The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
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.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
No crime has been without a precedent.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.
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.”
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
Man is condemned to be free.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
