Popular quotes about Prison! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 19
I think it's important to visit people in prison. And if you know anyone in prison, I would encourage you very much to visit them. They're a good audience! I always get good letters from prisoners. I don't usually answer them because I have a lot going on in my life, but I get some really good ones, I get some really good letters from prison.
John WatersPrison is quite literally a ghetto in the most classic sense of the word, a place where the U.S. government now puts not only the dangerous but also the inconvenientโpeople who are mentally ill, people who are addicts, people who are poor and uneducated and unskilled. Meanwhile the ghetto in the outside world is a prison as well, and a much more difficult one to escape from than this correctional compound. In fact, there is basically a revolving door between our urban and rural ghettos and the formal ghetto of our prison system.
Piper KermanThe prison was very important - as everywhere on earth. Everywhere the building of a prison is the first step in the organization of a civilized state.
B. TravenI have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
James UssherA lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight - and when they come out, they're gay.
Benjamin CarsonSometimes, to help someone you love, you have to commit a felony. But, you don't want to go to prison for that. Hey, dude, what are you in for? Armed robbery? Murder? And then, you have to say, Love. And, that's definitely going to get you, you know, picked last for prison kick ball.
Christopher TitusBy 1980, when I came out of prison, The Sun did a campaign to stop putting vice girls in prison. We've talked about it ever since and nothing has been done about it.
Cynthia PayneWe 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.
Jenji KohanYou don't see people in prison treating each other the way people do on the outside, and the reason is that if you're rude to somebody in prison, you get killed.
Sonny BargerI went back to work right away [after prison]. I was very lucky โ 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. Itโs very, very hard for most people who have a criminal record to get a job. I think the system is very wasteful of taxpayersโ dollars. Itโs 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.
Piper KermanIn regeneration, the mind is enlightened in the knowledge of spiritual things... The will is renewed... The will is cured of its utter inability to will what is good. While the opening of the prison to them that are bound is proclaimed in the gospel , the Spirit of God comes to the prison-door; opens it; goes to the prisoner, and, by the power of his grace, makes his chains fall off; breaks the bond of iniquity, wherewith he was held in sin so as he could neither will nor do anything truly good; brings him forth into a large place.
Thomas BostonNo, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage: When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down, And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too, Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out; And take upon's the mystery of things, As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out, In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones, That ebb and flow by the moon.
William ShakespeareI will get to the truth, if not in Ukrainian courts, then in international ones. I will fight to my last breath. They want to put me in prison but that won't help. My voice will be heard even louder from prison than now, and the whole world will hear me.
Yulia TymoshenkoMy time in prison only deepened my resolve against apartheid. Even while I was in prison, I fought against it, teaching my cellmates about white supremacy and how to fight against it.
Nelson MandelaPeople can be in a prison of their own mind. [There are] people who don't have their hearts open to other people's ideas, and can't listen to other people's ideas without feeling like they're being slapped in the face. Those people are more in a prison.
Kathleen HannaWe can see, from California to New York, from Maine to Florida, Seattle to New Mexico - everywhere there are women's groups. Everywhere there are women who have gotten together to examine global warming, and women who have gotten together to prepare each other for single parenting - there are women who have come together to be supportive to those whose mates are in prison, male or female, partners are in prison. All sorts of gatherings of women. I mean, I'm just celebrating my 80th year on this planet, and I look back 50 years ago and there was nothing like that.
Maya AngelouThe 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.
William GurnallThe most miserable prison in the world is the prison we make for ourselves when we refuse to show mercy.
Warren W. WiersbeI 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?
J. R. R. TolkienI had one warden tell me since I've been out, and I visited an inmate in prison right here in New York, Warden Fay up at Green Haven. I visited an inmate in prison and he told me that he didn't want anybody in there trying to spread this religion.
Malcolm XTo 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.
Jiddu KrishnamurtiThe guns on the walls that surround the prison accurately, though unwittingly, index the true character of the penitentiary in our day.
Eugene V. DebsWe have this exploding prison population. We have the equivalent of martial law on a day-to-day, 24/7-hour basis in our cities, because we have not heard the cry for help by young people in 1967.
Grace Lee BoggsIf we have a bitcoin universe, you don't get to print money for war. You don't get to have money for a prison/industrial complex. You don't get money for a war on drugs. You have to ask the people.
Stefan MolyneuxThe prison systems in this country actually are exploitative and they are not in any way rehabilitative.
Malcolm XI had some pretty weird fan mail growing up, sometimes from prison and wherever else. Nothing too intense. Some superfans that maybe went a little overboard with gifts and whatnot, expecting something other than what it could be with a kid. That's a little weird. But at the same time, it's like, "Hey, I'm getting free video games. I'm not going to return it if you sent it!" Thankfully we never felt unsafe.
