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Jack Abbott Quotes

Jack Henry Abbott was an American criminal and author. With a long history of criminal convictions, Abbott's writing on his life and experiences was lauded by a number of high-profile literary critics, including author Norman Mailer. Due in part to lobbying by Mailer and others on Abbott's behalf, Abbot was released from prison in 1981 where he was serving sentences for forgery, manslaughter and bank robbery. Abbott's memoir In the Belly of the Beast was published to positive reviews shortly after his release. Six weeks after being paroled from prison, Abbott stabbed and killed a waiter in a New York City cafe. Abbott was convicted and sent back to prison, where he committed suicide in 2002.

Abbott described his life as being a "state raised convict", spending much of his life since age 12 in confinement in state facilities, including solitary confinement. He wrote that because of confinement with other violent offenders from whom he could not escape, he developed a subjective perspective that every encounter was potentially threatening. Wikipedia  

✵ 21. January 1944 – 10. February 2002

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Jack Abbott: 7 quotes2 likes

Famous Jack Abbott Quotes

“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.”

Jack Abbott book In the Belly of the Beast

In the Belly of the Beast (1981)

“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.”

Jack Abbott book In the Belly of the Beast

In the Belly of the Beast (1981)

“Even European philosophers have taken notice that most of what we take for knowledge is nothing but bias and prejudice.”

Jack Abbott book In the Belly of the Beast

In the Belly of the Beast (1981)

“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.”

Jack Abbott book In the Belly of the Beast

In the Belly of the Beast (1981)

“But a kind of genius can come of this deprivation of sensation, of experience. It has been mistaken as naïve intelligence, when in fact it is empty intelligence, pure intelligence. The composition of the mind is altered. Its previous cultivation is disintegrated and it has greater access to the brain, the body: it is Supersanity. Learning is turned inside out. You have to start from the top and work your way down. You must study mathematical theory before simple arithmetic; theoretical physics before applied physics; anatomy, you might say, before you can walk.”

Jack Abbott book In the Belly of the Beast

In the Belly of the Beast (1981)

“I feel that if I ever did adjust to prison, I could by that alone never adjust to society.”

Jack Abbott book In the Belly of the Beast

In the Belly of the Beast (1981)

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