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.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
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.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
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.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
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.
Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
