Common Prison Quotes & Sayings

He who assists a poor or needy villain does evil to his neighbor ... for through the assistance which he renders he ... supplies him with the means of doing evil to others. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment of a government (for she then had a government) without inquiry what the nature of that government was, or how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the same nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a mad-man, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act over again the scene of the criminals condemned to the galleys, and their heroic deliverer, the metaphysic knight of the sorrowful countenance. — Edmund Burke

Ross Brawn knows that I prefer to have odd race numbers. — Michael Schumacher

Common sense dictates the term hot fudge sundae has a totally different meaning in prison. — Dana Gould

Sure, I told him to fuck himself and yes, I paid for it dearly (ruptured spleen). But after my recovery and given the time to reflect, I have a better understanding of who I am penning this for. Not just for the parole board. Not just for wronged Chinese people, not for racist whites, not for my prison therapy group, not for Manny or Jaynuss, not for Momma, not for my once-again estranged father, not even for Lene (though I hope and, in weaker moments, pray she will read this one day), but for others, like myself. Those who lack foresight. Those often overwhelmed by the present. Those ignorant of and indifferent to the past. Those whose worst qualities come to the surface when tested. Those who are fertile ground for dubious moral judgment. Those who feel, in some mysterious but common sense, unmoored. — Leland Cheuk

white-collar crime costs the communities in which it occurs more money than common crimes, but because white-collar criminals steal with a pencil they get away with it, while the eighteen-year-old kid who steals with a gun goes to prison for a long time. — Joseph Hilldorfer

But neither milk-white rose nor red
May bloom in prison air;
The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
Are what they give us there:
For flowers have been known to heal
A common man's despair. — Oscar Wilde

A quick quiz. What do the following events have in common? The war in Iraq. The Exxon Valdez oil spill. The rise in America's prison population. The answer: They all contribute to our nation's gross national product, or what's now referred to as gross domestic product, or GDP, and therefore all are considered "good," at least in the dismal eyes of economists. — Eric Weiner

Everyone who has ever been to school knows that school is prison, but almost nobody beyond school age says it is. It's not polite. We all tiptoe around the truth because admitting it would make us seem cruel and would point a finger at well-intentioned people doing what they believe to be essential. . . . A prison, according to the common, general definition, is any place of involuntary confinement and restriction of liberty. In school, as in adult prisons, the inmates are told exactly what they must do and are punished for failure to comply. Actually, students in school must spend more time doing exactly what they are told than is true of adults in penal institutions. Another difference, of course, is that we put adults in prison because they have committed a crime, while we put children in school because of their age. — Peter Gray

With the cross around his neck he could be his old self again, he could have it all back if he wanted it, but it wasn't worth having. If you were going to live in hell on earth, there was something to be said for being one of the devils. - Horns p.381 — Joe Hill

When they learned what orders they were to execute, they fell into a panic. They were concerned about releasing more than three thousand people from prisons, internment camps and exile. House arrest was to be withdrawn from more than a hundred. 'No, it didn't only apply to bandits, common criminals and hired mercenaries. The pardons were mostly for dissidents. Among the pardoned were henchmen of the deposed King Rhyd and people of the usurper Idi, their virulent partisans. And not only those who had supported in word: most were in prison for sabotage, assassination attempts and armed revolts. The minister of internal affairs was horrified and papa extremely worried. 'While — Andrzej Sapkowski

That's just like America. It's made up of lots of different people. We're all different colors, different ages, we do different jobs
but it takes all of us black people, white people, brown people, men and women, young and old, working in the factories, working in the fields, working in offices, working in stores
it takes a lot of different kinds of people to get the job done for America. — Jesse Jackson

How could I admit that the All-American Girl's force field of stoicism and self-reliance and do-unto-others-and-keep-smiling wasn't working, wasn't keeping pain and shame and powerlessness away?

From a young age I had learned to get over - to cover my tracks emotionally, to hide or ignore my problems in the belief that they were mine alone to solve. So when exhilarating transgressions required getting over on authority figures, I knew how to do it. I was a great bluffer. And when common, everyday survival in prison required getting over, I could do that too. This is what was approvingly described by my fellow prisoners as 'street-smarts,' as in 'You wouldn't think it to look at her, but Piper's got street-smarts. — Piper Kerman

The sort of enchantment I am speaking of is nothing you can teach. It's not of the sort of magic men can employ at whim. It's a magic the gods have given to only a few lucky men and women. It's the magic of a love so real and profound that nothing can change you back once you've known it. - Kulgan, Prince of the Blood — Raymond E. Feist

1 in every 28 children in the United States - more than 3.6 percent - now has a parent in jail or prison. Just 25 years ago, the figure was only 1 in 125. For black children, incarceration is an especially common family circumstance. More than 1 in 9 black children have a parent in prison or jail, a rate that has more than quadrupled in the past 25 years."57 Not — Christopher L. Hayes

So long as you believe yourself to be 'only human' you have accepted life in a prison cell whose door remains locked only by your own mind.
By saying, 'well, I'm only human', you have blindly submitted to all the limitations, fears, pettiness, greed and hatreds which make the common person weak and fragile.
Most never become aware that another way is possible.
You are human, but much more, too.
The much-moreness is the vast, brilliant freedom and power which has confined itself in your humanity.
If you are willing (and not everyone is, which is also a perfectly valid choice), you can begin to explore your native powers and experience freedom within limitation. When you do this, you live fully while you are here and you are no longer afraid to die.
When you are not afraid of death but seek to live in a state of always-discovering, this is when life is transformed and you accept your birthright to choose and create in extraordinary fashion. — Jacob Nordby

