Quotes

I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.

Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.

I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.

It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.

Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

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.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

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

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

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.

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.

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.

Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

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

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

They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!

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