If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
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.
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.
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
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 I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
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.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
