Penitentiary Quotes & Sayings

When most of us hear the word cells, we think biology. I think penitentiary. (It's an occupational hazard.) — Reginald Dipwipple

The first day I came I remarked to Miss Maria that it looked a little like rain - and Miss Maria laughed. I said the road from the station was very pretty - and Miss Maria laughed. I said there seemed to be a few mosquitoes left yet - and Miss Maria laughed. I said that Prospect Point was as beautiful as ever - and Miss Maria laughed. If I were to say to Miss Maria, 'My father has hanged himself, my mother has taken poison, my brother is in the penitentiary, and I am in the last stages of consumption,' Miss Maria would laugh. She can't help it - she was born so; but is very sad and awful. The — L.M. Montgomery

Becka might have been average in L.A., but average in L.A. is Queen of Mars in the visiting room of a federal penitentiary in North Carolina. — Kelly Link

The evening sky was streaked with purple, the color of torn plums, and a light rain had started to fall when I came to the end of the blacktop road that cut through twenty miles of thick, almost impenetrable scrub oak and pine and stopped at the front gate of Angola penitentiary. — James Lee Burke

Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don't let that fool you: he really is an idiot. I implore you, send him back to his father and brothers, who are waiting for him with open arms in the penitentiary. I suggest that we give him ten years in Leavenworth, or eleven years in Twelveworth. — Groucho Marx

Strange? I don't think that word comes anywhere near it. My troops are on an overnight camp three hundred kilometres away from here. I had to sleep at the Santangelo penitentiary for pre-pubescent girls. — Melina Marchetta

My hair is God's aura. Everything went up when I got home from the penitentiary. One night I went to lie down next to my wife, and my hair started popping and uncurling all on its own - ping, ping, ping, ping! I knew that it was God telling me to stay on the righteous path so he could one day pull me up to be there with him. — Don King

I am in the penitentiary. The only thing that I do is my time. — Suge Knight

My first jobs were all civil service. At 14, I worked for the Canadian National Railways. At 16, I worked for the Canadian Penitentiary Service. — Dan Aykroyd

You can't go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary, and really understand it, and come out a liberal. — Robert Downey Jr.

Three men at McAlester State Penitentiary had larger penises than Lamar Pye, but all were black and therefore, by Lamar's own figuring, hardly human at all. — Stephen Hunter

Don't sell your land, don't sell Grandmother Earth to the strip-mining outfits and the uranium companies. Don't sell your water." That kind of advice is a threat to the system and gets you into the penitentiary. — Mary Crow Dog

This happened in 1932, when the state penitentiary was still at Cold Mountain. And the electric chair was there, too, of course. — Stephen King

Until you're grown-up they send you to reform school. After you're grown-up they send you to the penitentiary. — Ernest Hemingway,

There are a whole lot of little tales told in 'Presumed Innocent,' whether it's about the Hobberly kid, who was an important witness who ends up assassinated, or an accountant named Marcy Lupino, who meets a horrible fate in a state penitentiary. There's less of that in 'Innocent,' and deliberately so. — Scott Turow

'cause humans, above all, fear intelligence. how humans, scared out of their minds, gather whatever intelligence they can put their hands on and put it all in a central penitentiary named facts ... — Kathy Acker

First, you're sorry for invading my privacy for years, years before I even knew you existed. Second, you're sorry for kidnapping me, isolating, controlling me, and manipulating me. Third, you're sorry for lying to me, pretending you cared and oh yearh, marrying me. Fourth, listen carefully Tony, this is the big one ... you're sorry for framing me for attempted murder, resulting in incarceration in a federal penitentiary."
"I am deeply sorry for one and four. I did provide you with an alternative destination for number four. I am not proud of two, but three would never have happened without it. I am not, and never will be sorry for three. And, for the record, I never lied about or pretended to love you. I didn't realize it at first, but I have loved you since before you knew my name. And, you forgot our divorce. I am sincerely sorry for that also. — Aleatha Romig

