We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.
The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.
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.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
Fast closed with double grills And triple gates–the cell To wicked souls is hell; But to a mind that's innocent 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
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.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
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.
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
