Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation.

I may not be able to say all I think; but I am not going to say anything I do not think.

The guns on the walls that surround the prison accurately, though unwittingly, index the true character of the penitentiary in our day.

I am guilty of believing that the human race can be humanized and enriched in every spiritual inference through the saner and more beneficent processes of peaceful persuasion applied to material problems rather than through wars, riots and bloodshed.

I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out.

Capitalism needs and must have the prison to protect itself from the criminals it has created.