Quotes

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.

On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.

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

It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.

We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.

I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.

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.

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

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.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

No crime has been without a precedent.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!

It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.

I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison.
~Jim Bakker

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

When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.

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

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

There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.

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