I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
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.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
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%.
I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.
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.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.
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.
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.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
