In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
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.
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.
Justice renders to every one his due.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
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.
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.
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.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
