Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
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.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
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.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
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.
Crimes generally punish themselves.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
