Quotes

Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.

And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.

Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.

I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.

Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

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

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.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.

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

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

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.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

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!

It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.

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

Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.

They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.

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

I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.

The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.