He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.
Fast closed with double grills And triple gates–the cell To wicked souls is hell; But to a mind that's innocent 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
A sick person is a prisoner.
Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
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.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
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.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
Crimes generally punish themselves.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
No crime has been without a precedent.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
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.
