If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
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 have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
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.
The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
