Quotes

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.

They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.

Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.

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.

I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.

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

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

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.

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

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

I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.

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.

Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.

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

The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.

The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.

Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

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

I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.