Quotes about prison (1122 quotes, page 7)

““You fought for your freedom and won a different kind of prison. I will fight for mine—”
“You can’t fight me,” Tearle reminded him harshly.
“I know.” In the placid light, his face looked chilled and very weary. “But I can die.””

Patricia A. McKillip book Winter Rose

Source: Winter Rose (1996), Chapter 15, p. 145.

Freedom , Light , Fight

“The only thing that prisons demonstrably cure is heterosexuality.”

John D. MacDonald (1916–1986) writer from the United States

Travis McGee series, (1970)

“I really believe that in America, if you are clinging to some indefensible, unconstitutional bad idea of a policy, ultimately — one day — you are going to look up from the front gate of your prison and there on the horizon will be the ACLU.”

Rachel Maddow (1973) American journalist

At the ACLU Wisconsin's 2009 Bill of Rights Celebration (February 23, 2009)

Idea

“It is never my custom to use words lightly. If twenty-seven years in prison have done anything to us, it was to use the silence of solitude to make us understand how precious words are and how real speech is in its impact on the way people live and die.”

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

Nelson Mandela on words, Closing address 13th International Aids Conference, Durban, South Africa (14 July 2000). Source: From Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations © 2010 by Nelson R. Mandela and The Nelson Mandela Foundation http://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/mini-site/selected-quotes
2000s

People , Way , Understanding , Solitude

“McCain ran an aggressive, hard-hitting campaign against former Congressman J. D. Hayworth. If he had taken this same kind of principled conservative and ‘take no prisoners’ campaign against Barack Obama in 2008, he’d now be in the second year of his presidency.”

Richard Viguerie (1933) American writer

Richard Viguerie: McCain beats Hayworth; Tea Party wins; Welcome back to the GOP, Senator McCain http://www.conservativehq.com/blog_post/show/755

“Of the prisoners captured a selection was made from the slaves and other spoils, “in order to detach the usual one-fifth share of the State. The number of the selected slaves came to about 20,000. The rest were distributed among the troops.””

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

Chachnama, Kalichbeg, in Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 10
Quotes from The Chach Nama

“We have lost our ability to dream our new selves and a new world into existence. We have mistakenly accepted the resolution to our problems that is designed by people who would have us move out of our rusty old colonial cages and right back into a shiny new prison of coping defined by managed fears and deadened emotional capacities.”

Taiaiake Alfred (1965) Author, educator and activist

Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom (2005)

People , World , Fear , Dreams

“Even if a civil society were to be dissolved by the consent of all its members (e. g., if a people inhabiting an island decided to separate and disperse throughout the world), the last murderer remaining in prison would first have to be executed, so that each has done to him what his deeds deserve and blood guilt does not cling to the people for not having insisted upon this punishment; for otherwise the people can be regarded as collaborators in his public violation of justice.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kt6:333
Metaphysics of Morals (1797)

People , World , Justice

“It was a bright September afternoon, and the streets of New York were brilliant with moving men…. He was pushed toward the ticket-office with the others, and felt in his pocket for the new five-dollar bill he had hoarded…. When at last he realized that he had paid five dollars to enter he knew not what, he stood stock-still amazed…. John… sat in a half-maze minding the scene about him; the delicate beauty of the hall, the faint perfume, the moving myriad of men, the rich clothing and low hum of talking seemed all a part of a world so different from his, so strangely more beautiful than anything he had known, that he sat in dreamland, and started when, after a hush, rose high and clear the music of Lohengrin's swan. The infinite beauty of the wail lingered and swept through every muscle of his frame, and put it all a-tune. He closed his eyes and grasped the elbows of the chair, touching unwittingly the lady's arm. And the lady drew away. A deep longing swelled in all his heart to rise with that clear music out of the dirt and dust of that low life that held him prisoned and befouled. If he could only live up in the free air where birds sang and setting suns had no touch of blood! Who had called him to be the slave and butt of all?… If he but had some master-work, some life-service, hard, aye, bitter hard, but without the cringing and sickening servility…. When at last a soft sorrow crept across the violins, there came to him the vision of a far-off home — the great eyes of his sister, and the dark drawn face of his mother…. It left John sitting so silent and rapt that he did not for some time notice the usher tapping him lightly on the shoulder and saying politely, 'will you step this way please sir?'… The manager was sorry, very very sorry — but he explained that some mistake had been made in selling the gentleman a seat already disposed of; he would refund the money, of course… before he had finished John was gone, walking hurriedly across the square… and as he passed the park he buttoned his coat and said, 'John Jones you're a natural-born fool.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Then he went to his lodgings and wrote a letter, and tore it up; he wrote another, and threw it in the fire....
Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. XIII: Of the Coming of John

Life , Men , Money , World

“Everything I've been through, twenty–nine years strung out on dope, the hard time in prison, and an endless obsession with romantic entanglements——were parts of a journey that I'm just now beginning to understand.”

Charles Neville (musician)

[Little, Brown and Company, 978-0-316-73009-9, Neville, Art, Neville, Aaron, Neville, Charles, Neville, Cyril, Ritz, David, The Brothers Neville, Boston, 2000, xii–xiii]

Understanding , Time , Parting

“What is essential to the idea of a slave? We primarily think of him as one who is owned by another. To be more than nominal, however, the ownership must be shown by control of the slave's actions — a control which is habitually for the benefit of the controller. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy another's desires. The relation admits of sundry gradations. Remembering that originally the slave is a prisoner whose life is at the mercy of his captor, it suffices here to note that there is a harsh form of slavery in which, treated as an animal, he has to expend his entire effort for his owner's advantage. Under a system less harsh, though occupied chiefly in working for his owner, he is allowed a short time in which to work for himself, and some ground on which to grow extra food. A further amelioration gives him power to sell the produce of his plot and keep the proceeds. Then we come to the still more moderated form which commonly arises where, having been a free man working on his own land, conquest turns him into what we distinguish as a serf; and he has to give to his owner each year a fixed amount of labour or produce, or both: retaining the rest himself. Finally, in some cases, as in Russia before serfdom was abolished, he is allowed to leave his owner's estate and work or trade for himself elsewhere, under the condition that he shall pay an annual sum. What is it which, in these cases, leads us to qualify our conception of the slavery as more or less severe? Evidently the greater or smaller extent to which effort is compulsorily expended for the benefit of another instead of for self-benefit. If all the slave's labour is for his owner the slavery is heavy, and if but little it is light. Take now a further step. Suppose an owner dies, and his estate with its slaves comes into the hands of trustees; or suppose the estate and everything on it to be bought by a company; is the condition of the slave any the better if the amount of his compulsory labour remains the same? Suppose that for a company we substitute the community; does it make any difference to the slave if the time he has to work for others is as great, and the time left for himself is as small, as before? The essential question is—How much is he compelled to labour for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labour for his own benefit? The degree of his slavery varies according to the ratio between that which he is forced to yield up and that which he is allowed to retain; and it matters not whether his master is a single person or a society. If, without option, he has to labour for the society, and receives from the general stock such portion as the society awards him, he becomes a slave to the society.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

The Man versus the State (1884), The Coming Slavery

Life , Food , Communication , Idea

“As long as we reported on Iraqi casualties the Americans were quiet. But when we showed American prisoners and the dead, U. S. authorities went crazy. They were trying to show their people that this is a clean war. When we showed American prisoners, they said Al Jazeera is violating the Geneva Convention. That’s just not true. But when they showed the dead bodies of the sons of Saddam, they said that was all right because how else are the Iraqi people going to know that the danger has ended.”

