Quotes About Prison

Paul was Nero's prisoner, but Nero was much more God's... But how does the great apostle spend his time in prison?... We read of no dispatches sent to court to procure his liberty; but many to the churches, to help them to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ had made them free... The devil had as good have let Paul alone, for he no sooner comes into prison but he falls a preaching, at which the gates of Satan's prison fly open, and poor sinners come forth.

I account this body nothing but a close prison to my soul; and the earth a larger prison to my body. I may not break prison till I be loosed by death; but I will leave it, not unwillingly,when I am loosed.

I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.

There is no captive in a worse state than the one who is captivated by his worst enemy (Shaytan) and there is no prison which is tighter than the prison of hawa (desire) and there is no bond/fetter more strong than the bond of desire. How, then, will a heart which is captivated, imprisoned and fettered travel unto Allah and the Home of the Hereafter?

I had to find meaning in it. So I go through this, I see all these homies die; I see all this terrible devastation, people sitting in prison. I've been saved from prison, from death, and from heroine addiction. What am I going to do with that?

The idea we have of prison is a scary place that also houses crazy people. And, to me, it was like, none of these guys were scary. They may have done things that are violent or scary, but these are not people that I feel nervous being around, and it feels like to me that we're wasting these men's lives in prison.

Grit is not synonymous with hard work. It involves a certain single-mindedness. An ungritty prison inmate will mount a daring new escape attempt every month, but a gritty prison inmate will tunnel his way out one spoonful of concrete at a time. Grit

On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.

Today I live on an island, in a house that is sad, hard, severe, that I built for myself, solitary on a sheer rock over the sea: a house that is the spectre, the secret image of prison. The image of my nostalgia. Maybe I never desired, not even then, to escape from jail. Man is not meant to live freely in freedom, but to be free inside a prison.

In the very progress of society, the prison has in the very nature of things undergone some improvement, but there are vast stretches yet to be covered before the prison becomes, if it ever does, an institution for the reclamation and rehabilitation of erring and unfortunate men and women.

We did tons of research. We went to visit a prison. We had speakers. We have read tons of supplementary material, books and articles. We are constantly emailing articles around the writers' room. We have dipped ourselves in prison culture and lore and media, and the experience and the people. We really want to be as informed as possible.

I went back to work right away [after prison]. I was very lucky — a friend of mine created a job for me at his company. Most prisoners who come home face really significant challenges when it comes to finding work. It’s very, very hard for most people who have a criminal record to get a job. I think the system is very wasteful of taxpayers’ dollars. It’s also very wasteful of human potential. I found that most people whom I was locked up with were, you know, good people who have skills and value. Prison is a missed opportunity to nurture those things.

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?

Millions of people are unable to vote due to felony convictions with the highest rates among black men. People in prison are denied the right to vote in 48 states, and while we accept that as normal in the United States, in other western democracies people in prison do have the right to vote.

Don't do drugs because if you do drugs you'll go to prison, and drugs are really expensive in prison.

I think the reality of prison is you don't get anything unless you want it in there. Whatever happens to you in prison, this is what you asked for. Nothing happens to you if you don't give that vibe.

To revolt within society in order to make it a little better, to bring about certain reforms, is like the revolt of prisoners to improve their life within the prison walls; and such revolt is no revolt at all, it is just mutiny. Do you see the difference? Revolt within society is like the mutiny of prisoners who want better food, better treatment within the prison; but revolt born of understanding is an individual breaking away from society, and that is creative revolution.

I is a great prison. It is your slavery and bondage to the mind. The moment you enter beyond the mind, you are - but you don`t have any notion of being an ego, of being an I. In other words: the more you think you are, the less you are; the more you experience that you are not... the more you are.

The guns on the walls that surround the prison accurately, though unwittingly, index the true character of the penitentiary in our day.

The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world: two million people. One out of every eight prisoners in the world is an African American. We are warehousing people as a profit to shareholders or for benefits to communities that get to host federal prisons. It is modern slavery. The whole future of America's black community is at risk. One out of every three young black men in Washington, D.C., is under one arm or the other of the criminal justice system. These are the continuing consequences of slavery.

