Prison Quotes

"I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator"

Mary Harris Jones, Activist

"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"

Danny Glover, Actor

"I believe that being an actress or being involved in a movie has to be a life experience, otherwise why go for it? I have to change me, and I have to learn things, and I have to push me and my limits. By acting, I find a freedom inside of a prison in a way"

Juliette Binoche, Actress

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

Fernando Flores, Politician

"Studies have shown that inmate participation in education, vocational and job training, prison work skills development, drug abuse, mental health and other treatment programs, all reduce recidivism, significantly"

Bobby Scott, 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

"We can't let somebody rise to the top who will pardon these war criminals. Because they need to go to prison for what they've done in this world. We can't have a pardon. They need to pay for what they've done"

Cindy Sheehan, Activist

"Men who are in prison for rape think it's the dumbest thing that ever happened... they were put in jail for something very little different from what most men do most of the time and call it sex. The only difference is they got caught. It may also be true"

Catharine MacKinnon, Activist

"By 1980, when I came out of prison, The Sun did a campaign to stop putting vice girls in prison. We've talked about it ever since and nothing has been done about it"

Cynthia Payne, Celebrity

"Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos rendered invisible in public discourse"

Cornel West, Educator

"There'll be moments when I'm out in the prison yard, chatting with the cast and the crew, getting ready to shoot a scene. And then I'll remember if I were actually an inmate, I'd only be out there an hour. The other 23 hours of the day, I'd be in my cell. It's kind of a downer"

Wentworth Miller, Actor

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

Wentworth Miller, Actor

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

William Glasser, Psychologist

"May was young and beautiful, we were legally married, but she was caught in the prison of my skin"

Sammy Davis, Jr., Entertainer

"Let me start with Yahoo. As we meet today, a Chinese citizen who had the courage to speak his mind on the Internet is in prison because Yahoo chose to share his name and address with the Chinese Government"

Tom Lantos, Diplomat

"I've never seen American Idol but I am grateful to them. That show is one of Fox's biggest moneymakers, and some of that money goes to pay for shows like Prison Break. Simon Cowell's been signing my paychecks and for that I say thanks"

Wentworth Miller, Actor

"I hadn't worked for a year when I had my Prison Break audition and it was the easiest audition I've ever had. I got the script on Friday, went to the audition on Monday and got the part on Tuesday. I was shooting the pilot a week later. I didn't have time to be nervous - it happened so quickly"

Wentworth Miller, Actor

"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

"We have one of our priests in prison right now, Steve Kelly, for his antiwar actions, and three of us in the community are forbidden to visit him because we're all convicted felons"

Daniel Berrigan, Clergyman

"I visited my father for the full ten years that he was in prison, so we already had a deep and loving relationship, and remembered our mother at those times"

Sam Sheppard, Scientist

"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"

Daniel Berrigan, Clergyman

"In 1960, when I came out of prison as an ex-convict, I had more freedom under parolee supervision than there's available... in America right now"

Merle Haggard, Musician

"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

"They transfer the prison, and all of a sudden all this money cuts loose, all these people cut loose"

Janis Karpinski, Soldier

"I knew how many MPs I had assigned to the brigade, how many military prison operations I would be running, but we needed to evaluate how many criminal prison operations we could support"

Janis Karpinski, Soldier

"When it comes to the point where you occasionally look forward to being in prison on the basis that you might be able to spend a day reading a book, the realization dawns that perhaps the situation has become a little more stressful than you would like"

Julian Assange, Activist

"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

"I did almost a year in prison, a year in prison, just because my name is Foxy Brown"

Foxy Brown, Musician

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

Jack Henry Abbott, Criminal

"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

"I will say that the prison regime is rather a good one for a writer because you have plenty of time to write"

Mary Archer, Scientist

"I think of my brother just out of prison again. He will have spent ten years of the last 30 in prison"

Daniel Berrigan, Clergyman

"It may seem a hard task to condemn fellow creatures to long years of confinement in prison, but it is not so hard if they clearly deserve it"

Thomas Mellon, Businessman

"I'd go to swim practice, put my face in the water, and I didn't have to talk to anybody. Swimming was like my escape, but it was also like this huge prison because I felt like I had to swim up to people's standards"

Amanda Beard, Athlete

"While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free"

Eugene V. Debs, Politician

"I used to think like Moses. That knocked me down for a couple years and put me in prison. Then I start thinking like Job. Job waited and became the wealthiest and richest man ever 'cause he believed in God"

James Brown, Musician

"Until the year 1967, it was a crime, for which you could be put in prison, to make homosexual love to someone in your own house. If they came in and caught you at it, you could be put into prison. This has changed - I'm talking about England, incidentally"

Patrick Macnee, Actor

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

Bronislaw Malinowski, Scientist

"His tenacity is unmatched in my opinion. Incredible how someone could have suffered that long and come back out of prison with such a good heart and positive things to say and do"

Maurice Ashley, Celebrity

"Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison"

Tim Allen, Comedian

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