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.
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
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.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.
There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.
If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
