Quotes

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.

Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.

Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.

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.

When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.

In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.

Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.

I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.

There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.

Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.

It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.

When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

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.

I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.

No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?

I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.