Quotes

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.

He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.

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

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.

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.

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.

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

One crime is everything; two nothing.

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

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.

I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.

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

The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

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

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

It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.

I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.

I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.

They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!

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