Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
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.
Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
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.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
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.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
A sick person is a prisoner.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40
I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
