A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
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 true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.
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.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
