Quotes about prison

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“What kind of justice is this?
Where the poor go to prison and the rich go free.
Where witnesses are rented, bought, or bribed.
Where people are tried not because of any criminal actions but because of their political beliefs.”

“Prison is where you promise yourself the right to live.”

“What good is it to be rich if we canna scrape up the scratch to buy a political prisoner on a whim?”

“Prisons are the temples where devils learn to prey. Every time we turn the key we twist the knife of fate, because every time we cage a man we close him in with hate.”

“Happiness is a prison, Evey. Happiness is the most insidious prison of all.”

“We are all imprisoned by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convicts, the little black printed words, when in truth we need fresh sounds to utter, new enfranchised noises which would produce a new effect.”

“You're a girl. Someday you'll want to be a prisoner to someone other than yourself.”

“She's like a prisoner inside stone walls, and every day the walls get a little thicker, the doorways a little narrower."
"And?" Eddis prompted.
"Well," said Eugenides, "it's a challenge.”

“By the way, a gendarme assured me this is not a prison.”

“The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.”

“Reading is like looking through several windows which open to an infinite landscape…. For me life without reading would be like being in prison, it would be as if my spirit were in a straightjacket; life would be a very dark and narrow place.”

“What a tragic realm this is, he reflected. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that they don't know it; they think they are free because they have never been free, and do not understand what it means.”

“Sunday school: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.”

“She closed her hands around his and shut her eyes, imagining their bed cut free of this strange prison, floating through space or on the surface of the ocean, just the two of them alone.”

“Never be a prisoner of your past. Become the architect of you future. You will never be the same.”

“Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in fight, searching the skies for dreams.”

“She was one of those Southerners who knew from an early age that the South could never be more for them than a fragrant prison, administered by a collective of loving but treacherous relatives.”

“It turns out Dimitri had a friend, who had a friend, and despite the best security in the Moroi world, we managed to get into the Court's prison facilities.”

“Prison for the crime of puberty—that was how secondary school had seemed, when he really thought back on it.”

“Prison is like high school with knives.”

“Poetry and prison have always been neighbors.”

“If I maintain my silence about my secret it is my prisoner… if I let it slip from my tongue, I am ITS prisoner.”

“Unforgiveness denies the victim the possibility of parole and leaves them stuck in the prison of what was, incarcerating them in their trauma and relinquishing the chance to escape beyond the pain.”

“An intelligent, energetic, educated woman cannot be kept in four walls — even satin-lined, diamond-studded walls — without discovering sooner or later that they are still a prison cell.”

“You cannot be a prisoner of your past against your will. Because you can only live in the past inside your mind.”

“A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.”

“I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.”

“That prison," I said with heartfelt sincerity, "Was absolutely the most awful thing that has happened to me in my entire life." I could tell by the way he looked at me that he thought my life had been filled with one awful thing after another.”

“Blake said that the body was the soul's prison unless the five senses are fully developed and open. He considered the senses the 'windows of the soul.' When sex involves all the senses intensely, it can be like a mystical experience.”

“The demigods have left for alaska," Stheno said. "They fly straight to their death. Ah, small "d" death, I mean. Not our prisoner Death. Although, i suppose they're flying to him too.”

“I will stay in prison till the moss grows on my eye lids rather than disobey God.”

“The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can't do is to change its consequences.”

“Every man is a prisoner, and the greatest irony of all is to be the prisoner of another man.”

“Back to prison. Maybe if you fake a heart attack, I can make a break for it. (Rose Hathaway says to Lissa Dragomir)”

“the mind is its own beautiful prisoner.
Mind looked long at the sticky moon
opening in dusk her new wings

then decently hanged himself, one afternoon.

The last thing he saw was you
naked amid unnaked things…”

“The witty woman is a tragic figure in American life. Wit destroys eroticism and eroticism destroys wit, so women must choose between taking lovers and taking no prisoners.”

