Pardon is the virtue of victory.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.
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.
I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.
Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
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.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
Justice renders to every one his due.
