Convicts Quotes

“There was only one guy in the whole Bible Jesus ever personally promised a place with him in Paradise. Not Peter, not Paul, not any of those guys. He was a convicted thief, being executed. So don't knock the guys on death row. Maybe they know something you don't.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Merciful heavens! Human treatment may even render human a man in whom the image of God has long ago been tarnished. It is these 'unfortunates' that must be treated in the most human fashion. This is their salvation and their joy.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead

“rip the prisons
open
put the
convicts
on
television”
― Norman Mailer, Deaths For The Ladies

“The backfire, my dear boy, of exiling the cleverest criminals of the nation to one place and requiring them to use their ingenuity is that they will -- and you can't control what they do with it.”
― Sam Starbuck, The Dead Isle

“Sometimes I feel like a normal person. Sometimes I forget I’m on parole, that I’m not really free.”
― Jennifer Lane, Bad Behavior

“We care (about prison education), very simply, because (prisoners) get out. Almost everyone who is locked up now is going to be set free one day. If we treat prisoners like animals the whole time they are locked up, that's what we'll get when they're back on the streets: wild, dangerous animals.”
― Christopher Zoukis, College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons

“(Prisoners) need an education. They need a GED to start with. Then they need some kind of training so when they get out they have a marketable skill. That way they can support themselves and they can support their families.”
― Christopher Zoukis, College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons

“As for the very first settlers, they were not even free. The founders were not a chosen people except in the old Australian joke that they were chosen by the best judges in England.”
― K.S. Inglis, Observing Australia: 1959–1999

“For fourteen years Wiliam Walker alias Brown alias Shields alias Swallow alias Waldon alias Todd alias Watson had been a major irritant to British authorities on both sides of the world. To the London police he was an accomplished thief. To the colonial government in Van Diemen's Land, he was a clever and determined escaper; he had stolen one of its vessels and caused much embarrassment by making it back to England not once but twice, one of only a handful of runaways to do so. To these skills of theft and evasion must be added outstanding seamanship, a glib tongue, extraordinary resourcefulness and a capacity for leadership. Among his more admirable attributes his loyalty to his family should also not be forgotten. To the convicts of Macquarie Harbour and Port Arthur he was a living legend, tangible proof that escape from the island prison was possible. By any standards, he was a remarkable man...”
― Warwick Hirst, The Man Who Stole the Cyprus: A True Story of Escape

“Vagrancy laws and other laws defining activities such as "mischief" and "insulting gestures" as crimes were enforced vigorously against blacks. The aggressive enforcement of these criminal offenses opened up an enormous market for convict leasing.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“I hate hiking with convicts carrying machetes.”
― Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief

“Have you ever wondered why people don't like the truth? Simply because the truth convicts, it brings to light all hidden or unknown things and exposes lies or deceptions.”
― Khuliso Mamathoni, The Greatest Proposal