“In chains and darkness, wherefore should I stay, And mourn in prison, while I keep the key.”

“The cruelest prison of all is the prison of the mind.”

“Adrian.
He was the reason I was able to survive in this prison.
And he was also the reason I was here in the first place.”

“Scientists are the enemies of tradition, and tradition own all the prisons. - Victor Vigny”

“That somehow dreams are a blurred line between here and there, like a meeting room in a prison. You’re both in the same room, yet on different sides and really, in different worlds.”

“I have always hated crowds. I like deserts, prisons, and monasteries. I have discovered, too, that there are fewer idiots at 3000 meters above sea level than down below.”

“Don’t worry, we’re not letting her out of our sight…and after the Nick incident, we’re not letting her out from behind this bar. (Aimee)
Yeah, Prisoners R Us. (Tory)”

“Prisons are built with stones of law; brothels with bricks of religion.”

“If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking… is freedom.”

“On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.”

“I had never feared insomnia before--like prison, wouldn't it just give you more time to read?”

“A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.”

“I'm this superphilosophical kind of person. Stuck in a prison of abstract ideas and overpowering emotions, I have this personality that makes it really hard to survive.”

“Forgiveness is unlocking the door to set someone free and realising you were the prisoner!”

“Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons.”

“A pedestal is the most insidious prison ever devised.”

“Loneliness is a kind of prison.
[Vincent Van Gogh]”

“He had wanted so hard to Escape, to find the stars. And all he had found was a new prison.”

“… when a wife wouldn't testify, little punishment was meted out. Alex came to understand that only those who pressed charges ever became truly free, because the life they were leading was a prison, even if most of them wouldn't admit it.”

“Go out and do something. It isn’t your room that’s a prison, it’s yourself.”

“What are you looking at, foreigner?” the guard demanded roughly. The smile was a little unsettling. A prisoner shouldn’t smile at his captors like that.
“I’m just making sure I can remember you,” Gilan told him. “Never know when that might be useful.”

“What are you doing here?” [ndr prison]
Selling Girl Scout cookies,” I said. “Want some? The Samoas are terrific.”
(Max II to Max)”

“I like visiting people in prison. I can say whatever I want to them, and they can’t do anything about it.”

“Even in darkness it is possible to create light and encourage compassion. That it is possible to feel free inside a prison. That even in exile, friendship exists and can become an anchor. That one instant before dying, man is still immortal.”

“Those men want to take Laurence from me, and put him in prison, and execute him, and I will not let them, ever, and I do not care if Laurence tells me not to squash you," he added, fiercely, to Lord Barham.”

“A mind enclosed in language is in prison.”

“Many a serious thinker has been produced in prisons, where we have nothing to do but think.”

“So, what, you got cigarette burns, too?" Gitanes said.

Chip showed his palm, "It's nothing."

"Self-inflicted. You pathetic American."

"Different kind of prison" Chip said.”

“Honestly, I thought I was going to be a kite forever, suffocating inside a little feathery prison. And he had the nerve to make fun!”

“It doesn't have to be that bad,' Chade said quietly. 'Most prisons are of our own making. A man makes his own freedom, too.”

“I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he's a victim of the times.”

“You are only a prisoner when you surrender.”

“Years from now, when I'm successful and happy,… and he's in prison… I hope I'm not too mature to gloat.”

“to know how to read is to light a lamp in the mind, to release the soul from prison, to open a gate to the universe." from Pavilion of Women page 292”

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

“As for one-party rule, it was questioned neither by the Left Opposition nor by the Right [wing of the Communist party]. All were prisoners of their own doctrine and their own past: all had worked with a will to create the apparatus of violence that crushed them. Bukharin’ s hopeless attempt to form a league with Kamenev was no more than a pitiful epilogue to his career. In November 1929 the deviationists performed a public act of penance, but even this did not save them. Stalin’ s victory was complete; the collapse of the Bukharinite opposition meant the triumph of autocracy in the party and in the country. In December 1929 Stalin’ s fiftieth birthday was celebrated as a major historical event, and from this point we may date the "cult of personality". Trotsky’ s prophecy of 1903 had come true: party rule had become Central Committee rule, and this in turn had becorne the personal tyranny of a dictator.”