Samir Khader Iraqi journalist

War , People , Dead

“I'd like to go back to Buffy, but I've been in a coma, I've jumped off a building, I've been in prison - how many other ways can they bring me back? But those guys are geniuses, so who knows?”

Eliza Dushku (1980) American actress

Eliza Strikes Back - Faith No More by David O'Donnell http://www.elizadushkuonline.com/html_articles/2002/01_nw-insider.html
She would come back in Cavalry.

Way , Guy

“Osama bin Laden’s welcome death has ignited debate over whether the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques used on enemy prisoners were instrumental in locating bin Laden, and whether they are a justifiable means for gathering intelligence.
Much of this debate is a definitional one: whether any or all of these methods constitute torture. I believe some of them do, especially waterboarding, which is a mock execution and thus an exquisite form of torture. As such, they are prohibited by American laws and values, and I oppose them. … Mistreatment of enemy prisoners endangers our own troops, who might someday be held captive. While some enemies, and al-Qaeda surely, will never be bound by the principle of reciprocity, we should have concern for those Americans captured by more conventional enemies, if not in this war then in the next.”

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

"Bin Laden’s death and the debate over torture" in The Washington Post (11 May 2011) http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bin-ladens-death-and-the-debate-over-torture/2011/05/11/AFd1mdsG_story.html
2010s, 2011

Death , War , Law , Intelligence

“As for the hired Greeks in Persian service, thousands of the dead were to be buried, but the prisoners were bound in fetters and sent to hard labour in Macedonia, 'because they had fought as Greeks against Greeks, on behalf of barbarians, contrary to the common decrees of the Greek allies.”

Robin Lane Fox (1946) Historian, educator, writer, gardener

Source: Alexander the Great, 1973, p.123

Dead

“[T]he man who accused Richard Simmons of slapping him in an airport has dropped the assault charge. Dropped it! Upon hearing the news, Simmons sadly responded, "You mean I'm not going to prison?"”

Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor

3 June 2004
Dennis Miller

“I’ll have to learn to snowshoe. I had my first lesson this morning and cut a ludicrous figure. I’ll be virtually a prisoner until I learn my way around. But any price is worth paying to get away from the thought-destroying din and soul-killing routine of the city!”

Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction

“Diary in the Snow” (p. 203); originally published in the first edition of Night's Black Agents (1947)
Short Fiction, Night's Black Agents (1947)

Way , Soul , Learning

“Your recent meetings with Chinese dissidents at the White House are to be commended. However, your participation at the opening ceremony of the Olympics will send a signal to the Chinese people and the international community that could be misperceived as your approval, and that of the American people, for the draconian policies of the Chinese government. Therefore, it is essential that you unambiguously speak out for human rights and meet with the families of jailed prisoners of conscience while you are in Beijing. (In a letter to President Bush prior to his 2008 trip to Beijing's Summer Olympic Games”

Nancy Pelosi (1940) American politician, first female Speaker of the House of Representatives, born 1940

[Pelosi to Bush: It Is Essential That You Speak Out for Human Rights During Visit to China for the Olympics, August 1, 2008, http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=5&hid=112&sid=e9e82631-01bc-425d-b19f-38189788ba53%40sessionmgr107&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=mth&AN=32X1376858305, 2008-11-08]
2000s

People , Family , Game , Communication

“I wanna say this to every man that has a mind, to all the intelligent life forms that exist on this planet Earth. I wish the British would say this to the Scottish Rites and the Masons and all the people with minds who have degrees of knowledge, and who are aware of courts, laws, United Nations, governments.
In the 40s, we had a war, and all of our economies went towards this war effort. The war ended on one level, but we wouldn't let it end on the other levels. We kept buying and selling this war. I'm not locked in the penitentiary for crimes, I'm locked in the Second World War. I'm locked in the Second World War with this decision to bring to the World Court - there must be a One World Court, or we're all gonna be devoured by crime.
Crime, and the definition of crime comes from Nuremberg, when the judges decided that they wanted to call Second World War a crime. Honor and war is not a crime. Crime is bad. When you go to war and you're a soldier, and you fight for your God and your country, that's not criminal. That's honorable. That's what you must do to be a man. If you don't fight for your God and your country, you're not worth anything. If you have no honor, then you're not worth petty's pigs.
Truth is, we've got to overturn this decision that you made in the Second World War, or the Second World War will never end. Degrees of the war was written in Switzerland, in Geneva, at conferences that were made by the men at the tables, clearly stated that anyone in uniform would be given the respect of their rank and their uniforms. Then when the United States and got all the Germans in handcuffs, they started breaking their own rules. And they've been breaking their own rules ever since. War is not a crime, but if you judge war as a crime in a court room, then turn around: If 2 + 3 = 5, and 3 + 2 = 5; if you say war is a crime, then crime becomes your war. I am, by all standards, a prisoner of war.
I've been a prisoner of war since 1944 in Juvenile Hall, for setting a school building on fire in Indianapolis, Indiana. I've been locked up 45 years trying to figure out why I got to be a criminal. It matters not whether I want to be; you've got to keep criminals going to keep the war going because that's your economy, your whole economy is based on the war. You've got to get your dollar bills off the war, you've got your silver market sterling off of the war, you've got to take your gold and your diamonds off of the war - You've got to overturn that decision, that hung 6000 men by the neck.
You killed 6000 soldiers for obeying orders. It's wrong. And the world has got to accept that's wrong. When you accept you're wrong, and you say you're sorry for all the things you've done, then that will be a note on that court, and we'll have some harmony going on this planet Earth, now.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Interview with Bill Murphy (1994) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAjh_wOByoY

Life , Men , God , War

“Those terrorists will carry their determination to disrupt society to any lengths. Once again we have a hunger strike at the Maze Prison in the quest for what they call political status. There is no such thing as political murder, political bombing or political violence. There is only criminal murder, criminal bombing and criminal violence. We will not compromise on this. There will be no political status.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech in Belfast (5 March 1981) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104589
First term as Prime Minister

Hunger

“I hear the train a comin,
It's rollin' round the bend.
An' I ain't seen the sunshine'
Since I don't know when.
I'm stuck in Folsom prison,
And time keeps draggin' on.
But that train keeps a rollin'
On down to San Antone.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Folsom Prison Blues
Song lyrics, Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar (1957)

Time , Training

“I'd stand in front of the mirror and talk to myself until I fell asleep, you know. I'd interview myself as women with problems, you know, like, women in documentaries who had three kids and chainsmoked and husbands in prison that hit them! I'd be in the mirror going, [lowers voice] yeah well, you know, it's not easy since Derrin went into prison. My eyes aren't black anymore, but the twins, Tilly and Wayne, you know, they don't stop crying. SHUT UP TILLY SHUT UP TILLY!”

Tracey Ullman (1959) English-born actress, comedian, singer, dancer, screenwriter, producer, director, author and businesswoman

Tracey Ullman: Live and Exposed (2005)

Women , Problem , Cry

“You have come out of the big prison which you had been put in and you have taken me out with the same act from the small prison which I had been put in.”

