Quotes

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

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

The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.

One crime has to be concealed by another.

In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.

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

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

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

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

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.

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

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.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

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!

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

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

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.

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.

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

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.

Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.

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

Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.