If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
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.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
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.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
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.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
