Quotes About Prison

While I was in prison, I was indulging in all types of vice, right within the prison. And I never was ostracized as much by the penal authorities while I was participating in all of the evils of the prison, as they tried to ostracize me after I became a Muslim.

Kids are growing up in communities in which they see their loved ones cycling in and out of prison and in which they are sent the message in countless ways that they, too, are going to prison one way or another. We cannot build healthy, functioning schools within a context where there is no funding available because it's going to building prisons and police forces.

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

Wrong believing puts people in a prison. Right believing is a light that illuminates the path to freedom out of this prison.

On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.

We have to change public perception of ex-convicts. Most Canadians don't realize that when you come out of prison, you're a complete pariah. You can't get a car loan or money from a bank to start a business. So most end up back in prison within 24 months. It's just so wrong. We need to fix this problem.

Association bring you into the larger world of other people and things. Not having that is a kind of prison, a prison of such a limited consciousness, of such a limited frame of reference and association.

Our prison in Georgia is a very different place from this prison here in Berlin. The conditions there are inhuman.

Prison is an important part of life. We can't have violent people running around in the streets. (3 out of 4 federal prisoners are serving time for non-violent crimes.) Most competent and qualified kindergarden teachers can tell you who the 5 kids are in his or her class likely to wind up in prison 15 - 20 years from now.

I do not wish to remove from my present prison to a prison a little larger. I wish to break all prisons.

Just look at the great Nelson Mandela. He came out of prison and saved his entire country. Some of the best people in the world have spent time in prison.

There are laws in some countries, I believe, which prohibit anyone from following you in the street, and if someone does, he can be arrested and put into prison. So, spiritually, I wish there were a police system which would put people into a spiritual prison for following others. In fact, it does happen automatically.

Don't do drugs because if you do drugs you'll go to prison, and drugs are really expensive in prison.

It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.

The guns on the walls that surround the prison accurately, though unwittingly, index the true character of the penitentiary in our day.

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.

This thing of darkness I acknowlege mine. There is nothing more confining than the prison we don't know we are in.

People talk about Jim Crow as if it's dead. Jim Crow isn't gone. It's adjusted. Look at the disproportionate sentences meted out to blacks caught up in the criminal justice system. There's a problem when people profit from putting and keeping African Americans in prison. We need to do a better job as a nation understanding the real values the country's built upon in terms of fairness, equality and equal opportunity.

An intelligent, energetic, educated woman cannot be kept in four walls - even satin-lined, diamond-studded walls - without discovering sooner or later that they are still a prison cell.

Barack Obama says he's gonna stay in Washington, but presidents don't stay in Washington. Presidents, they get out of there as fast as they can, 'cause it's like a prison to them. And Michelle Obama's even said as much about the White House. So the fact that he's gonna stay there has always told me that he's gonna stay there to protect his legacy, whatever it is, and that he's not gonna observe the age-old protocols of standing aside and staying silent for awhile while the new president takes office.

Oh spare me, being stuck in your bedroom is not like prison. You don't have to worry about being gang-raped in your bedroom.

In Russia, we have a long tradition of compassion for people who have been put into labor camps or prison.

The prison-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex are here with us and are multi-billion dollar enterprises. We can make more money off the kid in Compton if he's a criminal instead of a scholar. It's business.

I mean, what is prison, really, except a good bar without the liquor?

The world is a better place with Saddam in prison not in power.

Envy, like a cold prison, benumbs and stupefies; and, conscious of its own impotence, folds its arms in despair.

During the Boom Years, it was so easy to lose sight of basic values. For example, there was lots of nonsense said and written about the so-called "New Economy." Some people said all economic laws have been overturned! Then all the problems developed. Corporations were heavily fined for illegalities. Many of their senior-level executives were indicted, convicted, and sent to prison.

The worst prison would be a closed heart.

We need to take a hard look at the war on drugs and the number of non-violent offenders who end up getting their lives destroyed by going to prison. We need to look at mandatory minimum sentencing and give judges more flexibility when there are issues of drug abuse or addiction.

Each of us believes himself to live directly within the world that surrounds him, to sense its objects and events precisely, and to live in real and current time. I assert that these are perceptual illusions ... Each of us lives within the universe - the prison of his own brain.

The fact is that, in prison, you can't just go and be locked up and serve your time. That's not an option. You get locked up, and then you're going to go through hell and, if you're lucky, you'll come out somewhat of a human being, but you're probably going to be beyond traumatized, for the rest of your life. That's ridiculous!

There comes a time, thief, when the jewels cease to sparkle, when the gold loses its luster, when the throne room becomes a prison, and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

Keeping a guy in prison costs 50,000 bucks a year. Executing one costs a couple million.

Every single ancient wisdom and religion will tell you the same thing - don't live entirely for yourself, live for other people. Don't get stuck inside your own ego, because it will become a prison in no time flat.

You'd be surprised. Besides, they don't even send royal traitors to prison, Rose. Everyone knows that." I scoffed. "Are you insane? Of course they do. What else do you think they do with traitors? Set them free and tell them not to do it again?" "No," said Abe, just before he turned away. "They execute traitors.

Being young is an 18 year prison sentence for a crime your parents committed. But you do get time off for good behavior.

Public school felt like prison - cinderblock walls, fluorescent lights, metal lockers. It was so sterile and unstimulating.

I think we raised awareness of spice and what it's doing to people in prison. The media is also doing a good job of highlighting how dangerous it is as well, so maybe we can add to that.

The world was not meant to be a prison in which man awaits his execution.

I realized that I had been living a great part of my life like an ostrich, with my head stuck in the sand. Now I see that I was just prancing around my magical circle while the walls of my prison were being erected by other people.

During the 1960s, one neighborhood in San Francisco had the lowest income, the highest unemployment rate, the highest proportion of families with incomes under four thousand dollars a year, the least educational attainment, the highest tuberculosis rate, and the highest proportion of substandard housing ... That neighborhood was called Chinatown. Yet, in 1965, there were only five persons of Chinese ancestry committed to prison in the entire state of California.

Comeback records always worry me, especially when they're made by one of my heroes, and I'd heard stories about Gil Scott-Heron recently, about drug arrests and prison terms and other troubles. I wasn't prepared for the ravaged shakiness of his voice on this record or the raw spoken word pieces or the dark electronic backgrounds.

The place resembled a new model prison, or one that had achieved a provisional utopia after principled revolt, or maybe a homeless shelter for people with liberal arts degrees. The cages brought to mind those labs with their death-fuming vents near my college studio. These kids were part of some great experiment. It was maybe the same one in which I'd once been a subject. Unlike me, though, or the guinea pigs and hares, they were happy, or seemed happy, or were blogging about how they seemed happy.

The percentage of Americans in the prison system, has doubled since 1985.

One of the things that made me long to be back in prison was that I had so little opportunity for reading, thinking and quiet reflection after my release. I intend, amongst other things, to give myself much more opportunity for such reading and reflection.

Arrival = Prison, and the artist must never be a prisoner.

The prison psychiatrist asked me if I thought sex was dirty. I told him only when it's done right.

Words can bruise and break hearts, and minds as well. There are no black and blue marks, no broken bones to put in plaster casts, and therefore no prison bars for the offender.