Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
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.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
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.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