I believe when your children are born that you are reborn in some fashion. — Bruce Springsteen

If people can keep track of all the celebrity gossip, there's no reason we can't also assimilate the key concepts of economic philosophy. — Pedro Reyes

The left hemisphere is very interested in language; it communicates in words, it has a past, a present, and a future; it has a time component and it's all about details. The right hemisphere is more about the right now-right here experience where everything is an enormous collage of all the sensory systems flooding into our brains. — Jill Bolte Taylor

The White House announced on Monday the Prime Minister of Australia will visit President Bush in September. We have a lot in common. Australia started out as a prison colony, while the United States has evolved into one. — Argus Hamilton

Playing football is very simple, but playing simple football is the hardest thing there is. — Johan Cruijff

That has to be the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me in my whole life. — Charles M. Schulz

Take a deep breath. Get present in the moment and ask yourself what is important this very second. — Greg McKeown

One does not expect to be comfortable in prison. As a matter of fact, one's mental suffering is so much greater than any common physical distress that the latter is almost forgotten. — Emmeline Pankhurst

Mischief twinkled in his eyes. 'Okay' isn't even close. Kissing you is like a roller-coaster ride to outer space. The farther we go, the more I'm lost and the more I want to explore new territory — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The difference between the past and the present is that individual freedom and security no longer fall to be protected solely through the D vehicle of common-law maxims and presumptions which may be altered or repealed by statute, but are now protected by entrenched constitutional provisions which neither the Legislature nor the Executive may abridge. It would accordingly be improper for us to hold constitutional a system which, as Sachs J has noted, confers on creditors the power to consign the person of an impecunious debtor to prison at will and without the interposition at the crucial time of a judicial officer. — Pius Langa

We breathe when we're wrong, we breathe when we're right, we breathe even as we slip off the ledge toward an early grave. It cannot be undone. So I breathe. — Tahereh Mafi

Belgian officials say they have not found any links between the Paris attacks and those they say were being planned in Belgium. But there are many common elements: a clustering of radicals in a small area, the blurred boundary between petty criminality and jihadist violence, and the role of prison as an incubator for extremism. — Anonymous

The day dawns; the morning star is bright upon the horizon! The iron gate of our prison stands half open. One gallant rush from the North will fling it wide open, while four millions of our brothers and sisters shall march out into liberty. The chance is now given you to end in a day the bondage of centuries, and to rise in one bound from social degradation to the place of common equality with all other varieties of men. — Frederick Douglass

The point of Jesus' existence wasn't to lessen or diminish our appreciation of each other, but to expand our appreciation of each other by reminding us what lies within all of us, because Jesus was an example of the pinnacle of human evolution. — Marianne Williamson

The majority of astronauts have to change their eyeglasses while in space. They bring eyeglasses with them and typically change a few months into the mission. — Scott Kelly

In this country, two things stand first in rank: your flag and your mail. You all know what honor you pay to your flag, but you should know, also, that your mail, - just that ordinary postal card - is also important. But a postal card, or any form of mail, is not important, in that way, until you drop it through a slot in this building, and with a stamp on it, or into a mail box outdoors. Up to that instant it is but a common card, which anybody can pick up and carry off without committing a criminal act. But as soon as it is in back of this partition, or in a mail box, a magical transformation occurs; and anybody who now should willfully purloin it, or obstruct its trip in any way, will find prison doors awaiting him. What a frail thing ordinary mail is! A baby could rip it apart, but no adult is so foolish as to do it. That small stamp which you stick on it, is, you might say, a postal official, going right along with it, having it always in his sight. — Ernest Vincent Wright

Hard to imagine 40 years ago people could be convicted of a crime, fined, sent to prison for using the most common forms of birth control. — Dick Durbin

I, too, head for the Baths of Caracalla,
thinking - with my old, magnificent
privilege of thinking ...
(And let there still be a god in me that thinks,
lost, weak, and childish,
yet whose voice is so human
it is almost a song.) Oh, to leave
this prison of poverty!
To be free of the yearning
that makes these ancient nights so splendid!
He who knows yearning, and he who does not,
have something in common: man's desires are humble. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

Christopher Argent kept stealing disbelieving looks at Farah, his blue eyes reflecting the ambient glow like an alley cat's. Dorian understood why the man would dare in his presence.
First, because Christopher Argent was an unfeeling, fearless killer-for-hire.
And second, because most of the incarcerated men at Newgate had considered Dougan's Fairy some mythical creature, a sight too rare and beautiful to be beheld by a common man. Maybe even a fancy born of an imagination keen enough to take possession of the prison. To meet her was to gaze upon a fantasy realized, to remember the desperate yearnings of a lonely prisoner bereft of kindness, mercy, or beauty. To be blinded by the embodiment of all three of those things. For a man like Argent, one born to incarceration, the sight might have him reassessing some long-held cynical philosophies. — Kerrigan Byrne

Sanity and sense becomes a prison. — Darnell Lamont Walker