Quotes about prison
page 4

“This "scorched earth" directive was followed the next day, on March 23 by an equally monstrous order by Martin Bormann, the Fuehrer's secretary. Speer described it on the stand at Nuremberg: "The Bormann decree aimed at bringing the population to the center of the Reich from both East and West, and the foreign workers and prisoners of war were to be included. These millions of people were to be sent upon their trek on foot. No provisions for their existence had been made, nor could it be carried out in view of the situation. It would have resulted in an unimaginable hunger catastrophe.”

William L. Shirer book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960)

Hunger, War, People

“The pivotal struggle which must be waged in the ranks of the working class is consequently the open, unreserved battle against entrenched racism. The white worker must become conscious of the threads which bind him to a James Johnson, Black auto worker, member of UAW, and a political prisoner presently facing charges for the killings of two foremen and a job setter. The merciless proliferation of the power of monopoly capital may ultimately push him inexorably down the very same path of desperation. No potential victim of the fascist terror should be without the knowledge that the greatest menace to racism and fascism is unity!”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

If They Come in The Morning (1971)

Knowledge

“The prison has become a black hole into which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited. Mass imprisonment generates profits as it devours social wealth, and thus it tends to reproduce the very conditions that lead people to prison. There are thus real and often quite complicated connections between the deindustrialization of the economy—a process that reached its peak during the 1980s—and the rise of mass imprisonment, which also began to spiral during the Reagan-Bush era. However, the demand for more prisons was represented to the public in simplistic terms. More prisons were needed because there was more crime. Yet many scholars have demonstrated that by the time the prison construction boom began, official crime statistics were already falling.”

Angela Davis Are Prisons Obsolete?

Source: Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003), Chapter One

People, Time, Wealth

“That subtle knot which makes us man:
So must pure lovers' souls descend
T' affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great Prince in prison lies.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

The Extasy, line 64

Soul, Lovers, Sense

“With the same bricks one may erect… a palace or a prison…. The same letters are used in Holy Writ and heretical works.”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

A Gilgul fun a Nign, 1901. Alle Verk, vi. 33.

“What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random acts by "a few bad apples," it was the natural consequence of the Bush Administration policy that has dismantled those wise constraints and has made war on America's checks and balances.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, NYU Speech (2004)

War, Nature

“It was a world which granted privileges to some and imposed prohibitions on others…Endowed with strength and eager to learn, one had to drag himself in a narrow prison cell when he could see an open field, a vast horizon in the distance; when he could feel the beatings of a heart; and when he believed himself entitled to enjoy the beauty of a dream.”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

"Laughter and Tears", an essay (c.1884)

World, Beauty, Dreams, Feeling

“I call on Governments worldwide to put an end to multiple campaigns of defamation, mobbing and even prosecution of whistleblowers like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, the Luxleakers Antoine Deltour and Raphael Halet and the tax corruption leaker Rafi Rotem, who have acted in good faith and who have given meaning to article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on freedom of expression. Whistleblowers who are serving prison sentence in many countries should be pardoned.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

“It is time to recognize the contribution of whistleblowers” – UN expert welcomes commutation of Manning’s sentence
2017, Whistleblowers

Faith, Freedom, Country

“I am descended from Irish immigrants. A century ago, the Irish knew well how American society—and law enforcement—viewed them: as drunks, ruffians, and criminals. Law enforcement’s biased view of the Irish lives on in the nickname we still use for the vehicles we use to transport groups of prisoners. It is, after all, the “paddy wagon.””

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Law

“What should a priest do with so fair a house?
A prison may best beseem his holiness.”

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) English dramatist, poet and translator

Gaveston, Act I, scene i, lines 204–205
Edward II (c. 1592)

Housing

“The limitations of our strength compelled us to concentrate on two objectives - the points which seemed the most essential to the success of the invasion. The main effort, under my own control, was directed against the bridges at Rotterdam, Dordrecht and Moerdijk by which the main route from the south was carried across the mouths of the Rhine. Our task was to capture the bridges before the Dutch could blow them up, and keep them open until the arrival of our mobile ground forces. My force comprised four parachute battalions and one air-transported regiment (of three battalions). We achieved complete success, at a cost of only 180 casualties. We dared not fail, for if we did the whole invasion would have failed. The secondary attack was made against The Hague. Its aim was to get a hold upon the Dutch capital, and in particular to capture the Government offices and the Service headquarters. The force employed here was commanded by General Graf Sponcck; it consisted of one parachute battalion and two air-transported regiments. This attack did not succeed. Several hundred men were killed and wounded, while as many were taken prisoner.”

Kurt Student (1890–1978) German Luftwaffe general during World War II

Quoted in "The Other Side of the Hill" - Page 124 - by Basil Henry Liddell Hart - History - 1948.

Men, Effort, Success

“Once I was in solitary confinement, it provided me with the isolated moments to reflect on my past and to dwell upon something greater, something better than involving myself in thuggery and criminality. It had to be more to life than that. It had to be more than the madness that was disseminating throughout this entire prison.”

Stanley Tookie Williams (1953–2005) American criminal

Democracy Now! interview (2005)

Life, Past, Madness

“The art most significantly affected by radio was music, since it was abolished the acoustic or mechanical limitations on the range of sounds. Music, the last of the arts to break out of the bodily prison that confines oral communication, had already entered the era of mechanical production before 1914 with the gramophone, although this was hardly yet within reach of the masses”

Eric Hobsbawm book The Age of Extremes

The Arts 1914-1945
The Age of Extremes (1992)

Art, Music, Communication

“How oft the word which we would gladly speak
Might be, unto some darkly groping soul,
The key to bid doubt's massive doors unroll,
The free winds' breath upon the prisoner's cheek,
Or. to the hungry heart, sweet pity's dole!
We hurry on, nor know that they are near,
As passed Evangeline the one so dear.”

Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney (1823–1908) American writer

"Soul Blindness", as quoted Our Woman Workers: Biographical Sketches of Women Eminent in the Universalist Church for Literary, Philanthropic and Christian Work (1881) by E. R. Hanson.

