Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
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.
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.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.
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.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
We are prisoners of ideas.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
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.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
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.”
A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
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.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