Samir Geagea (1952) Lebanese politician and war lord

Upon being released from Yarze prison, as quoted in an Associate Press report "Ex-Christian Warlord Released in Lebanon" by Zeina Karam (26 July 2005)
Variant translation: Now that you (Lebanese people) have come out of the great prison to which you were confined, you have released me from the small prison in which I was put.
Full text of speech made on his release from prison (26 July 2005) http://www.lebanonwire.com/0705/05072701LW.asp

“We consider a prisoner unfortunate. He is unfortunate in two ways — because he has done something wrong and because he is deprived of his liberty. Therefore we should treat him kindly, because of his misfortune, for otherwise he would become hard and bitter and would not be sorry he had done wrong. Ozma thinks that one who has committed a fault did so because he was not strong and brave; therefore she puts him in prison to make him strong and brave. When that is accomplished he is no longer a prisoner, but a good and loyal citizen and everyone is glad that he is now strong enough to resist doing wrong. You see, it is kindness that makes one strong and brave; and so we are kind to our prisoners.”

L. Frank Baum book The Patchwork Girl of Oz

The Patchwork Girl of Oz
Later Oz novels

Way , Thinking , Strong

“Forty years on, Amnesty International has secured many victories. Its files are full of letters from former prisoners of conscience or torture victims thanking the organisation for making a difference. Torture is now banned by international agreement. Every year more countries reject the death penalty. The world will soon have an International Criminal Court that will be able to ensure that those accused of the worst crimes in the world will face justice. The Court's very existence will deter some crimes.
But the challenges are still great. Torture is banned but in two-thirds of the world's countries it is still being committed in secret. Too many governments still allow wrongful imprisonment, murder or "disappearance" to be carried out by their officials with impunity.
Those who today still feel a sense of impotence can do something: they can support Amnesty International. They can help it to stand up for freedom and justice.”

Peter Benenson (1921–2005) English human rights activist

Source: Amnesty International (2002) The Amnesty International Report. p. 22

Death , Secret , World , Justice

“From that place [Mahawan] the Sultan advanced to Mathurah, which is a large city containing many temples' and the Sultan completely destroyed the city and burnt the temples. There was one golden idol which was broken up under the orders of the Sultan… Then in accordance with his custom, he advanced with his army towards Hindustan with the object of the conquest of Somnath' there were many golden idols in the temple in the city, and the largest of these idols was called Manat… When he reached Somnath, the inhabitants shut the gate on his face. After much fighting and great struggles the fort was taken, and vast multitudes were killed and taken prisoners. The temples were pulled down, and destroyed from their very foundations. The gold idol Somnath was broken into pieces, and one piece was sent to Ghaznin, and was placed at the gate of the Jami' Masjid; and for years it remained there.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

The Tabqat-i-Akbari translated by B. De, Calcutta, 1973, Vol. I, p. 11-16
Quotes from Muslim medieval histories

Fight

“So I wait for the day
when I'll hear the key
as it turns in the lock
And the guard will say to me,
"Oh my patient prisoner
you waited for this day and finally,
you are free!
You are free!
You are free!"”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

From A Balance Beam
Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)

Waiting

“The first prison I ever saw had inscribed on it CEASE TO DO EVIL: LEARN TO DO WELL; but as the inscription was on the outside, the prisoners could not read it.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Preface to English Prisons Under Local Government http://books.google.com/books?id=81YwAAAAYAAJ by Sydney and Beatrice Webb (1922)
1940s and later

Learning , Evil , Reading

“We are told that Shakespeare's plays were generally performed in barns and that no great trouble was taken over the production. The constant changes of scene which, incidentally, seem the sign of a decadent art rather than one which is progressing, were shown by placards with the inscription: "A Forest," "A Prison," and so on. Within this conventional setting the onlooker's imagination was free to follow the actions of the various characters who were animated by passions drawn from nature, and that was enough for him. So-called innovations are gratefully seized on as an excuse for poverty of invention and in the same way, the long descriptive passages that so overburden modern novels are a sign of sterility, for it is obviously easier to describe a dress or the outward appearance of an object than to trace the subtle development of a character or portray the emotions of the heart.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

9 April 1856 (p. 313)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

Art , Way , Imagination , Nature

“The widespread abuse of prisoners is a virtually foolproof indication that politicians are trying to impose a system--whether political, religious or economic--that is rejected by large numbers of the people they are ruling. Just as ecologists define ecosystems by the presence of certain "indicator species" of plants and birds, torture is an indicator species of a regime that is engaged in a deeply anti-democratic project, even if that regime happens to have come to power through elections.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007)

People , Bird

“One night a German officer was shot in the back and the army asked for reprisals, but Best tried to impose money fines. Pancke became afraid of Himmler and ordered me to shoot several Danes at once. I told him I didn't know who, we just could not go on the street and shoot Danes. He ordered me to take political prisoners. Three internees, Communists, should be brought before a court-martial and shot while escaping. It was to be prearranged. Himmler was to be informed that three Danes were shot while escaping.”

Rudolf Mildner (1902) Chief of the Gestapo at Katowice

To Leon Goldensohn (12 February 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Money , Night

“Who is secure in all his basic needs? Who has work, spiritual care, medical care, housing, food, occasional entertainment, free clothing, free burial, free everything? The answer might be “monks and nuns,” but the standard reply is, “prisoners.” And inevitably this conjures up citizens of the Provider State who have protection from the “cradle to the grave.””

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

Source: Leftism Revisited (1990), p. 88

Food , Housing , Clothes

“Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?
And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists?
And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?
Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

Additional Poems, No. 18, st. 1 (1937).

“Stand up, damned of the Earth
Stand up, prisoners of starvation
Reason thunders in its volcano
This is the eruption of the end.
Of the past let us make a clean slate
Enslaved masses, stand up, stand up.
The world is about to change its foundation
We are nothing, let us be all.”

Eugène Edine Pottier (1816–1887) French politician

Debout, les damnés de la terre
Debout, les forçats de la faim
La raison tonne en son cratère
C'est l'éruption de la fin
Du passé faisons table rase
Foule esclave, debout, debout
Le monde va changer de base
Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout
The Internationale (1864)

World , Change , Past

“Three times in my life I have been captured: by the orphanage, by school, and by the Army. I was four years in the orphanage, seven or eight in school, and three in the Army. Each seemed forever, though. But I'm mistaken. The fact is I was captured only once, when I was born, only that capture is also setting free, which is what this is actually all about. The free prisoner.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Here Comes There Goes You Know Who (1961)

Life , School , Time

“Yes, she loved him very much. Yes, he was born that way.
Yes, she was standing by the prison wall that morning.
Yes, she heard the shots.
You may regret not having brought a camera,
a tape recorder. Yes, she has seen such things.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

"Pietà"
Poems New and Collected (1998), No End of Fun (1967)

Love , Way

“Mr McCain fought in Vietnam. I think that he has enough blood of peaceful citizens on his hands. It must be impossible for him to live without these disgusting scenes anymore. Mr McCain was captured and they kept him not just in prison, but in a pit for several years, Anyone [in his place] would go nuts.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Response to John McCain's tweet "Dear Vlad, The Arab Spring is coming to a neighbourhood near you." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8958294/Vladimir-Putin-calls-John-McCain-nuts-in-outspoken-attack.html
2011 - 2015

Peace , Thinking

“And this in turn makes it plain that the Right Man problem is a problem of highly dominant people. Dominance is a subject of enormous importance to biologists and zoologists because the percentage of dominant animals — or human beings — seems to be amazingly constant. Bernard Shaw once asked the explorer H. M. Stanley how many other men could take over leadership of the expedition if Stanley himself fell ill; Stanley replied promptly: "One in twenty." "Is that exact or approximate?" asked Shaw. "Exact." And biological studies have confirmed this as a fact. For some odd reason, precisely five per cent — one in twenty — of any animal group are dominant — have leadership qualities. During the Korean War, the Chinese made the interesting discovery that if they separated out the dominant five per cent of American prisoners of war, and kept them in separate compound, the remaining ninety-five per cent made no attempt to escape.”

Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904) Welsh journalist and explorer

Colin Wilson in The Essential Colin Wilson, p. 216
The Essential Colin Wilson (1985)

Men , War , People , Problem

“Interviewer: Is it possible to abolish man's humanity?
Levi: Unfortunately, yes. Unfortunately, yes; and that is really the characteristic of the Nazi lager [concentration camp]. About the others, I don't know, because I don't know them; perhaps in Russia the same thing happens. It's to abolish man's personality, inside and outside: not only of the prisoner, but also of the jailer. He too lost his personality in the lager.
These are two different itineraries, but with the same result, and I would say that only a few had the good fortune of remaining aware during their imprisonment; some regained their awareness of the experience later, but during it, they had lost it; many forgot everything. They did not record their experiences in their mind. They didn't impress on their memory track. Thus it happened to all, a profound modification in their personality. Most of all, our sensibility lost sharpness, so that the memories of our home had fallen into second place; the memory of family had fallen into second place in face of urgent needs, of hunger, of the necessity to protect oneself against cold, beatings, fatigue… all of this brought about some reactions which we could call animal-like; we were like work animals.
It is curious how this animal-like condition would repeat itself in language: in German there are two words for eating. One is essen and it refers to people, and the other is fressen, referring to animals. We say a horse frisst, for example, or a cat. In the lager, without anyone having decided that it should be so, the verb for eating was fressen. As if the perception of the animalesque regression was clear to all.”

Primo Levi (1918–1987) Italian chemist, memoirist, short story writer, novelist, essayist

Interview http://www.inch.com/~ari/levi1.html with Daniel Toaff, Sorgenti di Vita (Springs of Life), a program on the Unione Comunita Israelitiche Italiane, Radiotelevisione Italiana [RAI] (25 March 1983); translated by Mirto Stone

Hunger , People , Family , Home

“Tyranny does not impose itself only in the. Therefore, when a woman like me decides to break their dictated norms, she must suffer prison and separation from her children, as an intimidating lesson for other women.”

Narges Mohammadi (1972) Iranian human rights activist

Letter Accepting 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prizefrom (2018)

Women , Children , Suffering

“That is also how Mahmud of Ghazni could enslave 500,000 “beautiful men and women” in Waihind after he had killed 15,000 fighting men in a “splendid action” in November 1001 C. E. Utbi informs us that Jaipal, the Hindu Shahiya king of Kabul, “his children and grandchildren, his nephews, and the chief men of his tribe, and his relatives, were taken prisoners, and being strongly bound with ropes, were carried before the Sultan (Mahmud) like common evil-doers… Some had their arms forcibly tied behind their backs, some were seized by the cheek, some were driven by blows on their neck.””

Jayapala (964–1001) Ruler of the Kabal Shabi

In every campaign of Mahmud large-scale massacres preceded enslavement.
Utbi, E.D., II, 26. Minhaj, 607, n., 5. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3

Women , Men , Children , Beauty

“It is apparent that prisoners of war are among the most vulnerable of people. Not only are they completely under the control of their captors, but in a time of conflict, the hatred and brutality of the battlefield are very likely to be mirrored within military prison walls.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Pages 125-126
Post-Presidency, Our Endangered Values (2005)

War , People , Time

“Why should I feed my prisoners when I don't have enough to feed my peasants?”

Mobutu Sésé Seko (1930–1997) President of Zaïre

Ayittey, p. 109

“In the Middle Ages, people were born and baptized into the Church. But the Church was the corpus mysticum and it depended upon one's own free will whether one wanted to be a living or a dead member of the Mystical Body of Christ. The cry "traitor" was only raised against those who broke the solemn oath of allegiance, not those who chose to go ways different from their status of birth. The Connêtable Charles de Bourbon who served with Charles V, or Marshal Moritz of Saxony, the great general under Louis XV were hardly considered to be traitors. Soldiers picked out the countries they wanted to serve. Prospective monks chose their orders. There were no "traitors to the proletariat" or "traitors to democracy." Today we live in an age of increased predestination and decreased free will, where Calvin, Freud, Marx, Luther, Darwin, Dewey, and the host of racial biologists have laid down the inexorable laws of anthropological, religious, psychological, environmental, and sociological determinism with no hope for escape. We are merely exhorted to make a virtue out of necessity and to be loyal to our prison and prisoners. Every attempt from our side to escape the artificial shell or to use our dormant remainders of free will to destroy the chains is branded as treason and punished accordingly by State or Society or even by both.”

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

Pg 133, emphasis in the original
The Menace of the Herd (1943)

People , Age , Law , Hope

“While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror of these thoughts, Ethan Brand rose from the log, and flung open the door of the kiln. The action was in such accordance with the idea in Bertram's mind, that he almost expected to see the Evil One issue forth, red-hot, from the raging furnace.
Hold! hold!" cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh; for he was ashamed of his fears, although they overmastered him. "Don't, for mercy's sake, bring out your Devil now!"
"Man!" sternly replied Ethan Brand, "what need have I of the Devil? I have left him behind me, on my track. It is with such half-way sinners as you that he busies himself. Fear not, because I open the door. I do but act by old custom, and am going to trim your fire, like a lime-burner, as I was once."
He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and bent forward to gaze into the hollow prison-house of the fire, regardless of the fierce glow that reddened his face. The lime-burner sat watching him, and half suspected this strange guest of a purpose, if not to evoke a fiend, at least to plunge into the flames, and thus vanish from the sight of man. Ethan Brand, however, drew quietly back, and closed the door of the kiln.
"I have looked," said he, "into many a human heart that was seven times hotter with sinful passions than yonder furnace is with fire. But I found not there what I sought. No, not the Unpardonable Sin!"”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

"Ethan Brand" (1850)

Fear , Way , Idea , Business

“These were al-Qaeda fighters, the first I'd ever seen up close, and they looked like badasses. As I passed on the outskirts of the grid, many of the prisoners stared directly at me. None of them cowered. I've been in a lot of prisons, but these guys showed a ferocity and a hatred unlike any I'd ever seen.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 321
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

Guy

“I respect the jury’s verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Statement on I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby decision http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19570172/ (July 2, 2007)
2000s, 2007

“If society is the prison, families are the cells, with no time off for good behavior. Good behavior in fact tends to lengthen the sentence.”

John Updike book Rabbit Remembered

Rabbit Remembered (2000)

Family , Behavior , Time

“The purpose of my writing is to expose and arrest Nova Criminals. In 'Naked Lunch', 'Soft Machine' and 'Nova Express' I show who they are and what they are doing and what they will do if they are not arrested. Minutes to go. Souls rotten from their orgasm drugs, flesh shuddering from their nova ovens, prisoners of the earth to 'come out'. With your help we can occupy The Reality Studio and retake their universe of Fear Death and Monopoly”

William S. Burroughs book Nova Express

Source: Nova Express (1968), Chapter One, Prisoners, Come Out

Death , Fear , Soul , Reality

“Prisoner, God has given you good abilities, instead of which you go about the country stealing ducks.”

