Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”
The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
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.
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.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
A sick person is a prisoner.
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.
