Quotes

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

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.

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

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.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

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.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

I have never been contained except I made the prison.

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.

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

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.

Crimes generally punish themselves.

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.

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

If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.

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

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

Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.

I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.

We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.

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