The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
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.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
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.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
Vices are not crimes.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
