Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
It isn't true that convicts live like
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
If you want total security, go to
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
We are prisoners of ideas.
We are prisoners of ideas.
He had drawn many a thousand of these
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.
Self is the only prison that can bind
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
It is true you cannot eat freedom and
It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
On a planet that increasingly resembles
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?
One should respect public opinion
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
The contagion of crime is like that of
The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.
A country is in a bad state, which is
A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
The reformative effect of punishment is
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I
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. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
I asked a man in prison once how he
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.
Well, I don't think prisons are the
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
Before we can diminish our sufferings
Before we can diminish our sufferings from the ill-controlled aggressive assaults of fellow citizens, we must renounce the philosophy of punishment, the obsolete, vengeful penal attitude. In its place we would seek a comprehensive, constructive social attitude - therapeutic in some instances, restraining in some instances, but preventive in its total social impact. In the last analysis this becomes a question of personal morals and values. No matter how glorified or how piously disguised, vengeance as a human motive must be personally repudiated by each and every one of us.
If we were brought to trial for the
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
