Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.
There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
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.
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
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.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.
I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
A sick person is a prisoner.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
