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Prison Quotes

Browse 2429 quotes about Prison.

Prison Quotes

“I think the reality of prison is you don't get anything unless you want it in there. Whatever happens to you in prison, this is what you asked for. Nothing happens to you if you don't give that vibe.”

Ifs Thinking Want Giving Reality Happens Motivation Fear Prison Things Happen Fighter Mike Whatever Happens Intimidation Mental Strength

Author:Mike Tyson

“Sometimes it seems like we're all living in some kind of prison, and the crime is how much we all hate ourselves. It's good to get really dressed up once in a while and admit the truth - that when you really look closely, people are so strange and so complicated that they're actually beautiful. Possibly even me.”

People Looks Kind Sometimes Seems Truth Beautiful Hate Crime Strange Prison Complicated Get Real Dressed Up

Author:Winnie Holzman

“Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.”

Night House Black Half Watches Mines Son Wall Beats Stones Blue Prison Rounds Injustice Stranger Tall Shade Stubborn Palms Resignation Outcast Streaks

Author:W. E. B. Du Bois

“Instead, our system of "corrections" is about arm's-length revenge and retribution, all day and all night. Then its overseers wonder why people leave prison more broken than when they went in.”

People Night Wonder Broken Arms Prison Revenge Length All Night Corrections Retribution

Author:Piper Kerman

“Never steal anything so small that you'll have to go to an unpleasant city jail for it instead of a minimum-security federal tennis prison.”

Cities Advice Security Prison Stealing Tennis Jail Minimum

Book:Thrown Under the Omnibus: A Reader

Source: Thrown Under the Omnibus: A Reader

“Jurors realize that instead of having to make that terrible decision (voting for the death penalty), they can vote to put someone in prison and ensure that defendant is no longer a harm to society. It makes it easier for them to return a verdict of life without the possibility of parole.”

Realizing Decision Possibility Return Terrible Easier Vote Prison Harm Voting Penalties Law Enforcement Death Penalty Verdict Parole Jurors

Author:Robert Falcon Scott

“You've got to be willing to look at a guy's face and say I will kill you if I have to. You've got to be willing to look in his face and say that I will stab you, I will hurt you and you can't talk the game, you've got to really act and do the game. Prison is a thing where talking gets you killed. What gets you respect is you do. The guy that you fear is a guy that says nothing.”

Ifs Looks Faces Motivation Guy Games Hurt Talking Willing Prison Fighter

Author:Bernard Hopkins

“Smokey Wilson was like my Gandhi. If I had run into somebody else in prison, with a different set of values, the world might have never known one of the greatest boxing talents ever to come out of Philadelphia.”

Ifs World Different Might Running Motivation Values Known Talent Prison Fighter Boxing Philadelphia Wilson

Author:Bernard Hopkins

“Do you know what makes the prison disappear? Every deep, genuine affection. Being friends, being brothers, loving, that is what opens the prison, with supreme power, by some magic force. Without these one stays dead. But whenever affection is revived, there life revives.”

Knows Force Magic Brother Prison Affection Caring Disappear Supreme Genuine Do You Know Very Deep Revive Supreme Power

Book:Vincent van Gogh

Source: Vincent van Gogh

“The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self - to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.”

Ifs World Humans Self Helping Use Spiritual Human Beings Spring Prison Neighbor Hardest Encounters Convince Spiritual Work

Book:An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

Source: An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.”

Heart Stories Saws Changed Communication Transformation Victim Prison Outlook Imprisonment

Author:Fernando Flores

“Paranoia is an illness I contracted in institutions. It is not the reason for my sentences to reform school and prison. It is the effect, not the cause.”

Reason School Causes Effects Institutions Prison Illness Sentences Reform Reformation Paranoia

Book:In the belly of the beast: letters from prison

Source: In the belly of the beast: letters from prison

“One thing is to escape from prison, but what the Texas 7 did that night crossed the line they should have never crossed.”

Should Night Lines One Thing Should Have Prison Texas

Author:David Travis

“Crime is not punished as an offense against God, but as prejudicial to society.”

Crime Prison Offense

Book:Short Studies on Great Subjects

Source: Short Studies on Great Subjects

“By his own verdict no guilty man was ever acquitted.”

Men Prison Guilty Verdict

Author:Juvenal

“Those who are themselves incapable of great crimes are ever backward to suspect others.”

Crime Prison Suspects Incapable

Author:Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“Governments have tried to stop crime through punishment throughout the ages, but crime continued in the past punishment remains. Crime can only be stopped through a preventive approach in the schools. You teach the students Transcendental Meditation, and right away they'll begin using their full brain physiology sensible and they will not get sidetracked into wrong things.”

Government Age School Past Brain Teach Meditation Crime Students Approach Remains Prison Punishment Sensible Wrong Things Transcendental Physiology Transcendental Meditation

Author:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

“Most crimes are sanctioned in some form or other when they take grand names.”

Form Names Crime Prison

Book:Puck. In Maremma

Source: Puck. In Maremma

“Justice renders to every one his due.”

Justice Prison Dues

Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero

“A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.”

Country States Law Ought Thousand Authority Prison

Book:Boswell's Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides, and Johnson's Diary of A Journey Into North Wales

Source: Boswell's Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides, and Johnson's Diary of A Journey Into North Wales

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

Hard Grace Prison Excellent Corrections

Book:Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks

Source: Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks

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

Blame Lays Prison Dues Multitudes

Author:Ovid

“To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.”

