Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
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.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
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!
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
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.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
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.
