“For some people, four walls are three too many.”

This seems to have originated with the Spanish military leader Juan Domingo de Monteverde, who, in Francisco de Miranda, a Transatlantic Life in the Age of Revolution (2003) by Karen Racine, p. 239, is quoted as having said: "four walls are three too many for a prison — you only need one for an execution."
Misattributed

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 28, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "For some people, four walls are three too many." by Joseph Stalin?
Joseph Stalin photo
Joseph Stalin 95
General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1879–1953

Related quotes

Isaac Newton photo

“Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Les hommes construisent trop de murs et pas assez de ponts.
This became widely attributed to Isaac Newton after Dominique Pire ascribed it to "the words of Newton" in his Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1958. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1958/pire-lecture.html Pire refers not to Isaac, but to Joseph Fort Newton, who is widely reported to have said "People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges." This appears to be paraphrased from a longer passage found in his essays and addresses, The One Great Church: Adventures of Faith (1948), pp. 51–52: "Why are so many people shy, lonely, shut up within themselves, unequal to their tasks, unable to be happy? Because they are inhabited by fear, like the man in the Parable of the Talents, erecting walls around themselves instead of building bridges into the lives of others; shutting out life."
Misattributed

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“5037. Three are too many to keep a Secret, and too few to be merry.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Alex Haley photo

“Many grandparents carry three or four generations of history in their heads but don't talk about it because they have been ignored.”

Alex Haley (1921–1992) African American biographer, screenwriter, and novelist

TIME interview (1977)
Context: Just look at the scores of thousands of housing tracts in this country, where only parents and children live. Think of the impact on these children who will grow up without close proximity to grandparents. There are certain things that a grandmammy or a granddaddy can do for a child that no one else can. It's sort of like Stardust — the relationship between grandparents and children. The lack of this for many children has to have a negative impact on society. The edges of these children are a little sharper for the lack of it. … I tell young people to go to the oldest members of their family and get as much oral history as possible. Many grandparents carry three or four generations of history in their heads but don't talk about it because they have been ignored. And when the young person starts doing this, the old are warmed to the cockles of their souls and will tell a grandchild everything they can muster.

James Thurber photo

“One (martini) is all right, two is too many, three is not enough.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

Quoted in Time Magazine (New York, 15 August 1960) from an an interview with Glenna Syse of the Chicago Sun-Times
Letters and interviews

Herb Caen photo

“Martinis are like breasts, one isn't enough, and three is too many.”

Herb Caen (1916–1997) American newspaper columnist

Cockburn, Alexander. "Breasts, Martinis and Hitchens". http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/05/06/breasts-martinis-and-hitchens/ Counterpunch.org, May 6, 2003.
Attributed

Orson Welles photo
Edna St. Vincent Millay photo
Ayn Rand photo
James A. Michener photo
Anton Chekhov photo

“An expansive life, one not constrained by four walls, requires as well an expansive pocket.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (March 11, 1892)
Letters

Related topics