It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.
No man should be judge in his own case.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.
We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
We are prisoners of ideas.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.
Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.
