If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
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.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
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 world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
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 only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
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.
Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
