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.
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.
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
Justice renders to every one his due.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
One crime has to be concealed by another.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
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.
When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
