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.
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.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
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
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
Vices are not crimes.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
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.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