When I was in the penitentiary after being accused of killing a policeman, I was more in the system in the penitentiary than ever. — Huey Newton

The men who start out with the notion that the world owes them a living generally find that the world pays its debt in the penitentiary or the poor house. — William Graham Sumner

You have had indeed a fair trial. It is a shocking thing when a judge of your high office is shown to have betrayed the truth and his honor, and I sentence you to the penitentiary. — Florence Ellinwood Allen

All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling. — H.L. Mencken

The human mind houses a rich depository of positive emotions. It also builds a penitentiary that contains cells of ugly emotions. Love and laughter are two of the most esteemed emotions. Hate and jealously are the two of the most odious emotions. Hate is the rawest of all emotions, making hatred the most difficult of all emotions to curb. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I refer to what is called mysterium iniquitatis, meaning, as I see it, that a crime in the final analysis remains inexplicable inasmuch as it cannot be fully traced back to biological, psychological and/or sociological factors. Totally explaining one's crime would be tantamount to explaining away his or her guilt and to seeing in him or her not a free and responsible human being but a machine to be repaired. Even criminals themselves abhor this treatment and prefer to be held responsible for their deeds. From a convict serving his sentence in an Illinois penitentiary I received a letter in which he deplored that 'the criminal never has a chance to explain himself. He is offered a variety of excuses to choose from. Society is blamed and in many instances the blame is put on the victim. — Viktor E. Frankl

Jack Abramoff is the world's best lobbyist - for the Federal Penitentiary System. — P. J. O'Rourke

But we did conclude that Ray had actually killed Dr. King pursuant to his theory that he was going to be able to get hold of that money. He had learned of this offer through his ties in the Missouri State Penitentiary. — Louis Stokes

Penitentiary songs have been a love of mine for years. They are so wonderful. — Marianne Faithfull

Wrong believing puts people in a prison. Even though there are no physical shackles, wrong believing causes its inmates to behave as though they were incarcerated in a maximum-security penitentiary. — Joseph Prince

Rusche and Kirchheimer relate the different systems of punishment with the systems of production within which they operate: thus, in a slave economy, punitive mechanisms serve to provide an additional labour force
and to constitute a body of 'civil' slaves in addition to those provided by war or trading; with feudalism, at a time when money and production were still at an early stage of development, we find a sudden increase in corporal punishments
the body being in most cases the only property accessible; the penitentiary (the Hopital General, the Spinhuis or the Rasphuis), forced labour and the prison factory appear with the development of the mercantile economy. But the industrial system requires a free market in labour and, in the nineteenth century, the role of forced labour in the mechanisms of punishment diminishes accordingly and 'corrective' detention takes its place. — Michel Foucault

If we steal a man's purse we are thieves. If we steal twelve hundred islands we are patriots. If you steal a man's money you will be sent to the penitentiary. If you steal his liberty you will be sent to the White House. — William Jennings Bryan

You see, you can send me to the penitentiary, it's not a big thing. I've been there all my life anyway. What about your children? These are just a few, there is many, many more coming right at you. — Charles Manson

I got out late winter. I was off on the exact day by thirty-some hours, which is not bad calculations. I made the decision when I went in to keep track of the days, for the simple reason that it was the intention of my jailers to jettison my sense of time and place. They brought you in a metal truck with no windows and took you out in the same truck or one damned similar. The rumor was that Bell Federal Penitentiary was somewhere in the plains of the Montana-Saskatchewan annex. The sight from my cell would not have refuted this. The white of the snow and sky filled my eyes like the sheet pulled over the head of a dead man. If it was not Montana-Saskatchewan, then it was the North Pole, or the moon. It was a signal to anyone who's ever doubted the terror of an idea that almost all of us in this prison that had no time or place were utterly guiltless of a violent act, unless one counts the violence of tongues. — Steve Erickson

I'm the best promoter in the world because I haven't taken a day off work since I left the penitentiary, and because I have read all the great philosophers like St. Thomas Aquinine. — Don King

