It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”
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.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.
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 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.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
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.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
