When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
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%.
It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
Fast closed with double grills And triple gates–the cell To wicked souls is hell; But to a mind that's innocent 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
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.
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.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
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.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
