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.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
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.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
Man is condemned to be free.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
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.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
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.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40