It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”
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.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
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.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
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.
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.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
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 am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