Soul, Heart

“Almost everywhere and at all times the saying of St. Augustine aptly described the situation: "et paupera et inops est ecclesia — the Church is poor and helpless." The Church was powerful only when the state wanted it to be so or when pious laymen had a burning desire to make it so. In the Middle Ages especially the Church was sedulously oppressed: Popes were frequently imprisoned, made the pawns of secular rulers, persecuted, ridiculed, besieged, plundered, exiled, imprisoned and insulted. What about Canossa? People forget how the story ended, and the words of Gregory VII on his death-bed in exile: "Dilexi iustitiam et odi iniquitatem, propterea morior in exilio [I loved justice and hated injustice, therefore I die in exile]." Finally there came the Babylonian Captivity at Avignon. It is true that all of this looks quite different in the elementary schools of Kazachstan, in McKinley High and to our intellectuals, whose grasp of history is almost nil.
The situation altered very little in the nineteenth century. Once again there was a prisoner in the Vatican, Pius IX, whose body the mob yelling "Al fiume la carogna!" wanted to throw into the Tiber. This brings us to the twentieth century: Mexico City, Moabit, Dachau, Plötzensee, Auschwitz, Struthof, Carcel Modelo, Andrássy-út 66, Sremska Mitrovica, Vorkuta, Karaganda, Magadan, Lubyanka, Ocnele Mare — these are the modern Stations of the Cross of our clergy. (Pg 128)”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

The Timeless Christian (1969)

Love, Death, Hate, People

“I could never fear a God who kept a hell prison-house. No, not though he flung me there because I refused. There is a power stronger than such a one; and it is possible to walk unscathed even in the burning furnace.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Letter II
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

God, Fear, Hell, Housing

“At the first stages of negotiations, we will not release prisoners with blood on their hands. However, as part of a final agreement, I do not rule out this option. Offering hope for a better future is more important than grieving the past.”

Amir Peretz (1952) Israeli politician

Source: TV interview by Menashe Raz, Oded Shachar and Maya Bengal, on Channel 1, October 16, 2005.

Hope, Past, Future, Parting

“"Or animated", Friar Dudgald added. "And you know of course that to animate the corpse of a goodly man is a crime against all that is good and right. A crime against the Broken God!"
Entreri stared at Dudgald, narrowed his eyes, grinned, and spat on the floor. "Not my god", he explained.
Celedon rushed over and slugged him. He staggered, just a step, but refused to fall.
"Gareth is king by blood and by deed!" Dudgald shouted. "Anointed by Ilmater himself!"
"As every drow matron claims to be anointed by Lolth!" the stubborn prisoner cried.
"Lord Ilmater strike you dead!" Lady Christine shouted.
"Fetch your sword and strike for him," Entreri shouted right back. "Or get your sword and give me my own, and we will learn whose god is the stronger!"”

R. A. Salvatore book Road of the Patriarch

Road of the Patriarch

God, Learning, Animals, Dead

“Shahjahan was even otherwise interested in making converts. Professor Sri Ram Sharma has collected facts and figures of Hindus converted to Islam from the works of Qazvini, Lahori, Salih, Mohsin Fani, Khafi Khan, etc. during Shajahan’s reign… The following is the summary of what he says. “Early in his reign Shahjahan had appointed a Superintendent of converts to Islam, thus setting up a department for the special purpose of making converts. The one common practice was to make terms with the criminals… The Hindus of the Punjab, Bhimbar, Bhadauri and Sirhind… were all offered remission of their sentences provided they accepted the ‘true faith’. When the war with the Portuguese started, of the 400 prisoners taken a few became Muslims. The rest were kept in prison with orders that whenever they expressed willingness to embrace Islam, they were to be converted, liberated and given daily allowances. An order was issued in the seventh year of his reign that if a Hindu wanted to be converted to Islam, his family should not place any obstacles in his way… Under Shahjahan, apostasy from Islam had again become a capital crime.””

Shah Jahan (1592–1666) 5th Mughal Emperor

Lal, K. S. (1990). Indian muslims: Who are they, citing Sharma, Sri Ram, The Religious Policy of the Mughal Emperors, Asia Publishing House (Bombay, 1962).

War, Family, Faith, Way

“Ibn-ul-Asir says that Qutbuddin Aibak made “war against the provinces of Hind… He killed many, and returned home with prisoners and booty.” In Banaras, according to the same authority, Muhammad Ghauri’s slaughter of the Hindus was immense. “None was spared except women and children." No wonder that slaves began to fill the households of every Turk from the very beginning of Muslim rule in India. Fakhr-i-Mudabbir informs us that as a result of the Muslim achievements under Muhammad Ghauri and Qutbuddin Aibak, “even a poor householder (or soldier) who did not possess a single slave before became the owner of numerous slaves of all description (jauq jauq ghulam har jins)…””

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7 (quoting Kamil-ut-Tawarikh, E and D, II, p. 250-1; Tarikh-i-Fakhruddin Mubarak Shah, p. 20.)

Women, War, Children, Home

“Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Refusing to bargain for freedom after 21 years in prison, as quoted in TIME (25 February 1985)
1980s

Men, Freedom

“I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world that have disease from their parents, that have no chance to be a human being, practically. Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they're born. That to me is the greatest sin — that people can — can commit.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

The Mike Wallace Interview (ABC) http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/sanger_margaret_t.html, Posed question: "Do you believe in sin — When I say "believe" I don't mean believe in committing sin, do you believe there is such a thing as a sin

Children, People, World, Disease

“At the Galerie Colette Allendy I exhibited some twenty monochrome surfaces, all in different colours: greens, reds, yellows, purples, blues, oranges.... and so found myself at the start of my career in this style... I was trying to show colour, but I realized at the private view that the public were prisoners of a preconceived point of view and that, confronted with all these surfaces of different colours, they responded far more to the inter-relationship of the different propositions, they reconstituted the elements of a decorative polychromy.”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

In 1956; p. 30
before 1960, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings"

“No jailer can compel any prisoner to speak or act against that prisoner's will, but chains can prevent his acting, and a gag can prevent his speaking.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Give Me Liberty (1936)

“Colonel Ioane Naivalurua, Land Force Commander but now illegal Commissioner of Prison: "Courageous, strong and … a saviour of Fiji in this time of need". (23 June 2005).”

Frank Bainimarama (1954) Prime Minister of Fiji

Courage, Strong, Time

“The interesting questions are what did Hitler know, did Himmler conceal it, did he keep it from Hitler, where was the killing done, was it Auschwitz, was it the Reinhard camps and that's what people are frightened to research, because they go to prison for it.”

