The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”
A sick person is a prisoner.
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.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
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.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
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.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
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.
Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.
