Prison Quotes

"Prison Break is so far-fetched, I had to make viewers believe that Michael is capable of making the impossible possible"

Wentworth Miller, Actor

"A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents"

H. L. Mencken, Writer

"Blake said that the body was the soul's prison unless the five senses are fully developed and open. He considered the senses the 'windows of the soul.' When sex involves all the senses intensely, it can be like a mystical experence"

Jim Morrison, Musician

"A mind enclosed in language is in prison"

Simone Weil, Philosopher

"If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism"

Hunter S. Thompson, Journalist

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

Mike Tyson, Athlete

"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"

George W. Bush, President

"Destiny is the prison and chain of the ignorant. Understand that destiny like the water of the Nile: Water before the faithful, blood before the unbeliever"

Muhammad Iqbal, Poet

"I won't talk about what it was like in prison, except to say I'm glad I'm out and that I plan never to go back and to pay my taxes every day"

Richard Pryor, Actor

"There will be no prison which can hold our movement down"

Huey Newton, Activist

"When I finished the role of Christ, I felt as though I'd been let out on parole. A man who has served 18 months isn't eager to go back to prison"

Max von Sydow, Actor

"Playing the role of Christ was like being in a prison. It was the hardest part I've ever had to play in my life. I couldn't smoke or drink in public. I couldn't"

Max von Sydow, Actor

"On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break"

Robert Anton Wilson, Writer

"But in this Second Work if thou extract our Air and our Fire with the phlegm water, they will the more naturally and easily be drawn out of their infernal prison, and with less losse of their Spirits, than by the former way before described"

George Ripley, Activist

"Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline"

Michel Foucault, Historian

"The Stanford prison experiment came out of class exercises in which I encouraged students to understand the dynamics of prison life"

Philip Zimbardo, Psychologist

"The devil had as good have let Paul alone, for he no sooner comes into prison but he falls a preaching, at which the gates of Satan's prison fly open, and poor sinners come forth"

William Gurnall, Author

"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"

William Gurnall, Author

"Being here feels like I'm out of prison. This is the right place, the right time, the right team"

Shaquille O'Neal, Athlete

"Art led the way for me to recover. He got out of prison before me and started traveling all over the world before I did. He showed me by example that it could be done, and I'll always love him for that"

Frank Morgan, Actor

"In light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, critics are arguing that abuses of Iraqi prisoners are being produced by a climate of disregard for the laws of war"

John Yoo, Educator

"Jesus Christ came into my prison cell last night, and every stone flashed like a ruby"

Samuel Rutherford, Theologian

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

Eldridge Cleaver, Activist

"There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison"

William Glasser, Psychologist

"I've wanted somehow to convey to you the sensations - the atmospheric pressure, you might say - of what it is to be seriously a long-term prisoner in an American prison"

Jack Henry Abbott, Criminal

"To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there"

Jack Henry Abbott, Criminal

"America has the longest prison sentences in the West, yet the only condition long sentences demonstrably cure is heterosexuality"

Bruce Jackson, Public Servant

"I know what it's like to be ignored, and I think that is the big problem about the prison system: These people are being thrown away. There is no sense of rehabilitation. In some places, they are trying to do things. But, in most cases, it's a holding cell"

Lee Tergesen, Actor

"When I first went to prison, I was even questioning where, God, where are you?"

Jim Bakker, Celebrity

"To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison"

Jim Bakker, Celebrity

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

Naguib Mahfouz, Novelist

"With Animal Factory you'd think that because it's mostly interiors, you could shoot it anywhere. So we shot this in Philadelphia, and we had the cooperation of the prison system"

Steve Buscemi, Actor

"If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country"

Danny Glover, Actor

"Sadly, every year hundreds of children are victimized by a convicted sexual offender. Convicted predators should be put in prison where they belong and kept away from our Nation's children"

Jim Costa, Politician

"When I left prison, I had to figure out how to embrace my past"

Fernando Flores, Politician

"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"

Fernando Flores, Politician

"That is how prison is tearing me up inside. It hurts every day. Every day takes me further from my life"

Jack Henry Abbott, Criminal

"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"

Jack Henry Abbott, Criminal

"I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind"

Gene Tierney, Actress

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

Philip Emeagwali, Scientist

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