Lindsey HaunIn 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.
Deepak ChopraSome times I think this whole world Is one big prison yeard Some of us are prisoners The rest of us are guards
Bob DylanWhen you're in prison, and we're left to our own devices, you're stripped of everything, and you really get to see who these people are, the good and the bad.
Laura PreponThe only victory that really counts in prison is survival. But survival means more than simply being alive. It's not just the body that must survive a jail term; the spirit and the will and the heart have to make it through as well. If any one of them is broken or destroyed, the man whose living body walks through the gate, at the end of his sentence, can't be said to have survived it. And it's for those small victories of the heart, and the spirit, and the will that we sometimes risk the body that cradles them.
Gregory David RobertsDuring the Boom Years, it was so easy to lose sight of basic values. For example, there was lots of nonsense said and written about the so-called "New Economy." Some people said all economic laws have been overturned! Then all the problems developed. Corporations were heavily fined for illegalities. Many of their senior-level executives were indicted, convicted, and sent to prison.
Rosabeth Moss KanterWhen I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Mike TysonA garden was one of the few thing in prison that one could control. To plant a seed, watch it grow, to tend it then harvest it, offered a simple but enduring satisfaction. The sense of being the custodian of this small patch of earth offered a taste of freedom.
Nelson MandelaThough both erotica and pornography refer to verbal or pictorial representations of sexual behavior, they are as different as a room with doors open and one with doors locked. The first might be a home, but the second could only be a prison.
Gloria SteinemI was struck with a bolt of distilled horror like I have never known before. Far worse than suddenly finding yourself walking through a prison cafeteria wearing Daisy Duke shorts and a Jane Fonda headband.
Augusten BurroughsWe have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of 'success' as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon, 'schooling,' but historically that isnโt true in either an intellectual or a financial sense. And plenty of people throughout the world today find a way to educate themselves without resorting to a system of compulsory secondary schools that all too often resemble prison.
John Taylor GattoWould you really like to live in a society where you have no responsibility and no freedom, no choice, only the false option of obedience to the law, or disobedience followed by punishment? Would you really want to go live in a prison?
Ursula K. Le GuinOne of the reasons that so many people of color and poor people are in prison is that the deindustrialization of the economy has led to the creation of new economies and the expansion of some old ones โ I have already mentioned the drug trade and the market for sexual services. At the same time, though, there are any number of communities that more than welcome prisons as a source of employment. Communities even compete with one another to be the site where new prisons will be constructed because prisons create a significant number of relatively good jobs for their residents
Angela DavisI miss dogs, man. I always had a family pet, always had a dog growing up. It was almost equivalent to the prison sentence, having something taken away from me for three years. I want a dog just for the sake of my kids, but also me. I miss my companions.
Michael VickBut even now, with the crates piled high in the hall, what I see most plainly about the books is that they are beautiful. They take up room? Of course they do: they are an environment; atoms, not bits. My books are not dead weight, they are live weight โ matter infused by spirit, every one of them, even the silliest. They do not block the horizon; they draw it. They free me from the prison of contemporaneity: one should not live only in oneโs own time. A wall of books is a wall of windows.
Leon WieseltierThose things which make the infernal regions terrible, the darkness, the prison, the river of flaming fire, the judgment seat, are all a fable, with which the poets amuse themselves, and by them agitate us with vain terrors.
Seneca the YoungerListening to the radio every day for an entire year was a prison sentence. It was the most depressing, annoying, debilitating project I have ever undertaken, and I have a master's degree in art history.
Sarah VowellShe was one of those Southerners who knew from an early age that the South could never be more for them than a fragrant prison, administered by a collective of loving but treacherous relatives.
Pat ConroyFor one who is indifferent, life itself is a prison. Any sense of community is external or, even worse, nonexistent. Thus, indifference means solitude. Those who are indifferent do not see others. They feel nothing for others and are unconcerned with what might happen to them. They are surrounded by a great emptiness. Filled by it, in fact. They are devoid of all hope as well as imagination. In other words, devoid of any future.
Elie WieselThere have been times when I could have succumbed to some form of bribe, or could have had my way by offering one. But ever since that night in Dover prison I have never been tempted to break my vow.. My Parents always drummed into me that all you have life is your reputation: you may be very rich, but if you lose your good name you'll never be happy.
Richard BransonComeback records always worry me, especially when they're made by one of my heroes, and I'd heard stories about Gil Scott-Heron recently, about drug arrests and prison terms and other troubles. I wasn't prepared for the ravaged shakiness of his voice on this record or the raw spoken word pieces or the dark electronic backgrounds.
Will Hermes