As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
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.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.
We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
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.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
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.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
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.
In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.
