Quotes

It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.

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

I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.

Crimes generally punish themselves.

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

Body is a home, a prison and a grave.

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

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.

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.

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

Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

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.

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

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

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.

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