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.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
Man is condemned to be free.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
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.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
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.
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a 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.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
