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.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
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.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
Man is condemned to be free.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
Vices are not crimes.
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.”
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.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
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.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
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.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
