Quotes

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

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

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.

Fast closed with double grills
And triple gates – the cell
To wicked souls is hell;
But to a mind that's innocent
'Tis only iron, wood and stone.

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.

The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.

The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.

When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.

It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.

Body is a home, a prison and a grave.

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.

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!

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.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.

It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.

And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.