One crime is everything; two nothing.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
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.
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
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!
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
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.
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.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
