The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
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.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
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.
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.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
A sick person is a prisoner.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
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.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
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.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
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.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
