quotations about prison
While there is a lower class, I am in it, and 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
Statement to the Court Upon Being Convicted of Violating the Sedition Act, September 18, 1918
A prison is a grave to bury men alive, and a place wherein a man for half a year's experience may learn more law than he can at Westminster for a hundred pounds.
GEFFRAY MINSHULL
Essays and Characters of a Prison and Prisoners
Show me a prison, show me a jail
Show me a pris'ner whose face has grown pale
And I'll show you a young man
With many reasons why
There but for fortune, go you or I.
PHIL OCHS
"There but for Fortune"
I never saw sad men who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
We prisoners called the sky.
OSCAR WILDE
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
If they lock me up, at least I'll have a place to stay.
MIKE TYSON
"Tyson's love for the fight game turns to disgust", ESPN, June 11, 2005
It is better to die at once by the sword than languish in a prison.
QUEEN CLOTHILDE
attributed, Day's Collacon
This place. It was the noise that impressed me first of all. A terrible racket, yells and whistles, hoots of laughter, arguments, sobs. But there are moments of stillness, too, as if a great fear, or a great sadness, has fallen suddenly, striking us all speechless. The air stands motionless in the corridors, like stagnant water.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Book of Evidence
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
letter to Home Secretary Herbert Morrison, November 21, 1943
One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one will only in time come to hate. In this there is also a residue of belief that during the move the master will chance to come along the corridor, look at the prisoner and say: "This man is not to be locked up again, He is to come with me."
FRANZ KAFKA
Blue Octavo Notebooks
A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were all deteriorated by confinement. As the captive men were faded and haggard, so the iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air was faint, the light was dim. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside; and would have kept its polluted atmosphere intact, in one of the spice islands of the Indian Ocean.
CHARLES DICKENS
Little Dorrit
The man who has once been incarcerated in a prison is regarded as an outcast, and is shunned by all classes as a moral leper, whose touch is infectious.
MARIA MAXWELL
Ernest Grey; Or, The Sins of Society: A Story of New York Life
Oh, the inmates and the prisoners
I found they were my kind
And it was there inside the bars
I found my peace of mind
But the jails they were too crowded
Institutions overflowed
So they turned me loose to walk upon
Life's hurried tangled road
BOB DYLAN
"Ballad of Donald White"
Changi became my university instead of my prison.... Among the inmates there were experts in all walks of life -- the high and the low roads. I studied and absorbed everything I could from physics to counterfeiting, but most of all I learned the art of surviving.
JAMES CLAVELL
attributed, "James Clavell, Best-Selling Storyteller of Far Eastern Epics, Is Dead at 69", New York Times, September 8, 1994
Prisons of stone and iron may hold the body for long and painful years in darkness, but they cannot shut out the light of truth from the truth-loving soul; they cannot destroy the peace of the dutiful spirit.
HUBBARD WINSLOW
Elements of moral philosophy: analytical, synthetical, and practical
A prison harms not a brave man.
AL-JAHM
attributed, Day's Collacon
You're still in prison if you do nothing better in freedom.
TOBA BETA
Master of Stupidity
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.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Richard II
A prison proves the value of liberty.
GIULIO ALBERONI
attributed, Day's Collacon
That's all the freedom we can hope for -- the freedom to choose our prison.
L. M. MONTGOMERY
The Blue Castle
Over the past three decades, the number of prison inmates in the United States has increased by more than 600%, leaving it the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world. During this time, incarceration has changed from a punishment reserved primarily for the most heinous offenders to a much greater range of crimes and a much larger segment of the population.
DEVAH PAGER
"The Mark of a Criminal Record", American Journal of Sociology, March 15, 2016