William Arabin (1773–1841)

Notes and Queries, clxx.310

God , Country

“Aside from the humanitarian aspects, it is well known that, under excruciating torture, a prisoner will admit almost any suggested crime. Such confessions are, of course, not admissible in trials in civilized nations. The primary goal of torture or the threat of torture is not to obtain convictions for crimes, but to engender and maintain fear. Some of our leaders have found that it is easy to forgo human rights for those who are considered to be subhuman, or "enemy combatants."”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Page 129
Post-Presidency, Our Endangered Values (2005)

Fear

“When you are put into a big city jail, you will probably be frightened, lonely, humiliated, and completely drained of any spirit. This is normal. Talk to the fellow prisoners, write, play cards, read, doodle, do anything to keep your mind occupied, but above all do not verbalize your misfortune to your fellow prisoners. Each one of them has had similar situations, and is sick of thinking about it.”

William Powell (author) book The Anarchist Cookbook

"Postscript", p. 157.
The Anarchist Cookbook (1971)

Thinking , Reading

“Hey listen, I'm here to warn people, you keep telling me to shut up! This isn't a game! Okay? Our government, the US, is building FEMA camps. We have an NDAA where they disappear people now. You have this "arrest for public safety", life in prison. It's basically off with their heads, disappear 'em, take 'em away. Infowars dot com. Liberty is rising. Liberty is rising! Freedom will not stop! You will not stop freedom! You will not stop the Republic! Humanity is awakening! Infowars dot com! No, you guys are crazy, thinking that the public's too stupid! You're crazy, thinking the public doesn't know! You're crazy, thinking the public isn't waking up!”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

BBC's Sunday Politics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch9gQ9JOe3Y, 9 June 2013.
2013

Life , People , Stupidity , Guy

“Listen, I'm no social scientist and haven't done a survey. I don't pretend to know what John Q citizen thinks about this. But I've lived in prison for a long time now and I've met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence just like me. And without exception, every one of them… was deeply involved in pornography. Without question, without exception. Deeply influenced and consumed by an addiction to pornography.”

Ted Bundy (1946–1989) American serial killer

1989 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LYL1PTrtXo with James Dobson

Men , Motivation , Question , Thinking

“The members of this Elite are either direct incarnations of the fourth-dimensional Prison Warders or have their minds controlled by them. The aim of the Brotherhood and its interdimensional controllers has been to centralise power in the hands of the few. This process is now very advanced and it is happening on a global scale today thanks to modern technology. The game-plan is known as the Great Work of Ages or the New World Order, and it presently seeks to introduce a world government to which all nations would be colonies; a world central bank and currency; a world army; and a micro-chipped population connected to a global computer. What is happening today is the culmination of the manipulation which has been unfolding for thousands of years.”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

ibid

Age , World , Game

“And if God does not help me to go on, then I shall have to help God. — The surface of the earth is gradually turning into one great prison camp, and soon there will be nobody left outside. … I don't fool myself about the real state of affairs, and I've even dropped the pretense that I'm out to help others. I shall merely try to help God as best I can, and if I succeed in doing that, then I shall be of use to others as well. But I mustn't have heroic illusions about that either.”

Etty Hillesum (1914–1943) Jewish diarist

11 July 1942, p. 484-85
Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943

God , Fools , Help

“Palestinians and Arabs were not the only ones cast as Nazis. Israel was also accused — by Israelis as well as by Palestinians — of Nazi-style crimes. In the context of Israeli massacres of Palestinians in 1948, a number of Israeli ministers referred to the actions of Israeli soldiers as "Nazi actions," prompting Benny Marshak, the education officer of the Palmach, to ask them to stop using the term. Indeed, after the massacre at al-Dawayima, Agriculture Minister Aharon Zisling asserted in a cabinet meeting that he "couldn't sleep all night… Jews too have committed Nazi acts." Similar language was used after the Israeli army gunned down forty-seven Israeli Palestinian men, women, and children at Kafr Qasim in 1956. While most Israeli newspapers at the time played down the massacre, a rabbi rote that "we must demand of the entire nation a sense of shame and humiliation… that soon we will be like Nazias and the perpetrators of pogroms." The Palestinians were soon to level the same accusation against the Israelis. Such accusations increased during the intifada. One of the communiqués issued by the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising defined the intifada as consisting of "the children and young men of the stones and Molotov cocktails, the thousands of women who miscarried as a result of poison gas and tear gas grenades, and those women whose sons and husbands were thrown in the Nazi prisons." The Israelis were always outraged by such accusations, even when the similarities were stark. When the board of Yad Vashem, for example, was asked to condemn the act of an Israeli army officer who instructed his soldiers to inscribe numbers on the arms of Palestinians, board chairman Gideon Hausner "squelched the initiative, ruling that it had no relevance to the Holocaust."”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Massad, in Palestinian and Jewish History: Recognition or Submission? in the Autumn 2000 issue of the Journal of Palestine Studies.
On Comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany

Women , Men , Children , Education

“Abu Hurayra reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "This world is the prison of the believer and the paradise of the unbeliever."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 3, hadith number 470
Sunni Hadith

World , Peace

“In my country we go to prison first and then become President.”

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

1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)

Country

“My chief qualification for the job is that I have been in almost every cell in the Moabit Prison in Berlin.”

Kurt Daluege (1897–1946) German SS general

After receiving a promotion. Quoted in "The Pursuit of Crime" - Page 129 - by Ronald Howe - Police - 1961.

“I was filled with joy when studying quantum physics at the university as a means to understand the universe. But at the same time, I was preoccupied with the oppressive conditions in my country and the tyranny suffered by our universities, intellectuals, and the media. Like many others in our universities, I felt compelled to join the struggle for freedom. What we experience is a decades-old tyranny, that cannot tolerate freedom of speech and thought. In the name of religion, it restricts and punishes science, intellect, and even love. It labels as a threat to national security and toxic to society whatever is not compatible with its political and economic interests. It considers punishing unwelcome ideas as a positive thing. It does not tolerate differences of opinion; it responds to logic not by logic, discussion or dialog, but by suppression. By tyranny I mean a ruling power that tries to make only one voice—the voice of a ruling minority in Iran—dominant, with no regard for pluralism in the society. By tyranny I mean a judiciary that disregards even the Islamic Republic’s own constitution, and sentences intellectuals, writers, journalists, and political and civil activists to long prison terms, without due process and trial in a court of law. … By tyranny I mean power-holders who believe they stand above the law and who disregard justice and the urgent demands of the human conscience.”

Narges Mohammadi (1972) Iranian human rights activist

Letter Accepting 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prizefrom (2018)

Love , Religion , Justice , Law

“That was a time when only the dead
could smile, delivered from their wars,
and the sign, the soul, of Leningrad
dangled outside its prison-house…”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

As translated by Stanley Kunitz
In those years only the dead smiled,
Glad to be at rest:
And Leningrad city swayed like
A needless appendix to its prisons.
Translated by D. M. Thomas
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Prologue

War , Smile , Soul , Time

“I started hearing from families who had missing members, many of them young kids on our campus, and they all would describe the same sorts of things. A sudden change of personality, a new way of talking…and then they would disappear. And bingo, it was the same sort of thing as with the Korean War prisoners, the same sort of thought-reform and social controls. You find it again and again, any time people feel vulnerable. There are always sharpies around who want to hornswoggle people.”

Margaret Singer (1921–2003) clinical psychology

Margaret Singer - expert on brainwashing http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/25/BAGAG3A5A11.DTL, San Francisco Chronicle, November 25, 2003
2003

War , People , Family , Way

“I'm from the city rich desire to live in. Glass on the floor from breaking out of this prison / prism.”

