Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
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.
Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.
I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
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.
I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
We are prisoners of ideas.
