Quotes from Jerry Brown

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?

The big lock-up is about drugs. Here's the real scam. The drug war is one of the games to get more convictions and prisoners.

When I was Governor, Louis Kelso went out of his way to brief me. I was very impressed, but I was never able to get any of the economists in state government to give him the help his plan deserves.

Everyone's heard about the military-industrial complex, but they know very little about the medical-industrial complex...(in) a medical arms race.

I will defend everybody, every man, woman and child who's come to California for a better life and has contributed to the well-being of our state.

It looks to me to be obvious that the whole world cannot eat an American diet.

The volume of paper expands to fill the available briefcases.

We have to deal with where we are. We have to create cooperatives, we have to create intentional communities, we have to work for local cooperation where we are.

Look at the whole criminal correction game, which is a big piece of our economy. It's just an invention. Crime is being invented to put people to work.

Inaction may be the biggest form of action.

America will be disadvantaged, just like Detroit was disadvantaged when they couldn't build smaller cars in the '70s or '80s. The world shifts.

Multinational corporations do control. They control the politicians. They control the media. They control the pattern of consumption, entertainment, thinking. They're destroying the planet and laying the foundation for violent outbursts and racial division.

So we are being systematically trained to fear this false 'rising crime' tide. This is all part of a system to lock up more people, and impose more control and surveillance.

As we all learned from the sorry experience of state-sanctioned bureaucracies in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, decentralization in education is crucial to both freedom and excellence.

My goal in signing these [gun control ] bills is to enhance public safety by tightening our existing laws in a responsible and focused manner, while protecting the rights of law-abiding gun owners.