David Irving (1938) British writer and Holocaust denier

Interview with John Humphrys on The Today Program (23 December 2006)

People, Question

“There are prisoners in Guantanamo Bay that have not been tried, have no legal representation, their families cannot see them and are obviously kept in a strange land outside their own country. There is no international monitoring of their conditions and fate. No one knows whether they are prisoners, POWs, accused or criminals. European investigators have confirmed the existence of secret prisons in Europe too.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Paragraphs 6-7
2006, Letter to George W. Bush, 2006

Fate, Secret, Family, Country

“My father rarely spoke of life before [he left Cuba]. About prison, he jsut said, "That man is a genius at PR." Castro would come to the jail in the middle of the night and ask the prisoners, "What are you doing here? Don't you see we're trying to do the right thing?" The reason I'm not more political is because I have music. And from a young age, I needed it. After prison, my father came to America, joined the Army, fought in Vietnam -- and was exposed to Agent Orange. He died a slow, horrible death. Music was my escape.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

www.huffingtonpost.com (September 7, 2007)
2007, 2008

Life, Death, Age, Music

“Prisons are the universities of the opposition.”

Janusz Korwin-Mikke (1942) polish politician

Source: Blog of the autor, 6 March 2008 http://korwin-mikke.blog.onet.pl/Uroczystosci-w-Palacu,2,ID299671676,n

Universe

“If their princes exceed their bounds, Madam, no doubt they may be resisted, even by power. For there is neither greater honor, nor greater obedience, to be given to kings or princes, than God hath commanded to be given unto father and mother. But the father may be stricken with a frenzy, in which he would slay his children. If the children arise, join themselves together, apprehend the father, take the sword from him, bind his hands, and keep him in prison till his frenzy be overpast: think ye, Madam, that the children do any wrong? It is even so, Madam, with princes that would murder the children of God that are subjects unto them. Their blind zeal is nothing but a very mad frenzy, and therefore, to take the sword from them, to bind their hands, and to cast them into prison, till they be brought to a more sober mind, is no disobedience against princes, but just obedience, because it agreeth with the will of God.”

John Knox (1514–1572) Scottish clergyman, writer and historian

John Knox interview with Queen Mary I, History of the Reformation in Scotland http://www.reformation.org/john-knox-interview.html. (Edited by William Croft Dickinson, D.Lit.). Philosophical Library, New York, 1950

God, Children, Thinking, Madness

“You’re negotiating all these problems for several years, they will talk about that, about a newspaper, they will talk about an underage boy in prison (for example). He’s 17 and he raped a nine-year-old, and they ask: “Why do you lock him up?” And so I say, what do you do, this is a rape case, and they want to discuss, I spend so many hours discussing whatever it is this boy… So what do they want us to do? Release him? So that he can go and rape another one?”

Jakaya Kikwete (1950) Tanzanian politician and president

On doing business with China easily. Interviews, Interview with Financial Times, 2007-10-04 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d8a07e28-72a3-11dc-b7ff-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check1/

Boy, Problem

“A system designed to protect individual liberty will have no punishments for any group and no privileges. Today, I think inner-city folks and minorities are punished unfairly in the war on drugs.
For instance, blacks make up 14% of those who use drugs, yet 36 percent of those arrested are Blacks and it ends up that 63% of those who finally end up in prison are Blacks. This has to change.
We don’t have to have more courts and more prisons. We need to repeal the whole war on drugs. It isn’t working. We have already spent over $400 billion since the early 1970s, and it is wasted money. Prohibition didn’t work. Prohibition on drugs doesn’t work. So we need to come to our senses. And, absolutely, it’s a disease. We don’t treat alcoholics like this. This is a disease, and we should orient ourselves to this. That is one way you could have equal justice under the law.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

GOP Presidential Forum at Morgan State University http://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/p/30724045/Stands-on-race-Paul-can-not-deny.aspx, September 27, 2007 2000s, 2006-2009

Money, War, Alcohol, Disease

“Christians don't steal or lie, they don't get divorced or have abortions. If the Ten Commandments were followed by everyone we would be able to fire half the police force and in six months the prisons would be all half empty.”

John Hagee (1940) American pastor, theologian and saxophonist

"The Fish Gate" sermon (September 2, 2007)

Lie

“We need to shut down this Gitmo prison? Well, don't shut it down - we just need to start an advertising campaign. We need to call it, 'Gitmo, the Muslim resort.' Any resort that treated people like this would have ads all over the New York Times trying to get people to come down and visit for some R&R, for some rest and relaxation.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

Stated about Guantanamo Bay, on The Rush Limbaugh Show, (June 14, 2005), quoted in —

People, Time

“Some Western Church leaders don't care about [persecuted believers]. The names of the martyrs are not on their prayer lists. While they were being tortured and sentenced, the Russian Baptist and Orthodox official leaders who had denounced and betrayed them were received with great honor at New Delhi, at Geneva, and at other conferences. There they assured everyone that in Russia there is full religious liberty. A leader of the World Council of Churches kissed the Bolshevik archbishop Nikodim when he gave this assurance. Then they banqueted together in the imposing name of the World Council of Churches, while the saints in prison ate cabbage with unwashed intestines, just as I had eaten in the name of Jesus Christ.”

Richard Wurmbrand (1909–2001) Romanian Christian minister of Jewish descent

Tortured For Christ: 30th Anniversary Edition, p. 74-75 (1998).

World, Kiss, Christ

“When you go to prison they forget it's your Constitution, too.”

