.

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.

No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.