Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

Incarceration didn't change me. In many ways, incarceration galvanized me. The totality of the experience helped me.

Prison matures you.

When you go to prison, you don't feel like a superstar. It really humbles you as a person.

I feel like if I wasn't to go to jail, I probably wouldn't be the person I am - I wouldn't.

I grew to manhood in the Ohio State Penitentiary.

When you're in prison, and we're left to our own devices, you're stripped of everything, and you really get to see who these people are, the good and the bad.

I believe God takes the things in our lives - family, background, education - and uses them as part of his calling. It might not be to become a pastor. But I don't think God wastes anything.

Jail was probably the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me.

I'm eternally grateful to the penal system in California for saving my life.

I spent five years of my youth in prison - some very bad prisons.

When a young person is sent 'up the river,' we need to remember that all rivers can change course.

Being that I went to jail and came back, I went through a whole new experience in life. I went from being at the top to back down at the bottom again. In jail, you get stripped of your freedom and everything, so I experienced different things, learned more.

We don't live in a world where, if you commit a crime, your life's over. We as a society believe in rehabilitation. We believe in second and third chances.

At the age of 46, in my sixth prison term, it was the second prison I was in - California Rehabilitation Center. The California Civil Education program kind of opened up all of the experiences that that I had dealt with in my life, that I had experienced.

When I got to jail, it was a blessing in disguise because it made me reevaluate and check who I am as a person.

I'm all about people being able to redeem themselves.

I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.

All of life is a constant education.

That which we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so.

Every new experience brings its own maturity and a greater clarity of vision.

One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living.

Nothing will prepare you for singing the truth like about 35 years in the music business, financial troubles and a couple trips to jail, ... It will get you really humble and really truthful, and gets you ready to sing out about who and what saved you.

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

I don't trust anyone that hasn't been to jail at least once in their life.

The last best hope of life is that at some point during living it, all that you did wrong will suddenly teach you to do right.