Fast closed with double grills And triple gates–the cell To wicked souls is hell; But to a mind that's innocent 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
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.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.
Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
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.