And so, there in the penitentiary, Juan's education began. He didn't want to be a puto weakling, so he worked hard at learning to read. His earthly body was locked up, but his mind was set free as a young eagle soaring through the heavens. — Victor Villasenor

Build the prisons and they will commit the crimes. — Brian Spellman

Since the late 1970's, the main focus of prisons has been punishment, not rehabilitation. It's hard to believe, but you would be hard-pressed to find a meaningful violence-prevention class in a federal or state penitentiary. And 'we the people' are footing the bill to keep these folks imprisoned. It costs on average $46,000 a year to keep an adult incarcerated in California and about the same for New York State. — James Fox

Infiltrating the records of a state penitentiary as well as the state and federal court systems was much more fun than deciphering art. -Phil Roach — Aleatha Romig

If anyone knew where they were, I'd send the ISDBB (Incredibly Stupid and Dumb Beyond Belief) award to the two guys who tried to break in to the Ohio penitentiary. — Erma Bombeck

I'll never know why it was important to him that the couple (he said it later that he'd never seen them before) would take a picture of the whole Mr. Johnson back to Little Rock.
He must have been tired of being crippled, as prisoners tire of penitentiary bars and the guilty tire of blame. The high topped shoes and the cane, his uncontrollable muscles and thick tongue, and the looks he suffered of either contempt or pity had simply worn him out, and for one afternoon, one part of an afternoon, he wanted no part of them.
I understood and felt closer to him at that moment than ever before or since. — Maya Angelou

I remember when I was probably about ten years old I had a pen pal, and writing letters back and forth with him was one of my favorite things to do. His name was Steve and he lived in one of those huge mansions that's so big it has a name. It was called the Louisiana State Penitentiary, and he told me it was even bigger than the mayor's mansion. We'd send letters back and forth and he'd ask me to send him my favorite books and small pieces of metal or wood that were lying around and all the money I could find in my house. And I'd gather them all up and put cute little stickers of cats on the packages and send them away. It was so fun. Eventually we stopped writing because I moved to another city and he moved out to live on his own. He called it "solitary confinement." I was always so impressed by his vocabulary. — Ellen DeGeneres

I grew to manhood in the Ohio State Penitentiary. — Chester Himes

. . . you've got to do something about her," Aunty was saying. "You've let things go on too long, Atticus, too long." "I don't see any harm in letting her go out there. Cal'd look after her there as well as she does here." Who was the "her" they were talking about? My heart sank: me. I felt the starched walls of a pink cotton penitentiary closing in on me, and for the second time in my life I thought of running away. Immediately. "Atticus, — Harper Lee

In the penitentiary you learn this: don't lie. Don't lie, man. If someone catches you in a lie you leave yourself open to get snuffed. And all my life I lived in that eye of: tell the truth. Pay your debts. Don't get involved in other people's business. Do your number, do your time. And you learn to stand on your own. So, I am walking and standing on my own. People see me standing on my own and not too many people in your world can do that. And I don't realize that at that particular time. I don't realize how weak and mindless you people are. — Charles Manson

We are reaching the point, if we have not passed it already, where the largest public housing program in America will be our penitentiary system. — Barbara Ehrenreich

When he was four years old, his father had brought him home a tin box from the penitentiary. It was orange and had a picture of some peanut brittle on the outside of it and green letters that said, "A NUTTY SURPRISE!" When Enoch had opened it, a coiled piece of steel had sprung out at him and broken off the ends of his two front teeth. His life was full of so many happenings like that that it would seem he should have been more sensitive to his times of danger. — Flannery O'Connor

The criminal left belongs not in a dormitory, but in a penitentiary. — Spiro T. Agnew

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

If this gesture was the way of getting out of the penitentiary, I'd do it. — Lee J. Cobb

One hundred percent of the time, no plea bargain, no bail, you're going to the penitentiary - - that will change the atmosphere in this culture of violence the president talks about, . — Wayne LaPierre

