Quotes

It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.

The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.

On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.

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.

You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.

What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.

There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.

If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.

We are prisoners of ideas.

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

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

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.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

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

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

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

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

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.

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!

To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.

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.

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