Quotes

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.

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.

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

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

While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.

Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.

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

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.

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.

We are prisoners of ideas.

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

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

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

Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.

The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.

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.