The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.
There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.
If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.
When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
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.
The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
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.
Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