Jimmy Hoffa (1913–1982) American labor leader

Source: Hoffa The Real Story (1975), Chapter 12, Convict, p. 187

Forgetting

“Once again, my family and I find ourselves being assaulted by the obscenity that is Mumia Abu-Jamal. On Sunday October 5th, my husband's killer will once again air his voice from what masquerades as a prison, and spew his thoughts and ideas at another college commencement. Mumia Abu-Jamal will be heard and honored as a victim and a hero by a pack of adolescent sycophants at Goddard College in Vermont. Despite the fact that 33 years ago, he loaded his gun with special high-velocity ammunition designed to kill in the most devastating fashion, then used that gun to rip my husband's freedom from him--today, Mumia Abu-Jamal will be lauded as a freedom fighter. Undoubtedly the administrators at Goddard who first accepted, then enthusiastically supported Abu-Jamal as their speaker will be moved by his "important message" when, if one distills that message to its basic meaning, it amounts to nothing more than the same worn out hatred for this country and everyone in law enforcement that Mumia Abu-Jamal has harbored his entire life. Many at Goddard College have said that this is a matter of Abu-Jamal's First Amendment right to speak and be heard. What a convenient way to dodge their responsibility to take a moral position on this situation. This is not a matter of First Amendment rights -- it's a matter of right and wrong. Across the country, people have been voicing their disgust with the wrong that the college is about to commit by allowing a convicted cop-killer to speak to them. Is this the message to be heard? How could they allow him to speak when Danny no longer has a voice? It is my opinion that all murderers should forfeit their right to free speech when they take the life of an innocent person. I have repeatedly seen college administrators deny conservative and religious speakers access to their campuses when even the tiniest minority feel their message is in some way offensive. What could be more offensive than having a person who violently took the life of another imparting his "unique perspective" on your students? Let's be honest. The instructors, administrators and graduates at Goddard College embrace having this killer as their commencement speaker not despite the fact that he brutally murdered a cop, but because he brutally murdered a cop. Otherwise, like so many other speakers that have been denied access to college campuses across the country, Goddard's administration would have lived up to their moral responsibility and pulled the plug on this travesty long ago. Shame on Goddard College and all associated with that school for choosing to honor an arrogant remorseless killer as their commencement speaker. Unfortunately, this is something that I am certain they will be proud of for the rest of their lives.”

Mumia Abu-Jamal (1954) Prisoner, Journalist, Broadcaster, Author, Activist

Statement http://6abc.com/news/mumia-abu-jamal-speech-met-with-vigil-for-slain-officer/337357/ by Maureen Faulkner, widow of Daniel Faulkner, upon Abu-Jamal's delivering the Commencement Address at Goddard College in 2014 About

Life, People, School, Family

“Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind then that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; and while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

Federal Court statement (1918)

Soul

“Rawlings was a burglar and a thief, but like much of the London underworld he would not have anyone “trash” his country. It is a fact that convicted traitors in prison, along with child molesters, have to be kept in seclusion because professional “faces,” if left alone with such a man, are likely to rearrange his component parts.”

Frederick Forsyth book The Fourth Protocol

The Fourth Protocol (1984)

Parting, Country

“So cruel prison how could betide, alas,
As proud Windsor? where I, in lust and joy,
With a King's son, my childish years did pass,
In greater feast than Priam's sons of Troy.
Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour.”

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516–1547) English Earl

Source: Prisoned in Windsor, He Recounteth his Pleasure there Passed, Line 1

Joy

“One-hundred percent of British Muslims, polled by Gallup… believe that homosexuality is an unacceptable lifestyle choice… and fifty-two percent of those Muslims believe that homosexuality, or homosexual sex rather should be made illegal; that I should go to prison, for my love life.”

Milo Yiannopoulos (1984) British journalist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JciVfnR2lis Milo Yiannopoulos - Christianity vs. Islam on gays, Sky News (12 July 2016) 2016

Love, Life, Sex

“To tell the indigenous inhabitants of Brixton or Southall or Leicester or Bradford or Birmingham or Wolverhampton, to tell the pensioners ending their days in streets of nightly terror unrecognisable as their former neighbourhoods, to tell the people of towns and cities where whole districts have been transformed into enclaves of foreign lands, that "the man with a coloured face could be an enrichment to my life and that of my neighbours" is to drive them beyond the limits of endurance. It is not so much that it is obvious twaddle. It is that it makes cruel mockery of the experience and fears of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of ordinary, decent men and women…In understanding this matter, the beginning of wisdom is to grasp the law that in human societies power is never left unclaimed and unused. It does not blow about, like wastepaper on the streets, ownerless and inert. Men's nature is not only, as Thucydides long ago asserted, to exert power where they have it: men cannot help themselves from exerting power where they have it, whether they want to or not…It is the business of the leaders of distinct and separate populations to see that the power which they possess is used to benefit those for whom they speak. Leaders who fail to do so, or to do so fast enough, find themselves outflanked and superseded by those who are less squeamish. The Gresham's Law of extremism, that the more extreme drives out the less extreme, is one of the basic rules of political mechanics which operate in this field: it is a corollary of the general principle that no political power exist without being used. Both the general law and its Gresham's corollary point, in contemporary circumstances, towards the resort to physical violence, in the form of firearms or high explosive, as being so probable as to be predicted with virtual certainty. The experience of the last decade and more, all round the world, shows that acts of violence, however apparently irrational or inappropriate their targets, precipitate a frenzied search on the part of the society attacked to discover and remedy more and more grievances, real or imaginary, among those from whom the violence is supposed to emanate or on whose behalf it is supposed to be exercised. Those commanding a position of political leverage would then be superhuman if they could refrain from pointing to the acts of terrorism and, while condemning them, declaring that further and faster concessions and grants of privilege are the only means to avoid such acts being repeated on a rising scale. This is what produces the gearing effect of terrorism in the contemporary world, yielding huge results from acts of violence perpetrated by minimal numbers. It is not, I repeat again and again, that the mass of a particular population are violently or criminally disposed. Far from it; that population soon becomes itself the prisoner of the violence and machinations of an infinitely small minority among it. Just a few thugs, a few shots, a few bombs at the right place and time – and that is enough for disproportionate consequences to follow.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the Stretford Young Conservatives (21 January 1977), from A Nation or No Nation? Six Years in British Politics (Elliot Right Way Books, 1977), pp. 168-171
1970s

Life, Wisdom, Women, Men

“Host: In a nutshell, is what happened Islamic or un-Islamic?
Qaradhawi: The truth is that what happened is a reaction to these barbaric acts (in Abu Ghureib prison)…I say that the general atmosphere affects behavior… Even though Islam states that prisoners should be treated decently, there are those who allow killing a prisoner in certain circumstances.”

