No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
No man should be judge in his own case.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
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.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
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.
Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
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 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.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