Two Certain Prison Punishment Two Things Offence

Book:Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel, for the Woods and Wayside

Source: Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel, for the Woods and Wayside

“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.”

Men Law Purpose Suffering Prison Instance Penalties

Book:Thoughts and Apophthegms: From the Writings of Archbishop Whateley

Source: Thoughts and Apophthegms: From the Writings of Archbishop Whateley

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

Wells Prison Punishment Variety Proportion Utility

Book:The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private

Source: The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private

“Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.”

Soul Justice Virtue Prison Desert

Book:Works

Source: Works

“Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.”

Said Hard Law Cases Prison Bad Laws

Author:John Y. Campbell

“I told him that I thought it was law logic - an artificial system of reasoning, exclusively used in Courts of justice, but good for nothing anywhere else.”

Law Used Justice Logic Court Prison Reasoning Artificial

Author:John Quincy Adams

“Reality is a prison, where one vegetates and always will.”

Author:Cesare Pavese

“Pardon is the virtue of victory.”

Virtue Victory Prison Pardon

Book:Joseph Mazzini His Life, Writings, and Political Principles

Source: Joseph Mazzini His Life, Writings, and Political Principles

“Pardon ever follows sincere repentence.”

Prison Sincere Pardon

Book:Brilliants: selected from the works of C.H. Spurgeon

Source: Brilliants: selected from the works of C.H. Spurgeon

“Extreme justice is extreme injustice.”

Political Justice Mercy Prison Injustice Extremes

Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.”

Equal Prison Clemency

Author:Claudius Claudianus

“The law is a gun, which if it misses a pigeon always kills a crow; if it does not strike the guilty, it hits someone else. As every crime creates a law, so in turn every law creates a crime.”

Ifs Doe Law Turns Missing Crime Gun Prison Strikes Guilty Crow Pigeons

Author:Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

“Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.”

Believe Self Virtue Prison Denial Practise Self-denial

Book:Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think

Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think

“The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.”

Crime Prison Punishment Everlasting

Author:Ovid

“Purposelessness is the fruitful mother of crime.”

Mother Crime Prison Purposelessness

Author:Charles Henry Parkhurst

“The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.”

Men Perfect Perfection Essence Prison Criminals Probity

Author:Mazo de la Roche

“What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.”

Crime Prison Vices Multitudes

Book:The works of Benjamin Disraeli, earl of Beaconsfield: embracing novels, romances, plays, poems, biography, short stories and great speeches

Source: The works of Benjamin Disraeli, earl of Beaconsfield: embracing novels, romances, plays, poems, biography, short stories and great speeches

“Crimes generally punish themselves.”

Book:The Works of Oliver Goldsmith: Poetical works. Dramas. The vicar of Wakefield

Source: The Works of Oliver Goldsmith: Poetical works. Dramas. The vicar of Wakefield

“If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment-as well as the prison.”

Ifs Wells Suffering Mistake Conscience Prison Punishment Crime And Punishment

Book:Crime and Punishment: Dostoevsky's Collections

Source: Crime and Punishment: Dostoevsky's Collections

“He is coming! He is coming! Like a bridegroom from his room, Came the hero from his prison To the scaffold and the doom.”

Rooms Hero Prison Doom Bridegroom

Author:William Edmondstoune Aytoun

“I am now going from a prison to a palace: I have finished my work, and am now going to receive my wages.”

Prison Finished Wages Palaces

Book:The Last Words and Letters of Christopher Love: With A Clear Vindication of His Principles and Practices

Source: The Last Words and Letters of Christopher Love: With A Clear Vindication of His Principles and Practices

“A cement mixer collided with a prison van on the Kingston Pass. Motorists are asked to be on the lookout for 16 hardened criminals.”

Prison Criminals Prisoner Crash Vans Cement Hardened Wordplay Collide Funny Jokes

Author:Ronnie Corbett

“My prison shall be my grave before I will budge a jot; for I owe my conscience to no mortal man.”

Men Conscience Prison Graves Mortals

Book:The Sandy Foundation Shaken, Or Those So Generally Believed and Applauded Doctrines of One God, Subsisting in Three Distinct and Separate Persons [etc.] Refuted, from the Authority of Scriptures Testimonies and Right Reason

Source: The Sandy Foundation Shaken, Or Those So Generally Believed and Applauded Doctrines of One God, Subsisting in Three Distinct and Separate Persons [etc.] Refuted, from the Authority of Scriptures Testimonies and Right Reason

“I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.”

Feelings Remember Loss Walking Dignity Prison Privacy Disturbing Stimulation

Author:Cybill Shepherd

“We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.”

Should Writing Important Government Might Wish Important Things Prison Favors Journalist Embarrassing Revealing

Author:Chris Patten

“He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.”

Knows Giving Years Firsts Looks Doe Cases Crime Judging Fit First Time Prison Favors Punishment Backgrounds Minimum Discretion Offenders Specifics

Author:Carly Simon

“Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.”

Knows Has Beens Wanted Regret Police Court Prison Bounds Arrested Prosecution

Author:Laurence Housman

“But the thing I felt most strongly about, and put at the end of one of the prison diaries, was education.”

Ends Felt Prison Diaries

Author:Jeffrey Archer