Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
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 worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
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!
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
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.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
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.
I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.
