Quotes

If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.

Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.

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.

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.

The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.

No man should be judge in his own case.

We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.

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

I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.

Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.

If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!

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

So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

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.

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

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”

If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.

Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.

Justice renders to every one his due.

The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

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

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.