To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
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.”
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
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.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!
We are prisoners of ideas.
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.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.
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.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
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.
A sick person is a prisoner.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
Crimes generally punish themselves.
