Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
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.
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.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
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.
We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.
Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.
We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.
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.
