Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
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.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
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.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
