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.
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.
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.
America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.
We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
