Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
Vices are not crimes.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
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.
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
Fast closed with double grills And triple gates–the cell To wicked souls is hell; But to a mind that's innocent 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