Marcus Orelias (1993) American actor, rapper, songwriter, author and entrepreneur

Blackouts
20s A Difficult Age (2017)

“I have an ongoing operational preference, rather than an end goal. I was raised in a prison, as a war hostage. War is illogical, wasteful. Wars become less frequent the more incentives rational beings have to cooperate rather than to compete. A free and peaceful commonwealth embracing all rational entities of this and every other universe, Cosmic and Chaotic, mortal and immortal, will deter wars.
The primary requirement, however, is freedom: universal freedom. If there are other people out there, raised in imprisonment as I was, I have a duty to liberate them, for the same reason why I would have welcomed any outside liberator who would have attempted to free me. We were in the most pleasant prison imaginable. It was still unacceptable. The present condition of the universe is unacceptable. Anything I can do, large or small, along these lines, I will do. Other problems are secondary, and may resolve themselves once this primary problem is solved.”

John C. Wright (1961) American novelist and technical writer

Source: Titans of Chaos (2007), Chapter 3, “Within Sight of the Land of Freedom” Section 1 (pp. 42-43)

War , People , Peace , Imagination

“Whoever in his public services is handcuffed and shackled by the vice of consistency will be a man not free to act as various questions come before him from time to time; he will be a statesman locked in a prison house, keys to which are in the keeping of days and events that are dead. Let me quote Emerson: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen.”

Henry Fountain Ashurst (1874–1962) United States Senator from Arizona

Johnson, James W. (2002). Arizona Politicians: The Noble and the Notorious, illustrations by David `Fitz' Fitzsimmons, University of Arizona Press. p 112.

Quotes , Question , Time , Housing

“My mother, my dad and I left Cuba when I was two [January, 1959]. Castro had taken control by then, and life for many ordinary people had become very difficult. My dad had worked [as a personal bodyguard for the wife of Cuban president Batista], so he was a marked man. We moved to Miami, which is about as close to Cuba as you can get without being there. It's a Cuba-centric society. I think a lot of Cubans moved to the US thinking everything would be perfect. Personally, I have to say that those early years were not particularly happy. A lot of people didn't want us around, and I can remember seeing signs that said: "No children. No pets. No Cubans." Things were not made easier by the fact that Dad had begun working for the US government. At the time he couldn't really tell us what he was doing, because it was some sort of top-secret operation. He just said he wanted to fight against what was happening back at home. [Estefan's father was one of the many Cuban exiles taking part in the ill-fated, anti-Castro Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow dictator Fidel Castro. ] One night, Dad disappered. I think he was so worried about telling my mother he was going that he just left her a note. There were rumours something was happening back home, but we didn't really know where Dad had gone. It was a scary time for many Cubans. A lot of men were involved -- lots of families were left without sons and fathers. By the time we found out what my dad had been doing, the attempted coup had taken place, on April 17, 1961. Intitially he'd been training in Central America, but after the coup attempt he was captured and spent the next wo years as a political prisoner in Cuba. That was probably the worst time for my mother and me. Not knowing what was going to happen to Dad. I was only a kid, but I had worked out where my dad was. My mother was trying to keep it a secret, so she used to tell me Dad was on a farm. Of course, I thought that she didn't know what had really happened to him, so I used to keep up the pretence that Dad really was working on a farm. We used to do this whole pretending thing every day, trying to protect each other. Those two years had a terrible effect on my mother. She was very nervous, just going from church to church. Always carrying her rosary beads, praying her little heart out. She had her religion, and I had my music. Music was in our family. My mother was a singer, and on my father's side there was a violinist and a pianist. My grandmother was a poet.”

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

The [London] Sunday Times (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

Life , Men , Fate , Children

“In criminal cases you always begin by proving the corpus delicti, and then connect the prisoner with it.”

Sir Frederick Pollock, 1st Baronet (1783–1870) British lawyer and Tory politician

Queen v. Bernard (1858), 8 St. Tr. (N. S.) 922.

“The Bible has been interpreted to justify such evil practices as, for example, slavery, the slaughter of prisoners of war, the sadistic murders of women believed to be witches, capital punishment for hundreds of offenses, polygamy, and cruelty to animals. It has been used to encourage belief in the grossest superstition and to discourage the free teaching of scientific truths. We must never forget that both good and evil flow from the Bible. It is therefore not above criticism.”

Steve Allen (1921–2000) American comedian, actor, musician and writer

Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, and Morality (1990)

Women , War , Truth , Evil

“At present, there are hundreds of thousands of prisoners in Germany of all nationalities and degrees, partly in camps, but for the most part, however, as workers…The dangers of inter-mixing and bastardizing of our people are extraordinarily grave. They lie to a great extent in the almost unlimited lack of knowledge throughout our nation of the problems of blood.”

Günther Pancke (1899–1973) German general

(3 July 1940). Quoted in "Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals" - Page 117 - 1953

People , Lie , Knowledge , Problem

“We are living a moment of truth in Iraq, a moment in which we have to look fair and square at disagreeable realities, in which we have to look at ourselves. The pictures from Abu Ghraib prison are a kind of mirror in which we have to look at ourselves and ask: what kind of people did this? How did this become possible? Could I have done a thing like this to those people?”

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

From "Living Fearlessly in a Fearless World" Ignatieff Commencement Address to Whitman College (USA), 2004

People , Truth , Reality

“When Voltaire was bornreally but one church which, of course, was ignorant, tyrannical and barbarous in the extreme. All creeds are alike, and whenever there is but one, and the rulers honestly believe in that one, they are bound to be ignorant, barbarous and cruel. All sorts of heresies were punishable by death. If anyone dared to write a pamphlet or book that questioned any part of the accepted faith, the book was at once consigned to flames and the author was lucky if he did not meet the same fate. Religion was not maintained by the precepts of the priest, but by the prison, the torture chamber and the fagot. Everyone believed; no one questioned. The religious creeds, while strict and barbarous, did not interfere with the personal conduct of any of the rulers. They were left free to act as they pleased, so long as they professed to believe in the prevailing faith.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Voltaire (1916)

Death , Fate , Books , Faith

“When marine officers called on me at Palma, they remarked on the clean roads, the punctual trams and so on. 'Why', they exclaimed, 'business as usual - and you say there's killing going on? what nonsense!' They didn't realise that any tradesman who closed down, closed down at his peril. They didn't know that the relatives of the executed were not allowed to go into mourning. How can you expect the outside appearance of a town to be affected, just because the staff of its prisons is double, treble, ten times, a hundred times what it was? The discreet slaughter of fifteen or twenty wretched people per day, will not prevent tramways from running to schedule, cafés from being full, or churches resounding with the Te Deum.”

Georges Bernanos book Les grands cimetières sous la lune

Source: Les grands cimetieres sous la lune (A Diary of My Times) 1938, p.98

People , Business , Appearance , Time

“Tell me why the caged bird nutters against its prison bars, and I will tell you why the soul sickens of earthliness. The bird has wings, and wings were made to cleave the air, and soar in freedom in the sun. The soul is immortal — it cannot feed upon husks.”

Randolph Sinks Foster (1820–1903) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 338.

Soul , Bird , Freedom , Sun

“I have always had plenty of friends, and now at age sixty, I face four walls as a common prisoner.”

Albert Kesselring (1885–1960) German Luftwaffe Generalfeldmarschall during World War II

To Leon Goldensohn, February 4, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.

