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.
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.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
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.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.
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.
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.
Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
