Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
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.
I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.
Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
Fast closed with double grills And triple gates–the cell To wicked souls is hell; But to a mind that's innocent 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
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.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
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.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
