Written laws are like spiders' webs, and
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.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
No written law has been more binding
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
We are prisoners of ideas.
We are prisoners of ideas.
It is impossible to go through life
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
Women have worked hard; starved in
Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.
The world itself is but a large prison,
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
Before we can diminish our sufferings
Before we can diminish our sufferings from the ill-controlled aggressive assaults of fellow citizens, we must renounce the philosophy of punishment, the obsolete, vengeful penal attitude. In its place we would seek a comprehensive, constructive social attitude - therapeutic in some instances, restraining in some instances, but preventive in its total social impact. In the last analysis this becomes a question of personal morals and values. No matter how glorified or how piously disguised, vengeance as a human motive must be personally repudiated by each and every one of us.
We have initiated programs for re-entry
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.
If you want total security, go to
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
Prison continues, on those who are
Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.
Fast closed with double grills
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.
The only difference between me and my
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
Show me the prison, Show me the jail,
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 torment of human frustration,
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.
Two men look out the same prison bars;
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
I sometimes wish that people would put a
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
One of the problems that the marijuana
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.
I have never been contained except I
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
There is a point at which even justice
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
In a civilized society, all crimes are
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
He who opens a school door, closes a
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
