Quotes

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

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

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

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

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

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

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.

Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.

Body is a home, a prison and a grave.

The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

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.

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.

The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

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.

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.

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

To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

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