Quotes

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!

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.

He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.

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.

In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.

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.

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.

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

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

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

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.

So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

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

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

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

No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.

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

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

To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.

The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.

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.