Quotes

It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.

While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.

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

A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!

If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?

The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

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

Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.

It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.

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.

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

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

When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.

We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.

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

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

He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.

America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.