Yusuf Qaradawi (1926) Egyptian imam

Sheikh Dr. Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi about the Murder of American Citizen, Nick Berg http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/82.htm May 2004. Murder of Nick Berg

Truth, Behavior

“People have passed through a very dark tunnel at the end of which there was a light of freedom. Unexpectedly they passed through the prison gates and found themselves in a square. They are now free and they don't know where to go.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Address at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; quoted in The Independent, London (22 March 1990)

People, Freedom, Light

“Here's what we shouldn't do. We shouldn't import failed criminal justice policies from the United States. Mega prisons and mandatory minimums have failed in the United States, we've got to learn from the failure of the American criminal justice policy. Get tough on guns, invest in crime prevention and invest in victim services”

Michael Ignatieff (1947) professor at Harvard Kennedy School and former Canadian politician

English Language Leaders' Debate, April 12, 2011, http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20110413/main-election-110413/20110413?s_name=election2011

Justice, Failure, Learning

“I was imprisoned in Concepción for a few days and then realeased. They didn't torture me, as I had feared; they didn't even rob me. But they didn't give me anything to eat either, or any kind of covering for the night, so I had to rely on the goodwill of other prisoners, who shared their food with me. In the small hours I could hear them torturing others; I couldn't sleep and there was nothing to read except a magazine in English that someone had left behind. The only interesting article in it was about a house that had once belonged to Dylan Thomas. … I got out of that hole thanks to a pair of detectives who had been at high school with me in Los Ángeles…”

Roberto Bolaño book Last Evenings on Earth

His experience of being imprisoned during the regime of Augusto Pinochet, as depicted in "Dance Card", p. 215
Last Evenings on Earth (2006)

Fear, School, Food, Sleep

“There are two important truths to understand here. First: God will not 'torture' anyone. He will give them 'justice'. A criminal may believe that his being thrown into a cold prison because he viciously raped three teenage girls is torture. The judge rather knows better. He calls it 'justice'. Sinners are not God's children. The Bible makes that clear. We are children of Satan, and it's his will we gladly run to do. Isn't it true that we love the darkness and hate the light”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

see John 3:19
You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

Love, God, Hate, Children

“If Theodore Roosevelt is the great champion of democracy —the arch foe of autocracy, what business had he as the guest of honor of the Prussian Kaiser? And when he met the Kaiser, and did honor to the Kaiser, under the terms imputed to him, wasn’t it pretty strong proof that he himself was a Kaiser at heart? Now, after being the guest of Emperor Wilhelm, the Beast of Berlin, he comes back to this country, and wants you to send ten million men over there to kill the Kaiser; to murder his former friend and pal. Rather queer, isn’t it? And yet, he is the patriot, and we are the traitors. I challenge you to find a Socialist anywhere on the face of the earth who was ever the guest of the Beast of Berlin, except as an inmate of his prison—the elder Liebknecht and the younger Liebknecht, the heroic son of his immortal sire.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

Men, Democracy, Business, Strong

“When then is liberalism correctly understood? Liberalism is not an exclusvely political term. It can be applied to a prison reform, to an economic order, to a theology. Within the political framework, the question is not (as in a democracy) “Who should rule?” but “How should rule be exercised?” The reply is “Regardless of who rules—a monarch, an elite, a majority, or a benevolent dictator—governments should be exercised in such a way that each citizen enjoys the greatest amount of personal liberty.” The limit of liberty is obviously the common good. But, admittedly, the common good (material as well as immaterial) is not easily defined, for it rests on value judgments. Its definition is therefore always somewhat arbitrary. Speed limits curtail freedom in the interests of the common good. Is there a watertight case for forty, forty-five, or fifty miles an hour? Certainly not…. Freedom is thus the only postulate of liberalism—of genuine liberalism. If, therefore, democracy is liberal, the life, the whims, the interests of the minority will be just as respected as those of the majority. Yet surely not only a democracy, but a monarchy (absolute or otherwise) or an aristocratic (elitist) regime can be liberal. In fact, the affinity between democracy and liberalism is not at all greater than that between, say, monarchy and liberalism or a mixed government and liberalism. (People under the Austrian monarchy, which was not only symbolic but an effective mixed government, were not less free than those in Canada, to name only one example.)”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Source: Leftism Revisited (1990), p. 21

Life, People, Way, Exercises

“Prayerless people cut themselves off from God's peace and from his prevailing power, and a common result is that they feel overwhelmed, overrun, beaten down, pushed around, and defeated by a world operating with a take-no-prisoners approach.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

God, People, World, Peace

“By [refusing] to work for a traditional revolution we would not be "giving up the struggle". As we saw in the previous three chapters, we would be struggling – nonviolently – against the Prison [of consciousness] and its institutions, which are more responsible for the sterility of our lives (and our society) than "human nature" or "capitalism". But even if we can't do any more than embark on the stage of self-healing, even if we can't get a strong group together, or if all our group efforts fail to heal society, we would still be learning to preserve our worth as human beings. And that is an essential part of the political process today. For without life-oriented people… there can be no New Age evolution. And only New Age evolution can take us off of the production-consumption continuum and out of the Prison.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Page 201. The second word above was printed as "trying" in the second edition, but was printed as "refusing" in the first edition, page 78, and in the third edition, page 230. "Refusing" is consistent with Satin's argument.
New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society (1978)

Life, People, Age, Nature

“Mine was a threeplank bed whereon
I lay and cursed the weary sun.
They took away the prison clothes
and on the frosty nights I froze.
I had a Bible where I read
that Jesus came to raise the dead—
I kept myself from going mad
by singing an old bawdy ballad
and birds sang on my windowsill
and tortured me till I was ill”

Basil Bunting (1900–1985) Poet

from "Villon" (1930)

Bird, Singing, Reading, Sun

“It's hard for me to see how members of al Qaeda could be considered prisoners of war. I think they clearly do not fit within the prescriptions of the Geneva Convention.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

January 28, 2002. CNN transcript http://premium.edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0201/28/ltm.03.html 2000s

War, Thinking

“Why should you shake hands with somebody who's keeping Americans in prison? I mean, what's the point? Neville Chamberlain shook hands with Hitler.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Regarding U.S. President Barack Obama shaking the hand of Cuban President Raul Castro at a memorial for Nelson Mandela
2013-12-10
The Takeaway
Radio, quoted in * 2013-12-10
McCain On Obama-Castro Handshake: 'Chamberlain Shook Hands With Hitler' (Audio)
Tom Kludt
Talking Points Memo
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/mccain-on-obama-castro-handshake-chamberlain-shook-hands-with-hitler-audio
2010s, 2013

“I believe that I have cosmic religious feelings. I never could grasp how one could satisfy these feelings by praying to limited objects. The tree outside is life, a statue is dead. The whole of nature is life, and life, as I observe it, rejects a God resembling man. I like to experience the universe as one harmonious whole. Every cell has life. Matter, too, has life; it is energy solidified. Our bodies are like prisons, and I look forward to be free, but I don't speculate on what will happen to me. I live here now, and my responsibility is in this world now.... I deal with natural laws. This is my work here on earth.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 64

