Quotes

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.

I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.

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

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

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.

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.

Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.

By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.

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

There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.

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

On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.

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

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

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

Vices are not crimes.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!

No crime has been without a precedent.