Mark Twain describes how his friend Ralph Keeler introduced him at the start of a lecture: 'I don't know anything about this man. At least I know only two things; one is, he hasn't been in the penitentiary, and the other is (after a pause, and almost sadly), I don't know why. — Mark Twain

Yes, (Bush is a) racist. We all knew that but the world is only finding it out now. As Texas's governor, Bush led a penitentiary system that executed more people than all the other U.S. states together. And most of the people who died from (the) death penalty were Afro-Americans or Hispanics. (Bush) promoted a Conservative program, designed to eliminate everything Americans had accomplished so far in matters of race and equality. — Danny Glover

I was told I would be back in 90 days. If I listened to people, I would be back where I came from - the penitentiary. — Bernard Hopkins

East Germany may have been a giant penitentiary administrated by the Russians, the Stasi may have embodied the worst excesses of German authority and bureaucratic thoroughness, and anyone with brains and spirit may have fled the country before the Wall went up, but the inmates who'd remained behind to expiate the country's collective guilt had paradoxically been liberated from their Germanness (...) Humble, unpunctual, spontaneous, and generous with what little they had. (...) their real loyalties were to one other, not to the state. — Jonathan Franzen

I have a really interesting political point of view, and its not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you cant go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You cant. I wouldnt wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics every since. — Robert Downey Jr.

I am fairly certain that I was the first Seven Sisters grad to eat duck liver chased with a Diet Coke in the lobby of a federal penitentiary. Then again, you never know. — Piper Kerman

If the incision of our words amounts to nothing but a feeling, a slow motion, it will still cut a better swath than the factory model, the corporate model, the penitentiary model, which by my lights are one and the same. — C.D. Wright

I will say that since our capture we have met with uniform kindness, and while in the penitentiary our relations with the officers have been cordially pleasant, and for their considerate and kind disposition we feel profoundly grateful. — Cole Younger

If it wasn't for baseball, I'd be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery. — Babe Ruth

If forced to choose between the penitentiary and the White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you. — William Tecumseh Sherman

I sent people to the penitentiary as fast as I could, never thinking about whether they deserved it. — Joe Jamail

we may lead a horse to water we cannot make him drink; and that while we can shut a man up in a penitentiary we cannot make him penitent. — John Dewey

It is very odd to be standing in a locked room in the Penitentiary, speaking with a strange man about France and Italy and Germany. A travelling man. He must be a wanderer, like Jeremiah the peddler. But Jeremiah travelled to earn his bread, and these other sorts of men are rich enough already. They go on voyages because they are curious. They amble around the world and stare at things, they sail across the oceans as if there's nothing to it at all, and if it goes ill with them in one place they simply pick up and move along to another. — Margaret Atwood

It's almost like a lot of black people in America, a lot of young black men, are born with this cloud over their heads. It's their penitentiary cloud, this philosophy we all have, that it's harder for us. — Erykah Badu

Huguet, on the other hand, insisted that prosecutors settle for nothing less than a lengthy sentence at the state penitentiary in Deer Lodge. — Jon Krakauer

Take a trip in my mind
see all that I've seen,
and you'd be called a
beast, not a human being ...
Fuck it, cause there's
not much I can do,
there's no way out, my
screams have no voice no
matter how loud I shout ...
I could be called a
low life, but life ain't
as low as me. I'm
in juvenile hall headed
for the penitentiary.
George Trevino, sixteen, Who Am I? — Edward Humes

[Mark] Twain called Congress "the only distinctly native criminal class in America. We've lately sent a United States Senator to the penitentiary." That was a fact. — Hal Holbrook

This is the criminal left that belongs not in a dormitory, but in a penitentiary. The criminal left is not a problem to be solved by the Department of Philosophy or the Department of Englishit is a problem for the Department of Justice. Black or white, the criminal left is interested in power. It is not interested in promoting the renewal and reforms that make democracy work; it is interested in promoting those collisions and conflict that tear democracy apart. — Spiro T. Agnew