Quotes

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

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.

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.

When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.

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

It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.

To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.

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

I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

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.

Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.

Body is a home, a prison and a grave.

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.

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.

The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.

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

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.

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.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.