Quotes

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

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

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

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

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.

We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.

I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

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

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

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

One crime has to be concealed by another.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

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

To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.

No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

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

Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.

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.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

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.

Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.

The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.