Quotes

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

Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.

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.

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

No man should be judge in his own case.

Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.

What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.

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.

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.

Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.

I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

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.

Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.

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.

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.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

Crimes generally punish themselves.