Quotes

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

Man is condemned to be free.

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

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.

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

Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.

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

When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.

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

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

Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.

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.

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

The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.

I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.

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

If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.

He who profits by a crime commits it.

Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.

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

I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.

I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

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

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.