Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
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.
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.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.
I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
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.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
