When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.
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.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
