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 can work for the Lord in or out of prison.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.
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.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
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.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
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.