“It's a fairly unique position; to have been in charge of prison funding and then to have been an inmate. I wish I'd been more generous.”

“Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention. Our prisons are full of black and brown men and women who are serving inappropriately long and harsh sentences for non-violent mistakes in their youth.”

“Pandora, waking: …
I am alone. These faces in the mirrors
Are but the shadows and phantoms of myself;
They cannot help nor hinder. No one sees me,
Save the all-seeing Gods…
She lifts the lid. A dense mist rises from the chest
and fills the room. Pandora falls senseless on
the floor. Storm without.

Chorus of Dreams from the Gate of Horn: …
Fever of the heart and brain,
Sorrow, pestilence, and pain,
Moans of anguish, maniac laughter,
All the evils that hereafter
Shall afflict and vex mankind,
All into the air have risen
From the chambers of their prison;
Only Hope remains behind.”

“Well, not so much politics. A couple of my songs have a social commentary, like Oye Mi Canto (Hear My Voice). I really can't escape from politics because my father was a political prisoner in Cuba; he went to Vietnam. But I try to stay away from politics as much as possible.”

“Those without a chip will not be allowed in high security places like military installations, prisons, government buildings of all sorts and of course airports, subways, trains and later cars and trucks. Eventually, after some major planned crisis of course, it will become mandatory and anyone who does not take this chip will not only not be allowed to do those things, they will become “enemies of the state” for “disrupting the economy” or “threatening public security” or whatever phrase they can dream up to excuse arresting, imprisoning and eventually executing those who don't cooperate. Wars and civil unrest have always been great “cover” for implementing grabs for power.”

“There's definitely a rule in the Convention against humiliating prisoners and I'd have to see exactly the interview to see whether that in itself violated the Convention, but the Convention is very clear that prisoners have got to be treated properly. We are treating the Iraqi prisoners extremely well. In fact I think they get good food and shelter and they're free from the horrible commanders they used to work for. I think most of them are much happier, frankly.”

“And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific reverse shock: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers around the racks invent, refine, discuss.People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind — it’s Nazism, it will pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, but the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it.”

“Across this dazzling
Mediterranean
August morning
The dolphins write such
Ideograms:
With power to wake
Me prisoned in
My human speech
They sign: 'I AM!”

“Everywhere — all over Africa and South America … you see these suburbs springing up. They represent the optimum of what people want. There's a certain sort of logic leading towards these immaculate suburbs. And they're terrifying, because they are the death of the soul … This is the prison this planet is being turned into.”

“The rapid change in many aspects of morality, even in the last century, also suggests that much of its “innateness” comes not from evolution but from learning. That’s because evolutionary change simply doesn’t occur fast enough to explain societal changes like our realization that women are not an inferior moiety of humanity, or that we shouldn’t torture prisoners. The explanation for these changes must reside in reason and learning: our realization that there is no rational basis for giving ourselves moral privilege over those who belong to other groups.”

“South Australian prison officers do have a duty of care to protect inmates from rape and from assault. Provision of condoms would not protect against rape: prisoners with rape or assault tendencies should be separated from other prisoners. So should prisoners with HIV/AIDS.”

“Life is but the spirit's prison,
Where its wings are furl'd,
Stretching to their flight in vain, —
Seeking that eternal home
Which is in a world to come.”

“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”

“I believe that we cannot survive as a democratic country when we are supporting someone like Thieu in Saigon, who has put 300,000 political prisoners in jail because they've spoken in favor of peace. I just don't believe that when a Republican Party bugs the Democratic Party headquarters, that that smacks of democracy. These kind of things I speak out against. That doesn't mean I'm a Communist.”

