Quotes

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 most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

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.

We are prisoners of ideas.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

No crime has been without a precedent.

In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.

Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.

You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.

I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.

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.

Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.

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

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.

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.

There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.

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.

It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.

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.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

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.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.