Quotes

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.

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.

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

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

Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.

I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.

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.

Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.

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.

If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.

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

If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.

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.

One crime has to be concealed by another.

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.

Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.

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

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

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.

And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.

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

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