One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
Man is condemned to be free.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
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.
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.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
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.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
