The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
Fast closed with double grills And triple gates–the cell To wicked souls is hell; But to a mind that's innocent 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
Man is condemned to be free.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
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.
We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.
We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
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.
The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.
