I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.
I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
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.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.
A sick person is a prisoner.
If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
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.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
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.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
