Quotes

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.

If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

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.

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.

The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

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.

He who profits by a crime commits it.

Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

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.

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

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

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.

The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.

Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.

In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.

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.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.