Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
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.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
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.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
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.”
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
No crime has been without a precedent.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
