Quotes

I have never been contained except I made the prison.

There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.

Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Man is condemned to be free.

Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.

Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.

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

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

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

Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

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

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

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

One crime is everything; two nothing.

We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.

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.

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

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.