Quotes

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

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

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

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

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.

Vices are not crimes.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.

No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.

I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40

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

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

Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.

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

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

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.

Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.

Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.

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

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

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

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.

It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.