Quotes

They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!

It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

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

There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.

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

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!

Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.

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

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.

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

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

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.

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

Justice renders to every one his due.

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.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

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.

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.

Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.

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

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.

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 refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.