Quotes

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

In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?

Fast closed with double grills
And triple gates – the cell
To wicked souls is hell;
But to a mind that's innocent
'Tis only iron, wood and stone.

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

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.

Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.

Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

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.

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

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.

The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.

I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.

To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

One crime is everything; two nothing.

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

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