It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
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.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
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.
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
No man should be judge in his own case.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
