One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
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.
Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.
Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
We are prisoners of ideas.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
