I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.
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.
Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.