Quotes

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

The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

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

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

Crimes generally punish themselves.

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

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

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!

Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.

There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.

I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.

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

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.

I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.

The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.

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