Quotes

Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.

And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.

I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

Body is a home, a prison and a grave.

I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.

The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.

If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.

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.

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.

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.

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

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.

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

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

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

Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.

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

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

I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.