Quotes

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.

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

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

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

The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.

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

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.

We are prisoners of ideas.

Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.

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

The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

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

It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.

I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

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.

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

Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.

Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.

The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.