When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
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 thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
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.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.