Quotes

We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.

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

Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.

Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

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

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

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.

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.

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.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

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.

Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.

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

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

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.

In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.

Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.

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.

We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.

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.

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

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

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

I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.