Quotes

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

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.

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

Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

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

No man should be judge in his own case.

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison.
~Jim Bakker

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

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.

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.

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.

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.

The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

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

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 power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.