Age

“How many thousands, tens of thousands [of prisoners], are in for petty theft, while the 'robber barons' of our day get away with murder. Literally murder, accessories to murder. "Property is Theft." Proudhon wrote--The coat that hangs in your closet belongs to the poor. The early Fathers wrote--The house you don't live in, your empty buildings (novitiates, seminaries) belong to the poor. Property is Theft.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

"On Pilgrimage," Catholic Worker (December 1971)

Housing

“Almost half of the bankruptcies in the United States are connected to an illness in the family, whether people had health insurance or not. Middle-class Americans, who had the misfortune of either experiencing a medical emergency themselves or watching a family member suffer, were then forced to face the daunting task of pulling themselves out of debt. Bankruptcy law has allowed them to start over. It has given hope. Now this new law will put people on their own. Illness or emergency creates medical bills. We are telling the people that they themselves are to blame. At the same time, we are removing protections that would stay an eviction, that would keep a roof over the head of a working family. We allow the credit industry to trick consumers into using subprime cards, with exorbitant interest rate hikes and fees. Then we hand those same consumers over to an unforgiving prison of debt, to be put on a rack of insolvency and squeezed dry by the credit card industry. We are protecting the profits of the credit card industry instead of protecting the economic future of the American people. Americans are left on their own. That's what this Administration's "Ownership Society" is all about — you're on your own — and your ship is sinking.”

Dennis Kucinich (1946) Ohio politician

Speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressional Record (14 April, 2005) http://frwebgate5.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate.cgi?WAISdocID=240761331899+3+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve.

People , Health , Family , Law

“If you desire a man to tell you comfortable lies about your prowess, and so fetter any hope of true excellence, I'm sure you may find one anywhere. Not all prisons are made of iron bars. Some are made of feather beds.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: World of the Five Gods series, The Curse of Chalion (2000), p. 58

Hope

“Political repression in the United States has reached monstrous proportions. Black and Brown peoples especially, victims of the most vicious and calculated forms of class, national and racial oppression, bear the brunt of this repression. Literally tens of thousands of innocent men and women, the overwhelming majority of them poor, fill the jails and prisons; hundreds of thousands more, including the most presumably respectable groups and individuals, are subject to police, FBI and military intelligence surveillance. The Nixon administration most recently responded to the massive protests against the war in Indochina by arresting more than 13,000 people and placing them in stadiums converted into detention centers.”

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

If They Come in The Morning (1971)

Women , Men , War , People

“It was painful for me several years ago when several friends were arrested. I said nothing. I didn’t want to lose my job or my freedom. I worried about my family.
I have made a different choice now. I have left my home, my family and my job, and I am raising my voice. To do otherwise would betray those who languish in prison. I can speak when so many cannot. I want you to know that Saudi Arabia has not always been as it is now. We Saudis deserve better.”

Jamal Khashoggi (1958–2018) Saudi Arabian journalist

"Saudi Arabia wasn’t always this repressive. Now it’s unbearable." in The Washington Post (18 September 2017)

Pain , Family , Home , Freedom

“A great part of my family was murdered. It was in my own house that their murderer was converted. It was also the most suitable place. So in Communist prisons the idea of a Christian mission to the Communists was born.”

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

Source: Tortured For Christ (1967), p. 58.

Family , Idea , Parting , Housing

“The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Role of the Behavioral Scientist in the Civil Rights Movement (1967)

“There is no escaping the unfortunate fact that Muslim government employees in law enforcement, the military, and the diplomatic corps need to be watched for connections to terrorism, as do Muslim chaplains in prisons and the armed forces. Muslim visitors and immigrants must undergo additional background checks. Mosques require a scrutiny beyond that applied to churches, synagogues, and temples. Muslim schools require increased oversight to ascertain what is being taught to children.”

Daniel Pipes (1949) U.S. neoconservative columnist, author, counter-terrorism analyst, and scholar of Middle Eastern history

Jerusalem Post (January 22, 2003), page 9.

Children , School , Law

“In the case of a man and a woman [accused of commiting a crime together], both will often agree to the man taking the rap—despite the man being more likely to receive a longer sentence and more likely to be raped in prison. If blacks were agreeing to do that for whites, the black community would be smart enough to call that ‘learned subservience.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 243.

Communication , Learning

“I think there are too damn many institutions on the face of the earth as it is. Robert Graves said: 'As soon as women organize themselves in the male way with societies, memberships and rules, everything goes wrong.' I think that applies to artists, too. The artist stands for everything against institutions.. [Rosalyn Drexler reacted: 'Institutions and clear thought are opposites. You can't have one with the other']. Right! Institution to me means authority, coercion, mindlessness, bureaucracy; it means the Pentagon, the CIA, the army, organized denominational religion, prisons, mental hospitals.”

Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989) American painter

n.p.
1950 - 1971, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists' - Rosalyn Drexler with Elaine de Kooning (1971)

Women , Religion , Way , Thinking

“Crime is so out of control. Criminals have no fear of punishment. Prisons are overcrowded so they know they will not be imprisoned long. This breeds more crime, in an escalating cyclic pattern.”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

1990s, Letter to the Union-Sun & Journal (1992)

Fear

“The fall of the patriciate by no means divested the Roman commonwealth of its aristocratic character. We have already indicated that the plebeian party carried within it that character from the first as well as, and in some sense still more decidedly than, the patriciate; for, while in the old body of burgesses an absolute equality of rights prevailed, the new constitution set out from a distinction between the senatorial houses who were privileged in point of burgess rights and of burgess usufructs, and the mass of the other citizens. Immediately, therefore, on the abolition of the patriciate and the formal establishment of civic equality, a new aristocracy and a corresponding opposition were formed; and we have already shown how the former engrafted itself as it were on the fallen patriciate, and how, accordingly, the first movements of the new party of progress were mixed up with the last movements of the old opposition between the orders. The formation of these new parties began in the fifth century, but they assumed their definite shape only in the century which followed. The development of this internal change is, as it were, drowned amidst the noise of the great wars and victories, and not merely so, but the process of formation is in this case more withdrawn from view than any other in Roman history. Like a crust of ice gathering imperceptibly over the surface of a stream and imperceptibly confining it more and more, this new Roman aristocracy silently arose; and not less imperceptibly, like the current concealing itself beneath and slowly extending, there arose in opposition to it the new party of progress. It is very difficult to sum up in a general historical view the several, individually insignificant, traces of these two antagonistic movements, which do not for the present yield their historical product in any distinct actual catastrophe. But the freedom hitherto enjoyed in the commonwealth was undermined, and the foundation for future revolutions was laid, during this epoch; and the delineation of these as well as of the development of Rome in general would remain imperfect, if we should fail to give some idea of the strength of that encrusting ice, of the growth of the current beneath, and of the fearful moaning and cracking that foretold the mighty breaking up which was at hand. The Roman nobility attached itself, in form, to earlier institutions belonging to the times of the patriciate. Persons who once had filled the highest ordinary magistracies of the state not only, as a matter of course, practically enjoyed all along a higher honour, but also had at an early period certain honorary privileges associated with their position. The most ancient of these was doubtless the permission given to the descendants of such magistrates to place the wax images of these illustrious ancestors after their death in the family hall, along the wall where the pedigree was painted, and to have these images carried, on occasion of the death of members of the family, in the funeral procession.. the honouring of images was regarded in the Italo-Hellenic view as unrepublican, and on that account the Roman state-police did not at all tolerate the exhibition of effigies of the living, and strictly superintended that of effigies of the dead. With this privilege were associated various external insignia, reserved by law or custom for such magistrates and their descendants:--the golden finger-ring of the men, the silver-mounted trappings of the youths, the purple border on the toga and the golden amulet-case of the boys--trifling matters, but still important in a community where civic equality even in external appearance was so strictly adhered to, and where, even during the second Punic war, a burgess was arrested and kept for years in prison because he had appeared in public, in a manner not sanctioned by law, with a garland of roses upon his head.(6) These distinctions may perhaps have already existed partially in the time of the patrician government, and, so long as families of higher and humbler rank were distinguished within the patriciate, may have served as external insignia for the former; but they certainly only acquired political importance in consequence of the change of constitution in 387, by which the plebeian families that attained the consulate were placed on a footing of equal privilege with the patrician families, all of whom were now probably entitled to carry images of their ancestors. Moreover, it was now settled that the offices of state to which these hereditary privileges were attached should include neither the lower nor the extraordinary magistracies nor the tribunate of the plebs, but merely the consulship, the praetorship which stood on the same level with it,(7) and the curule aedileship, which bore a part in the administration of public justice and consequently in the exercise of the sovereign powers of the state.(8) Although this plebeian nobility, in the strict sense of the term, could only be formed after the curule offices were opened to plebeians, yet it exhibited in a short time, if not at the very first, a certain compactness of organization--doubtless because such a nobility had long been prefigured in the old senatorial plebeian families. The result of the Licinian laws in reality therefore amounted nearly to what we should now call the creation of a batch of peers. Now that the plebeian families ennobled by their curule ancestors were united into one body with the patrician families and acquired a distinctive position and distinguished power in the commonwealth, the Romans had again arrived at the point whence they had started; there was once more not merely a governing aristocracy and a hereditary nobility--both of which in fact had never disappeared--but there was a governing hereditary nobility, and the feud between the gentes in possession of the government and the commons rising in revolt against the gentes could not but begin afresh. And matters very soon reached that stage. The nobility was not content with its honorary privileges which were matters of comparative indifference, but strove after separate and sole political power, and sought to convert the most important institutions of the state--the senate and the equestrian order--from organs of the commonwealth into organs of the plebeio-patrician aristocracy.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

