Quotes

The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

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.

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.

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

Before we can diminish our sufferings from the ill-controlled aggressive assaults of fellow citizens, we must renounce the philosophy of punishment, the obsolete, vengeful penal attitude. In its place we would seek a comprehensive, constructive social attitude - therapeutic in some instances, restraining in some instances, but preventive in its total social impact. In the last analysis this becomes a question of personal morals and values. No matter how glorified or how piously disguised, vengeance as a human motive must be personally repudiated by each and every one of us.

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.

We are prisoners of ideas.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

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

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

No crime has been without a precedent.

Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.

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

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

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

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