By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
Man is condemned to be free.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
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.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
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.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
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.
In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
