Quotes

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

On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.

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

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

It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.

In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.

Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.

Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

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.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

I have never been contained except I made the prison.

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

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.

Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”

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

What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.

There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

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

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