The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
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.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
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.
We are prisoners of ideas.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
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 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.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
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.
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.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
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.
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.
