Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
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.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
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.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
