We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
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.
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.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
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.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages 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.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
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.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
