Quotes

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

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

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.

The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.

The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.

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

Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.

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

I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.

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.

It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.

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

What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.

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

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.

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.

I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.

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

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

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.

No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.