Quotes

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

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

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

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

Body is a home, a prison and a grave.

Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.

Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

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

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.

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.

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.

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.”

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

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

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

Governments have tried to stop crime through punishment throughout the ages, but crime continued in the past punishment remains. Crime can only be stopped through a preventive approach in the schools. You teach the students Transcendental Meditation, and right away they’ll begin using their full brain physiology sensible and they will not get sidetracked into wrong things.

He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.

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

If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.