Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
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!
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
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.
Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
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.
Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
