Quotes

Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.

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

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

If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

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

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

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.

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.

Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.

We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.

In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.

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

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.

The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.

Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

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

So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.