I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
Man is condemned to be free.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
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.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
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.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
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.
And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.
We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.
