I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.
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.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
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.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
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.
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