I certainly want to be involved in politics and help shape the transition. I am in contact with regime critics who had to leave for the West. One of them is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former businessman, who had to endure 10 years in a prison camp.

Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?

The world is a better place with Saddam in prison not in power.

In the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known, from the prison of past conditioning. Uncertainty is the fertile ground of creativity and freedom.

I've always believed in the goodness of people. I teach in prison. They all said, don't do it. Carry a gun, take Mace. Are you kidding? I guess, they're around so many criminal elements that they fear for.

The United States has more women and girls in prison than any other industrialized nation on earth.

There are so many issues that impact women. When we talk about prison reform, for example, women were [once] sterilized in women's prisons. When they were giving birth, they were asked to sign paperwork but they weren't even completely conscious of what they were signing. That sounds like something that would never happen in America, but it was happening, not just in America, but in [California], one of the most progressive states in the United States.

When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

If I were asked to chose between execution and life in prison I would, of course, chose the latter. It's better to live somehow than not at all.

His tenacity is unmatched in my opinion. Incredible how someone could have suffered that long and come back out of prison with such a good heart and positive things to say and do.

I knew Deng Xiaoping when he came out of prison. He had, after all, been imprisoned for nearly ten years by Mao. I know what China looked like before he took over, and so in my own mind, I don't think of Deng Xiaoping as an oppressor. I think of somebody who, faced with that crisis, made a very painful and decision with which I cannot agree. But I also think of him as a great reformer.

For many, whether they go to prison or not is far less about the choices they make and far more about what kind of cage they're born into.

It was in prison that we found the hope of salvation for the Communists. It was there that we developed a sense of responsibility toward them. It was in being tortured by them that we learned to love them.

Animals aren't property, and the law generally finds it acceptable to use and kill animals for human gain, imposing prison terms and steep fines on large corporations-who have even larger lawyers-is rare.

I think these discussions with my father even gave the label of pacifist, particularly with my father, and he mentions this when he turns himself in to prison at La Catedral when he dedicates his action to his 14-year-old pacifist son.

The night in prison was novel and interesting enough.... I found that even here there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of verses which were composed by some young men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them.

The earth is not a lair, neither is it a prison. The earth is a Paradise, the only one we'll ever know. We will realize it the moment we open our eyes. We don't have to make it a Paradise-it is one. We have only to make ourselves fit to inhabit it. The man with the gun, the man with murder in his heart, cannot possibly recognize Paradise even when he is shown it.

After the fall of communism in Poland, we had a post-communist as president for two terms: Aleksander Kwasniewski. He was very good. He brought Poland into NATO and the European Union. The call to finally clean house is a propaganda tool of the right, which tolerates the leftists who it condemns. Kaczynski appointed a judge to the position of deputy justice minister who had once sentenced current President Bronislaw Komorowski to a prison term.

I found fame to be somewhat of a prison. The more famous you were, the smaller the cell that you had to live in.

Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison When the door is so wide open?

I'm a golfaholic, no question about that. Counseling wouldn't help me. They'd have to put me in prison, and then I'd talk the warden into building a hole or two and teach him how to play.

I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels and Mao when I entered prison and they redeemed me.

I feel like somebody who just got out of prison after 40 years for something she didn't do, like I got pardoned by the governor. When dear friends deal with me with mixed emotions, it is a little like being told, 'Well, Jenny, we're glad you got sprung, really, but quite honestly we did kind of like you better when you were in jail.

O joy of suffering! To struggle against great odds! to meet enemies undaunted! To be entirely alone with them! to find how much one can stand! To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, death, face to face! To mount the scaffold! to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance! To be indeed a God!

I was always shocked in prison because it's a scary place. It's not natural to lock that many people up like that, in such a tiny place. There's something disturbing about it.

I don't believe anyone can go through the prison experience without being changed by it. The experience becomes part of your identity forever.

The law against sodomy is trying to stop homosexual men from enjoying themselves. That's what the law is all about. But this is stupid. What do you do according to the law? You find two men enjoying themselves sexually. You arrest them and throw them in... prison? That outta do it.