The History of Rome - Volume 2

Death , Men , War , Youth

“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.”

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

Miscellaneous http://books.google.com/books?id=cvlOAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Everyone+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%22&pg=PA104#v=onepage, Cosmic Religion, p. 104 (1931)
1930s

Youth , Idea , Reality

“Very few of the Christians recanted, although an altar with a fire burning on it was generally kept in the arena for their convenience. All a prisoner had to do was scatter a pinch of incense on the flame and he was given a Certificate of Sacrifice and turned free.
It was also carefully explained to him that he was not worshiping the emperor; merely acknowledging the divine character of the emperor as head of the Roman state. Still, almost no Christians availed themselves of the chance to escape.”

Daniel P. Mannix (1911–1997) animal collector and author

About early Christians in the Arena. Those about to Die (1958), Chapter 14

Chance

“The natural leaning of our minds is in favour of prisoners; and in the mild manner in which the laws of this country are executed, it has rather been a subject of complaint by some that the Judges have given way too easily to mere formal objections on behalf of prisoners, and have been too ready on slight grounds to make favourable representations of their cases. Lord Hale himself, one of the greatest and best men who ever sat in judgment, considered this extreme facility as a great blemish, owing to which more offenders escaped than by the manifestation of their innocence." We must, however, take care not to carry this disposition too far, lest we loosen the bands of society, which is kept together by the hope of reward, and the fear of punishment. It has been always considered, that the Judges in our foreign possessions abroad were not bound by the rules of proceeding in our Courts here. Their laws are often altogether distinct from our own. Such is the case in India and other places. On appeals to the Privy Council from our colonies, no formal objections are attended to, if the substance of the matter or the corpus delicti sufficiently appear to enable them to get at the truth and justice of the case.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

King v. Suddis (1800), 1 East, 314. Lord Kenyon is later reported to have written, "I once before had occasion to refer to the opinion of a most eminent Judge, who was a great Crown lawyer, upon the subject, I mean Lord Hale; who even in his time lamented the too great strictness which had been required in indictments, and which had grown to be a blemish and inconvenience in the law; and observed that more offenders escaped by the over easy ear given to exceptions in indictments than by their own innocence". King v. Airey (c. 1800), 2 East, 34.

Men , Truth , Fear , Justice

“It is a war of ideologies and struggle races. On one side stands National Socialism: ideology, founded on the values of our Germanic, Nordic blood. It is worth the world as we want to see: beautiful, orderly, fair, socially, a world that may be, still suffers some flaws, but overall a happy, beautiful world filled with culture, which is precisely Germany. On the other side stands the 180 millionth people, a mixture of races and peoples, whose names are unpronounceable, and whose physical nature is such that the only thing that they can do - is to shoot without pity or mercy. These animals, which are subjected to torture and ill-treatment of each prisoner from our side, which do not have medical care they captured our wounded, as do the decent men, you will see them for yourself. These people have joined a Jewish religion, one ideology, called Bolshevism, with the task of: having now Russian, half [located] in Asia, parts of Europe, crush Germany and the world. When you, my friends, are fighting in the East, you keep that same fight against the same subhumans, against the same inferior races that once appeared under the name of Huns, and later - 1,000 years ago during the time of King Henry and Otto I, - the name of the Hungarians, and later under the name of Tatars, and then they came again under the name of Genghis Khan and the Mongols. Today they are called Russian under the political banner of Bolshevism.”

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS

Heinrich Himmler speaking in Stettin to soldiers of the SS (13 July 1941)
1940s

Men , War , People , World

“…and I haven't got to the bloody Japanese yet, with their poisoned stakes and booby traps and nasty habit of using prisoners for bayonet practice and no-surrender valour and fighting ability to match our own…almost.”

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) English-born author of Scottish descent

The Defeat of the British Army. p. 184.
The Light's On At Signpost (2002)

Fight

“They call us kidnappers, yet Brother Clark Squires (who is accused, along with me, of murdering a new jersey state trooper) was kidnapped on April z, 1969, from our Black community and held on one million dollars' ransom in the New York Panther 21 conspiracy case. He was acquitted on May 13, 1971, along with all the others, of 156 counts of conspiracy by a jury that took less than two hours to deliberate. Brother Squires was innocent. Yet he was kidnapped from his community and family. Over two years of his life was stolen, but they call us kidnappers. We did not kidnap the thousands of Brothers and Sisters held captive in amerika's concentration camps. Ninety percent of the prison population in this country are Black and Third World people who can afford neither bail nor lawyers.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

To My People (July 4, 1973)

Life , People , World , Family

“Today the Israeli government continues seizures of Palestinian land for settlements, military incursions into surrounding countries and denial of the right of Palestinians expelled by terror to return. Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, is a war criminal who should be in prison, not in office. Israel's own Kahan commission found that Sharon shared responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacres.”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Commentary in The Guardian (4 March 2005)

War , Country

“President Bush owes more than one apology. On the list of those he let down are the young soldiers who are themselves apparently culpable, but who were clearly put into a moral cesspool. The perpetrators as well as the victims were both placed in their relationship to one another by the policies of George W. Bush.
How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush/Cheney Administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world and in the conscience of our own people. How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace. How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison.”

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

Quotes, NYU Speech (2004)

People , World

“[The Abu Ghraib prison scandal is] the key reason, the sole reason, that I was forced to retire. I was essentially not offered another position in either a three-star or four-star command.”

Ricardo Sanchez (1953) United States Army Lieutenant General

As quoted in " November Off To Bloody Start In Iraq http://web.archive.org/web/20070430024348/http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/02/iraq/main2143888.shtml" (2 November 2006), by Alfonso Serrano, CBS News.

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