Quotes

He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.

In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.

Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.

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

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.

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

No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.

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

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.

If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

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

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.

A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!

Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

No crime has been without a precedent.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

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

Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.

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.

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.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.

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

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.”