Quotes

Man is condemned to be free.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

Fast closed with double grills
And triple gates – the cell
To wicked souls is hell;
But to a mind that's innocent
'Tis only iron, wood and stone.

Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.

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

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

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

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

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

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.

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.

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

So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

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

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

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

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.

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.

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

One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.

If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.

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.

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