I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.
Man is condemned to be free.
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.
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.
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.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
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.
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.
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.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
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.
