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.
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.
If you treat prisoners well, they will be less angry, less inclined to violence inside prison, less likely to provoke violent actions by guards, less likely to have reason to file brutality lawsuits that cost taxpayers a bundle and waste administrators' time. And most important, well-treated prisoners will be less likely to leave prison angrier, more vicious and more inclined to criminal behavior than when they went in.
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
