I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
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.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
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.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
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.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
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!
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
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.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
