The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.
No crime has been without a precedent.
Justice renders to every one his due.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.
Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
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.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
