Quotes

There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.

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

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

I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

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.

Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.

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.

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.

I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.”

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.

Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.

It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.

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