Quotes

They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

Justice renders to every one his due.

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.

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.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

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

Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.

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

It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

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

Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.

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.

Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.

There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.

Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.

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

I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.