Quotes

Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.

Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.

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.

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

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.

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.

Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.

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.

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?

There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.

Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

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.

In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.

Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.

I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.

The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.