Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
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.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
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.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
Vices are not crimes.
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
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.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
