The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
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.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
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.
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
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.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
No man should be judge in his own case.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
We are prisoners of ideas.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
