Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
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.
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.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
Man is condemned to be free.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?
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.
Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
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.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
