Stanislaw Jerzy Lec Quotes

Nothing can excel a few days in jail for giving a young man or woman a quick education in the basis of industrial society.

Behind every great man in prison is another great man in prison.

The prison life of the past looks in our own time like liberation itself.

Imprisonment, as it exists today, is a worse crime than any of those committed by its victims.

Historically, there would always be people among the general population who had family members, friends, cousins who'd done time or who'd been in prison.

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

Capitalism needs and must have the prison to protect itself from the criminals it has created.

Are there no prisons?

The last place I would ever want to go is prison.

Have not prisons - which kill all will and force of character in man, which enclose within their walls more vices than are met with on any other spot of the globe - always been universities of crime?

I know what it's like to be ignored, and I think that is the big problem about the prison system: These people are being thrown away. There is no sense of rehabilitation. In some places, they are trying to do things. But, in most cases, it's a holding cell.

Of course it can be said of jails, too, that they try - by punishing the troublesome - to deter others. No doubt, in certain instances this deterrence actually works. But generally speaking it fails conspicuously.

People in general have a preconceived idea of what prison is, from seeing documentaries or whatever.

We make no apology for people who should be in prison being in prison.

Going to prison is like dying with your eyes open.

I believe, and I may be wrong, the system sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Prison is supposed to rehabilitate, but they don't do that in a lot of cases.

Jail is much easier on people who have nothing.

Going to prison, for me, was like seeing my death before it happened.

Prison … for the detention of persons and not for flagellating them or undermining their health.

I'm an equal opportunity incarcerator.

Let there be convenient cages for the committing of unruly vagrants in every ward.

Bad people should be incarcerated.

All of us have made mistakes in our lives, but only some of us have had to pay for the mistakes. [By going to jail.]

Right outside of Kansas City is Leavenworth, and there are, like, five prisons there. It was kind of the tapestry of my childhood. I was always fascinated. I wanted to know what was behind those walls.