While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
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 reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
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.
They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!
I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.
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.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
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.
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.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
