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.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
Crimes generally punish themselves.
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.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
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.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.
They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
