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.
Faults of the head are punished in this
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
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.
In prison, you get the chance to see who
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
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.
It is the deed that teaches, not the
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
The world is a prison in which solitary
The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but
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.
It is the spirit and not the form of law
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
You stuff somebody into the American
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
The object of punishment is prevention
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
We who live in prison, and in whose
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.
Assassination is the extreme form of
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
In my country we go to prison first and
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
Laws do not persuade just because they
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
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?
Most people fancy themselves innocent of
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
The severest justice may not always be
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
There are dreadful punishments enacted
There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
In prisons, those things withheld from
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.
