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.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
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.
It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
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%.
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.
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.
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