Life, God, World, Law

“I really hope that the symbolism isn't lost on you four Superstars in the chamber right now, because it's killing me. Here's four extremely weak individuals that, every day, are locked inside a prison of addiction, like most of these people here today; and now, the four of you are locked inside the Elimination Chamber with me. And be sure, it's not me locked in here with you — it's you locked in here with me. And tomorrow morning, when you're nursing the pain and the wounds that this chamber and myself have caused you, I want you to remember that when your pod door opens and you came out and I defeated you, don't think of it as failure. Think of it as me saving you. [Standing over Rey Mysterio's pod] Think of it as me setting you free.
Punk: [To Undertaker, after elimination R-Truth] You'd better pray that your pod door opens last, 'cause when you come out, I'm gonna make you tap out, just like I did before. [To John Morrison] And I'm gonna prove to you that your decadent rock life will get you nowhere. I'm gonna prove to the world that straight-edge means I'm better than you! For those of you at home, feel free, place your hand on the screen and feel CM Punk flow through you!
Lawler: Matt, did you just put your hand on the screen?
Striker: Yes.
Lawler: Do you feel CM Punk flow through you?
Punk: Nobody can stop me!
Cole: Guys, the sermon's over in [checking the timer] three seconds.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

Elimination Chamber - February 21, 2010
Friday Night SmackDown

Life, Pain, People, Truth

“This place is prison and this life is penance, and in the remedy He willeth that we rejoice. The remedy is that our Lord is with us, keeping and leading into the fulness of joy. For this is an endless joy to us in our Lord’s signifying, that He that shall be our bliss when we are there, He is our keeper while we are here. Our way and our heaven is true love and sure trust; and of this He gave understanding in all and especially in the Shewing of the Passion where He made me mightily to choose Him for my heaven.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 77

Love, Life, Way, Understanding

“Do you know what makes the prison disappear? Every deep, genuine affection. Being friends, being brothers, loving, that is what opens the prison, with supreme power, by some magic force. Without these one stays dead. But whenever affection is revived, there life revives.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)

Love, Life, Dead

“Indians don't last in prison. They weren't born for it like the whites.”

Abraham Polonsky (1910–1999) American politician

Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969).

“Bad men, like good men, are entitled to be tried and sentenced in accordance with law, and when it is shown to us that a person is serving an illegal sentence our obligation is to direct that proper steps be taken to correct the wrong done, without regard to the character of a particular defendant or to the possible effect on others who might also want to challenge the legality of their sentences as they have the right to do 'at any time' under Rule 35. If it has any relevance at all, the fact that there may be other prisoners in this country's jails serving illegal sentences would seem to me to make it all the more imperative that we grant appropriate relief in this case rather than search for some obviously dubious excuse to deny this petitioner's claim.”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

Dissenting in Green v. United States, 365 U.S. 301, 309-310 (1961).

Men, Law, Search, Time

“If a passion for freedom is not in vogue, patriots may sound the alarm till they are weary.
The Act of Habeas Corpus, by which prisoners may insist on being brought to trial within a limited time, is the corner-stone of our liberty.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

Notes of 1758, published in Memoires of the Last Ten Years of the Reign of George the Second (1822), p. 226; also published as "Memoirs of the Year 1758" in Memoirs of King George II, Vol. III (1985), p. 10

Freedom, Passion, Time

“In the middle of the month of Safar, 593 H. (Jan. 1197), the world-conquering Khusru departed from Ajmir, and with every description of force turned his face towards the annihilation of the Rai of Nahrwala…. A severe action ensued from dawn to mid-day when 'the army of idolatry and damnation turned its back in flight from the line of battle. Most of their leaders were taken prisoners, and nearly fifty thousand infidels were despatched to hell by the sword, and from the heaps of the slain, the hills and the plains became of one level… More than twenty thousand slaves, and twenty elephants, and cattle and arms beyond all calculation, fell into the hands of victors.”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

You would have thought that the treasures of the kings of all the inhabited world had come into their possession' Gujarat. Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 228-230. https://archive.org/stream/cu31924073036729#page/n5/mode/2up Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

World, Hell

“I never hear the word “escape”
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation,
A flying attitude.I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars,—
Only to fail again!”

Emily Dickinson Life, and Death, and Giants —

Life, p. 22
Collected Poems (1993)

Flying

“What Miss Moore’s best poetry does, I can say best in her words: it “comes into and steadies the soul,” so that the reader feels himself “a life prisoner, but reconciled.””

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Her Shield”, p. 187
Poetry and the Age (1953)

Life, Feeling, Soul

“The proletarian revolution ought now, by a little ray of kindness, to illuminate the gloomy life of prisoners, shorten Draconian sentences, abolish barbarous punishments - the use of manacles and whippings - improve, as far as possible, the medical attention, the food allowance, and the conditions of labor. That is a duty of honor.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Against Capital Punishment (1918), Rosa Luxemburg Speaks

Life, Food

“Absolutely. Because a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight -- and when they come out, they're gay. So, did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

On whether homosexuality is a choice, as quoted in "Ben Carson apologizes for comments on gay people" http://edition.cnn.com/2015/03/04/politics/ben-carson-prisons-gay-choice/, CNN, (March 5, 2015)

People, Question

“As we see the threat changing, evolving becoming a more complex threat, we need to make sure that our police and security and intelligence agencies have the powers they need. I mean longer prison sentences for people convicted of terrorist offences. I mean making it easier for the authorities to deport foreign terrorist suspects back to their own countries. And I mean doing more to restrict the freedom and the movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they are a threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court. And if our human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change the laws so we can do it.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech on the election trail after the June 2017 London Bridge attack (7 June 2017). http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2017-40181444 2010s, 2017

People, Law, Intelligence, Freedom

“Thought reform is accomplished through the use of psychological and environmental control processes that do not depend on physical coercion. Today's thought reform programs are sophisticated, subtle, and insidious, creating a psychological bond that in many ways is far more powerful than gun-at-the-head methods of influence. The effects generally lose their potency when the control processes are lifted or neutralized in some way. That is why most Korean War POWs gave up the content of their prison camp indoctrination programs when they came home, and why many cultists leave their groups if they spend a substantial amount of time away from the group or have an opportunity to discuss their doubts with an intimate.”

