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.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
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.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
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.
The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
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.
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
