Quotes

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.

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

I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.

It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.

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.

The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

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

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

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.

The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

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!

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.

We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.

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

The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.

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.

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.

If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.