Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
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.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
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 can work for the Lord in or out of prison.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
Vices are not crimes.
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.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
