Quotes

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

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

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

It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.

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

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

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

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.

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

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.

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

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

I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40

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

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.

Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.

No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.

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

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

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.