Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
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.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
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.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
