One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
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.
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.”
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Crimes generally punish themselves.
Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was.
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.
And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
