The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.
There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.
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.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
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
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.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
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 worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
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.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
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.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
