The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad 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.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!
The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