Margaret Singer (1921–2003) clinical psychology

Thought Reform Exists: Organized, Programmatic Influence http://www.csj.org/infoserv_articles/singer_margaret_thoughtreform.htm, Margaret Thaler Singer, Ph.D., The Cult Observer, Vol. 11 No. 6 1994. 1990s

War, Way, Home, Time

“The colonel in charge of the London prison that I was in has told me that I would be hanged in any case, no matter what the outcome would be. Since I am fully aware of that, all I want to do is to clear up on the fundamental things that are wrong here.”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

Quoted in "Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression" - by International Military Tribunal - 1946

“My mom was a manic depressive schizophrenic who, after a year in prison, went home and shot herself. My sister, Shannon, an amazing poet, who was raised by this woman, and was dating a guy who broke up with her for the fourth time in three weeks. And one day, she came to his house, got a gun, and blew her brains out all over his headboard. I just went through a divorce, five years in court and cost me $2 million dollars. If anyone, by law, should be forced to take antidepressants it's me…But instead, I choose to be an antidepressant. And you can take me with alcohol.”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

Neverlution (2011)

Alcohol, Law, Guy, Home

“Abdulla Khan Uzbeg’s force of 12,000 horse and 20,000 foot destroyed, in the Kalpi-Kanauj area alone, all towns, took all their goods, their wives and children as slaves and beheaded and ‘immortered’ (fixed heads with mortar in walls and pillars) the chiefest of their men. No wonder he once declared that “I made prisoners of five lacs of men and women and sold them. They all became Muhammadans. From their progeny there will be crores by the day of judgement.””

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

Shah Nawaz Khan, Maasir-ul-Umara, I, 105. quoted from K.S. Lal, Muslim slave system in medieval India, chapter 6
Generals under the command of Jahangir

Women, Men, Children, Horse

“He could leap the corral,
If he rose
To his full height;
He could splinter the fencing light,
With three blows
Of his porcelain hoofs in flight —
If he chose.
He could shatter his prison wall,
Could escape them all —
If he rose,
If he chose.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American aviator and author

The Unicorn in Captivity (1955)

Light

“The moment I realised that I was dealing with a mechanism whose participants were its prisoners, at that moment I was able to take distance from what had happened, and forgiveness started to become possible.”

James Alison (1959) Christian theologian, priest

Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), " Theology amidst the stones and dust http://girardianlectionary.net/res/alison_elijah.htm", p. 38.

Forgiveness

“I would prefer to remain in prison for another 20 years than bargain my beliefs for freedom.”

Samir Geagea (1952) Lebanese politician and war lord

November 2004, speaking to a delegation from the Human Rights Committee of the Lebanese Parliament, quoted in "Samir Geagea will be out of Jail this weekend" in Ya Libnan (18 July 2005) http://yalibnan.com/site/archives/2005/07/samir_geagea_wi.php

Freedom

“I'd have to lock the door of the paint room. He wouldn't allow anyone in. I was like a prisoner.”

Margaret Keane (1927) American artist

1999, Cited by Amy M. Spindler

Painting

“That there is also freedom in captivity, only a prisoner can claim. Coming from a prison guard, this statement would be blasphemy.”

Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990) Swiss author and dramatist

About Tolerance (1977)

Freedom

“Americans combine to give fêtes, found seminaries, build churches, distribute books, and send missionaries to the antipodes. Hospitals, prisons, and schools take shape in that way. Finally, if they want to proclaim a truth or propagate some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form an association. In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find an association. I have come across several types of association in America of which, I confess, I had not previously the slightest conception, and I have often admired the extreme skill they show in proposing a common object for the exertions of very many and in inducing them voluntarily to pursue it.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Two, Chapter V.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Two

Truth, Books, School, Way

“It is a fact that throughout my reign, representatives of the Red Cross were allowed to visit the kingdom's prisons at liberty. Our penitentiaries were open to all official investigators. Every prisoner's lawyer knew the details of the charges against his client, and had time in which to prepare his defence and find the necessary witnesses. Finally, a condemned man had the right of appeal, after which I often excercised my right of pardon. It is no longer like this. The so-called "Islamic tribunals" are an insult to the elevated principles of the Koran.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 199
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On Islam and the Islamic Revolution

Time

“I went up to my room, up the dusty stairs of Bunker Hill, past the soot-covered frame buildings along that dark street, sand and oil and grease choking the futile palm trees standing like dying prisoners, chained to a little plot of ground with black pavement hiding their feet. Dust and old buildings and old people sitting at windows, old people tottering out of doors, old people moving painfully along the dark street. The old folk from Indiana and Iowa and Illinois, from Boston and Kansas City and Des Moines, they sold their homes and their stores, and they came here by train and by automobile to the land of sunshine, to die in the sun, with just enough money to live until the sun killed them, tore themselves out by the roots in their last days, deserted the smug prosperity of Kansas City and Chicago and Peoria to find a place in the sun. And when they got here they found that other and greater thieves had already taken possession, that even the sun belonged to the others; Smith and Jones and Parker, druggist, banker, baker, dust of Chicago and Cincinnati and Cleveland on their shoes, doomed to die in the sun, a few dollars in the bank, enough to subscribe to the Los Angeles Times, enough to keep alive the illusion that this was paradise, that their little papier-mâché homes were castles. The uprooted ones, the empty sad folks, the old and the young folks, the folks from back home. These were my countrymen, these were the new Californians. With their bright polo shirts and sunglasses, they were in paradise, they belonged.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Money, People, Sadness, Angels

“One opinion that is trotted out for propaganda, for the propaganda parade, is my dissent in Hudson vs. McMillian. The conclusion reached by the long arms of the critics is that I supported the beating of prisoners in that case. Well, one must either be illiterate or fraught with malice to reach that conclusion. Though one can disagree with my dissent, and certainly the majority of the court disagreed, no honest reading can reach such a conclusion. Indeed, we took the case to decide the quite narrow issue, whether a prisoner's rights were violated under the 'cruel and unusual punishment' clause of the Eighth Amendment as a result of a single incident of force by the prison guards which did not cause a significant injury. In the first section of my dissent, I stated the following: 'In my view, a use of force that causes only insignificant harm to a prisoner may be immoral; it may be tortuous; it may be criminal, and it may even be remediable under other provisions of the Federal Constitution. But it is not cruel and unusual punishment.' Obviously, beating prisoners is bad. But we did not take the case to answer this larger moral question or a larger legal question of remedies under other statutes or provisions of the Constitution. How one can extrapolate these larger conclusions from the narrow question before the court is beyond me, unless, of course, there's a special segregated mode of analysis.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Question, Support, Reading

“They developed out of the situation. The courts brought in a lot of people who had to be shot. I always objected to having to use the same men for firing squadrons over and over again. During that period one day my camp leader, Karl Fritzsch, came to me and asked me whether I could try to execute people with Zyklon B gas. Until that time, Zyklon B was used only to disinfect barracks which were full of insects, fleas, et cetera. I tried it out on some people sentenced to death in the cell prison and that is how it developed. I didn't want any more shootings, so we used gas chambers instead.”

