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.
No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
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.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
Justice renders to every one his due.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
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.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
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.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
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.
Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
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.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