“All is gone, all is gone, admit it, take flight.
I gagged twice, doubled, tears blinding my sight.
My mind it was mangled, I ran into the night
Leaving all of love's ashes behind me.
The wind knocks my window, the room it is wet.
The words to say I'm sorry, I haven't found yet.
I think of her often and hope whoever she's met
Will be fully aware of how precious she is.
Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me,
"How good, how good does it feel to be free?"”

“The Americans have always been more open to my ideas. In fact, I could earn a living in America just by lecturing. One of my brightest audiences, incidentally, were the prisoners in a Philadelphia gaol — brighter than my students at university.”

“The people resemble a wild beast, which, naturally fierce and accustomed to live in the woods, has been brought up, as it were, in a prison and in servitude, and having by accident got its liberty, not being accustomed to search for its food, and not knowing where to conceal itself, easily becomes the prey of the first who seeks to incarcerate it again.”

“Thus I alone, where all my freedom grew,
In prison pine, with bondage and restraint:
And with remembrance of the greater grief,
To banish the less, I find my chief relief.”

“He was not condemned to death, freedom awaited
him. What was the temptation, the one that worked?
Perhaps he wanted to live with a woman whose life
he had saved, who had seen down into the earth but
had nevertheless followed him back up to life. It was
his only chance to be a hero, to one person at least,
for if he became the hangman the others would
despise him. He was in prison for wounding another
man, on one finger of the right hand, with a sword.
This too is history.”

“Dylan… said, "Both Becky and Kenny need medical attention—"
"And a prison cell until their social security kicks in," Jilly added.
"—but give us two or three minutes before you call 9-1-1," Dylan finished.
This instruction baffled Marj. "But you are 9-1-1."
Jilly fielded that peculiar question: "We're one of the ones, Marj, but we're not the other one or the nine."”

“These 100 books do not agree on everything – and that's OK too. You don't need total agreement when you're an open-hearted, decentralist, experimentalist New Ager. After the Prison and its institutions lose their hold over us, you won't even want such agreement. Within the parameters of certain life-affirming values, you'll want a hundred flowers to bloom. Synergy is all; cooperation and coordination is all.”

“I set up the Orchestra in 1939. I had had my supporters by that time and they used to follow me and scream during my shows. I used to like it, but said to myself: "be humble Osvaldo, don't be arrogant." There were sometimes I was in prison and a cousin of mine (a policeman) used to replaced me on the piano.”

“Everywhere men have unlocked the prisoners within, and from under the disguising skins the apes have leapt joyfully out.”

“He was also extraordinarily sensitive to the ways that imperialists could cloak essentially materialist concerns in the language of morality, mission and destiny. Yet in the process and on more than one occasion he provided evidence to show that the financiers too were prisoners of imperial ideology, that they were as much wedded to causes like 'the civilising mission', as much mislead by hightened imperial rhetoric, as anyone else.”

“Prisoners do get shafted at every opportunity by BOP. Well, not every defendant; there are a few exceptions. But for the most part, BOP isn’t there to be nice to prisoners. They’re there to imprison them.”

“Rosanna Spearman had been a thief, and not being of the sort that get up Companies in the City, and rob from thousands, instead of only robbing from one, the law laid hold of her, and the prison and the reformatory followed the lead of the law.”

“I know this of my own knowledge, because when the garrison of Baton Rouge was sent to the Rio Grande to assist in protecting that frontier against the guerrilla Cortina, who had cause of offense against the Texan people, Governor Moore made strong complaints and demanded a new garrison for Baton Rouge, alleging as a reason that it was not prudent to have so much material of war in a parish where there were 20,000 slaves and less than 5,000 whites, and very shortly after this he and Bragg, backed by the militia of New Orleans, made 'prisoners of war' of that very garrison, sent there at their own request.”