I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
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.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
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.
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.
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.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.
