Quotes

Vices are not crimes.

Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.

I have never been contained except I made the prison.

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

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

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.

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

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

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

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

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.

There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.

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

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.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.

If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.

Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.

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.