Quotes

Fast closed with double grills
And triple gates – the cell
To wicked souls is hell;
But to a mind that's innocent
'Tis only iron, wood and stone.

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

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

It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.

In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.

We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.

There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.

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

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

One crime has to be concealed by another.

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.

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.

Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”

Crimes generally punish themselves.

When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.

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

I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.

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

Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.

To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison.
~Jim Bakker

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

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

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