Quotes

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.

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.

Vices are not crimes.

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.

A sick person is a prisoner.

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.

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.

No crime has been without a precedent.

If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.

Justice renders to every one his due.

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.

In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.

Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.

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

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

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

What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.

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

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

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

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

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