Quotes

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.

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

They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!

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

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

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.

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.

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

In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.

Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.

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

Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.

You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.

I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

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.

Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.

The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

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

No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.

Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.