Jack Abbott

Also known as Jack Henry Abbott

American author and criminal (1944–2002)

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“Even European philosophers have taken notice that most of what we take for knowledge is nothing but bias and prejudice.”
“Most important, you learn never to trust a man, even if he seems honest and sincere. You learn how men deceive themselves and how impossible it is to help them without injuring yourself.”
“The mind does not regulate its own condition. Mental depression, for example, is a state of mind caused by the body. In a cell in the hole it only seems that there is a separation of mind and body - in fact, the body's condition (of deprivation of sensations; experiences, functions, and so on) controls the moods of the mind more than in any other situation I can think of.”
“The intelligence recedes, no more a tool of learning - because knowledge is based on experience - but a tool of the outside world it is deprived of knowing. It tries to contact other minds by telepathy; it becomes the Ancestor. Words and Numbers come to hold mystic significance: they were invented by some arcane magic older than man. The line between the word and the thing vanishes; the intervals of numbers in infinity collapse with infinity.”
“I feel that if I ever did adjust to prison, I could by that alone never adjust to society.”
“This world is nothing. An illusion. Death is the release.”