Quotes

Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.

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.

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.

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

If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.

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

While crime is punished it yet increases.

They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.

There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.

Body is a home, a prison and a grave.

Justice renders to every one his due.

Crimes generally punish themselves.

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

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.

No crime has been without a precedent.

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

If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?

A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!

We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

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

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

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