Yes, it can work that way. The amount of PR that is transferred is calculated by DIVIDING the total available PR by the number of links on the page. There's also a damping factor involved, but that doesn't really make a lot of difference here, since it's the same in every case.

Here's a bit more detail. PR is spread over a roughly logarithmic scale (base 6) and not a linear scale - so each level has roughly 6 times the available power of a page that is exaclty one PR level down. Comparing a PR5 page to a PR 3 page, there would be roughly 36 times more power to vote to other pages.

But if we're talking about a low PR5 page compared to a high PR3 page might be as low as 7 times more power. In that case, having one out of 5 links on the PR3 would be a lot better than having 1 out of 100 links on the PR5.

How can that be true because most of the time you don't control where the links for your website are put, and how can google penalize you for having links on websites that have 100 of links ?

If you asked someone on the street where to buy widgets and they gave you 10 companies, you would think that all of those companies were ok, but that no single one stood out. If the next person said just one company did the best widgets, you may be more inclined to go to that one company as they had created a greater impression.

So when a site only links to one other site that is viewed as a greater recommendation then a site that links to hundreds, it also means that directory sites for instance don't tip the balance by passing on huge amounts of trust to thousands of sites.

Google isn't penalising you because another site links to you among others though, it just isn't crediting you with as much trust.

How can that be true because most of the time you don't control where the links for your website are put, and how can google penalize you for having links on websites that have 100 of links ?

Thats how the (original) PageRank algo works. Each page gets 1 vote, modified by it's own PR value. That vote gets (orignally) equally SHARED among all outbound links. Its now more complicated, but thats the basics

How can that be true because most of the time you don't control where the links for your website are put

Exactly, that's the whole idea and has been the basis of Googles ranking model since 1997.