Quotes

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

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

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.

He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.

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.

Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

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.

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

The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

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

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

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.

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

One crime has to be concealed by another.

So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.

I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.

No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.

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.

Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.

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.

One crime is everything; two nothing.