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.
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.
And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
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.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
Justice renders to every one his due.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
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.
I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.
