Quotes

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.

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.

In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.

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

It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.

You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

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.

Punishment, that is the justice for the unjust.

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

Governments have tried to stop crime through punishment throughout the ages, but crime continued in the past punishment remains. Crime can only be stopped through a preventive approach in the schools. You teach the students Transcendental Meditation, and right away they’ll begin using their full brain physiology sensible and they will not get sidetracked into wrong things.

To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.

Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.

Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.

Justice renders to every one his due.

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.

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

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

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison.
~Jim Bakker