No crime has been without a precedent.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
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.
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.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
Justice renders to every one his due.
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.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
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.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
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.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
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.
They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!
No man should be judge in his own case.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
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.
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.
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.
