Quotes

On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.

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.

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.

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

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

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.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.

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

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.

The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.

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

We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.

No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.

The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.

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