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.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
No man should be judge in his own case.
I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.
We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
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%.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
