Quotes

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.

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 torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.

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

The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.

When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.

One crime has to be concealed by another.

Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.

Vices are not crimes.

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.

The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.

Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

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

I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.

Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

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

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.

Governments have tried to stop crime through punishment throughout the ages, but crime continued in the past punishment remains. Crime can only be stopped through a preventive approach in the schools. You teach the students Transcendental Meditation, and right away they’ll begin using their full brain physiology sensible and they will not get sidetracked into wrong things.

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

It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.

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.

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.