The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
Vices are not crimes.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
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.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
