Quotes

I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.

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

You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.

A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.

Punishment, that is the justice for the unjust.

I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.

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

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.

I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.

Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.

What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.

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.

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.

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.

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.

In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.

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

Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.

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