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.”
Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
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.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
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.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
