In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.
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.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
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.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
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.
On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.
We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
