Quotes

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

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.

A sick person is a prisoner.

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

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

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.

We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.

Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.

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.

Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.

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

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

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.”

Body is a home, a prison and a grave.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.