Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
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.
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.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
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.
No crime has been without a precedent.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
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.
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.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
Vices are not crimes.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
