Quotes

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.

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.

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

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.

No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.

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.

What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.

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.

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

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

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.

I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40

Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.

To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.

Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.

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