“Everyone sits in the prison of his own ideas; he must burst it open, and that in his youth, and so try to test his ideas on reality.”

“Everyone is in love with his own ideas”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

“He who comes up to his own idea of greatness, must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

“Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own.”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

“Mandela taught us the power of action, but he also taught us the power of ideas; the importance of reason and arguments; the need to study not only those who you agree with, but also those who you don’t agree with. He understood that ideas cannot be contained by prison walls, or extinguished by a sniper’s bullet. He turned his trial into an indictment of apartheid because of his eloquence and his passion, but also because of his training as an advocate. He used decades in prison to sharpen his arguments, but also to spread his thirst for knowledge to others in the movement. And he learned the language and the customs of his oppressor so that one day he might better convey to them how their own freedom depend upon his.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

“When the prison gates slam behind an inmate, he does not lose his human quality; his mind does not become closed to ideas; his intellect does not cease to feed on a free and open interchange of opinions; his yearning for self-respect does not end; nor is his quest for self-realization concluded. If anything, the needs for identity and self-respect are more compelling in the dehumanizing prison environment.”

Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

“Everyone must come out of his Exile in his own way.”

Martin Buber (1878–1965) German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian

“Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

“The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices — just recognize them.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist