Quotes

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.

No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

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.

Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.

Punishment, that is the justice for the unjust.

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

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.

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

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.

No man should be judge in his own case.

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

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.

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

It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.

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.

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

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

Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.

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

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

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!