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.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.
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.”
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
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.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
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.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
