Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.
Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
We are prisoners of ideas.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
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.
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.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.
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.
The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
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.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