Rudolf Höss (1901–1947) German war criminal, commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp

To Leon Goldensohn, after being asked about the invention of gas chambers, April 9, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Death, Men, People, Time

“The past is our cradle, not our prison, and there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition.”

Israel Zangwill (1864–1926) British writer

The Voice of Jerusalem, Macmillan, 1921, p. 270

Past

“Do you know freedom exists in a school book
Did you know madmen are running our prisons
Within a jail
Within a gaol
Within a white free protestant maelstrom
We're perched headlong on the edge of boredom
We're reaching for death on the end of a candle
We're trying for something that's already found us.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

An American Prayer (1978)

Death, Books, School, Freedom

“Let others probe the mystery if they can.
Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will —
The right thing happens to the happy man.”

Theodore Roethke book The Far Field

"The Right Thing," ll. 1-3
The Far Field (1964)

Happiness, Time

“The political prisoner’s words or deeds have in one form or another embodied political protests against the established order and have consequently brought him into acute conflict with the state. In light of the political content of his act, the “crime” (which may or may not have been committed) assumes a minor importance. In this country, however, where the special category of political prisoners is not officially acknowledged, the political prisoner inevitably stands trial for a specific criminal offense, not for a political act.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

If They Come in The Morning (1971)

Light, Country

“(Breaking) ritual habit, ritual normality that seals our eyes and ears…you can advance, see things you never saw before, move out of boundaries that have been a prison.”

Wilson Harris (1921–2018) Guyanese writer

"Redemption song," Maya Jaggi, The Guardian, December 16, 2006 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/dec/16/featuresreviews.guardianreview15/.

“To be a prisoner means to be defined as a member of a group for whom the rules of what can be done to you, of what is seen as abuse of you, are reduced as part of the definition of your status.”

Catharine A. MacKinnon (1946) American feminist and legal activist

"Francis Biddle's Sister: Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech" (1984), p. 170
Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (1987)

Parting

“The color of the prisoner’s skin, and the form of his features, are not impressed upon the spiritual immortal mind which works beneath. In spite of human pride, he is still your brother, and mine, in form and color accepted and approved by his Father, and yours, and mine, and bears equally with us the proudest inheritance of our race — the image of our Maker. Hold him then to be a Man.”

William H. Seward (1801–1872) American lawyer and politician

Argument as defense attorney during the trial of an African-American criminal defendant, Auburn, New York (July 1846), published in Works of William H. Seward, vol. I (New York: Redfield, 1853), p. 417.

Color

“It is not only the prisoners who grow coarse and hardened from corporeal punishment, but those as well who perpetrate the act or are present to witness it.”

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

A Journey to Sakhalin (1891)

“I'm willing to zap conservatives when they do things that are not libertarian. I was the first to really go after George W. on his treatment of prisoners.”

William Safire (1929–2009) American journalist

"William Safire to End Op-Ed Run at N.Y. Times" by Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post (16 November 2004) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52678-2004Nov15.html. Letter to H. R. Haldeman

“We need to have a total rethink of what we do in our prisons to tackle extremism. And we need our internet companies to go further in helping us identify potential terrorists online. Many of their commercial models are built around monitoring platforms for personal data, packaging it up and selling it on to third parties. And when it comes to doing what’s right for their business, they are happy to engineer technologies to track our likes and dislikes. But when it comes to doing what’s right in the fight against terrorism, we too often hear that it’s all too difficult.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)

Happiness, Business, Help, Fight

“I know that you observe Christmas Day as you learned it at home. I do not observe it. However, as assistant director of this prison, I allow all the Catholics to observe freely and with some joy this day in this home.”

Odilo Globocnik (1904–1945) SS officer

Quoted in "In Tito's Death Marches and Extermination Camps" - Page 163 - by Joseph Hecimovic, John Prcela - 1962.

Home, Learning, Joy, Christmas

“Then, my lords, permit me to say, that admitting the narrow and confined constitutional doctrines, which I have heard preached in this court, to be right, I am not guilty of the charge according to this Act! In the article of mine, on which the jury framed their verdict, which was written in prison, and published in the last number of my paper, what I desired to do was this, to advise and encourage my countrymen to keep their arms; because that is their inalienable right, which no Act of Parliament, no proclamation can take away from them. It is, I repeat, their inalienable right. I advised them to keep their arms; and further, I advised them to use their arms in their own defence against all assailants - even assailants that might come to attack them unconstitutionally and improperly, using the Queen's name as their sanction.”

John Martin (1812–1875) (1812-1875) Irish nationalist activist

“What has the church done? It made the wife a slave—the property of the husband, and it placed the husband as much above the wife as Christ was above the husband. It taught that a nun is purer, nobler than a mother. It induced millions of pure and conscientious girls to renounce the joys of life—to take the veil woven of night and death, to wear the habiliments of the dead—made them believe that they were the brides of Christ. For my part, I would as soon be a widow as the bride of a man who had been dead for eighteen hundred years. The poor deluded girls imagined that they, in some mysterious way, were in spiritual wedlock united with God. All worldly desires were driven from their hearts. They filled their lives with fastings—with prayers—with self-accusings. They forgot fathers and mothers and gave their love to the invisible. They were the victims, the convicts of superstition—prisoners in the penitentiaries of God. Conscientious, good, sincere—insane. These loving women gave their hearts to a phantom, their lives to a dream.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

A Thanksgiving Sermon (1897)

Love, Life, Death, Women

“The issue of prisoner swap is highly emotional and delicate. We have to carefully tread within the ambit of a particular country’s laws, which we would also like other countries to respect ours. But as a government, it behooves us to do everything within our capacity to give our people what the government should – to protect its people in and out of the country.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Zamboanga Today http://www.zamboangatoday.ph/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3233:dfa-sets-prisoner-swap-talks-with-china&catid=26:inside-stories&Itemid=182 2011

People, Law, Country

“At no time during my reign were there more than 3,164 so-called political prisoners, most of whom were terrorists. Since February, it is certain that tens of thousands of men and women have been arrested and imprisoned under frequently inhumane conditions.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 198-199
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On Islam and the Islamic Revolution

Women, Men, Time