Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
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.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
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.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
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.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
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.
If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.
It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.
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.
We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
