Quotes

I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.

I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.

The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.

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

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.

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

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.

Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.

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

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

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

We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.

Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.

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

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.

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

You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.

I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.

Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.

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.

I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.