Quotes

Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.

Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

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

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

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

One crime is everything; two nothing.

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!

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.

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.

They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.

There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.

Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.

A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

Before we can diminish our sufferings from the ill-controlled aggressive assaults of fellow citizens, we must renounce the philosophy of punishment, the obsolete, vengeful penal attitude. In its place we would seek a comprehensive, constructive social attitude - therapeutic in some instances, restraining in some instances, but preventive in its total social impact. In the last analysis this becomes a question of personal morals and values. No matter how glorified or how piously disguised, vengeance as a human motive must be personally repudiated by each and every one of us.

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

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

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

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

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

Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.