A sick person is a prisoner.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
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.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
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.”
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
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.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
Crimes generally punish themselves.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
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.
