Quotes

No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.

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.

The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

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

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.

Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.

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%.

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

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.

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.

Man is condemned to be free.

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

The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.

Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

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

One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.

Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.

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

In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.