Popular quotes about Prison! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 26
I was wondering why I was put in prison for working in an African language when I had not been put in prison for working in English. So really, in prison I started thinking more seriously about the relation between language and power.
Ngugi wa Thiong'oWhat I did, you know, being away from my family, letting so many people down. I let myself down, not being out on the football field, being in a prison bed, in a prison bunk, writing letters home, you know. That wasn't my life.
Michael VickIt does not matter what you call the gaoler so long as he has the key that will open the door of your prison! Similarly, as I have the key to release Life from its prison, it does not matter in the least what you call either the key or myself. I am not concerned about the title.
Jiddu KrishnamurtiWhy did the regime put me in prison in the first place? I was put in prison for six years and it has been all illegal.
Akbar GanjiI 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 UssherThere 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?
Ibn Qayyim Al-JawziyyaOur prison in Georgia is a very different place from this prison here in Berlin. The conditions there are inhuman.
Irakli OkruashviliThere was a lot of rebelliousness, without focus, in my younger years. And even when people ask me, "Oh you went to prison and you went to college for a couple years?" I'm like "Yeah, I learned more in prison than I think I ever learned in college." That's the sad truth.
Immortal TechniqueA freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison.
Simone de BeauvoirThey have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.
C. S. LewisI 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.
RajneeshThe guns on the walls that surround the prison accurately, though unwittingly, index the true character of the penitentiary in our day.
Eugene V. DebsWhen I was in the ring at the Olympics, it was my father's words that I was hearing, not the coaches'. 'I never listened to what the coaches said. I would call my father and he would give me advice from prison.
Floyd Mayweather, Jr.John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I and many of my comrades in North Vietnam in the prison camps took torture to avoid saying.
Paul GalantiI'm not excusing crime or those who bring poison into the community, but I do want brothers and sisters in prison to know someone cares.
Hill HarperI remember my emotions the day we watched Nelson Mandela walk out of prison Writing & literature in South Africa during the anti-apartheid years, became a 'cultural weapon.' You had to use it to fight apartheid & some of us resisted that in the end, you recognize that you are facing a government that has no scruples about using culture & art to oppress you.
Achmat DangorI have long been aware that when an independent intellectual stands up to an autocratic state, step one toward freedom is often a step into prison. Now I am taking that step; and true freedom is that much nearer.
Liu XiaIt is God's earth out of which man is taken. From it he has his body. His body belongs to his essential being. Man's body is not his prison, his shell his exterior, but man himself. Man does not "have" a body; he does not "have" a soul; rather he "is" body and soul. Man in the beginning is really his body. He is one. He is his body, as Christ is completely his body, as the Church is the body of Christ
Dietrich BonhoefferMr. 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 PutinI was generally busy from 7 A.M. until midnight. I never had time to sit and think. As I worked, physical and mental fatigue set in and I was unable to operate to the maximum of my intellectual ability. But in a single cell in prison, I had time to think. I had a clear view of my past and present, and I found that my past left much to be desired, both in regard to my relations with other humans and in developing personal worth.
Nelson MandelaWhen 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 PreponDuring 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 KanterFormer South Africa President Nelson Mandela announced Tuesday he will begin writing his autobiography. He spent 25 years in prison before being elected to public office. In America, we do it the other way around.
Argus HamiltonBefore this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-pern, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison.
Nathaniel HawthorneHis 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.
Maurice AshleyThe four walls of paper are like a prison because every idea wants to spring out in all directions - everything is connected with everything else, sometimes more than others.
Ted NelsonAll are interconnected...the environment; rights of the dying; care of caregivers; education and medical care for peoples of the Himalayas; prison work; those living on the margins of society, particularly kids.
Joan HalifaxFor 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.
Michelle AlexanderLegalized drugs would cause dislocations in the US economy - the prison industry for example and tens of billions spent annually on drug enforcement. But because the US economy is so large, this would be a minor blow, hardly as severe as the ultimate nightmare for the US economy, global peace, which would shutter its death industry commonly called the military/industrial complex.
Charles BowdenIt is not every calamity that is a curse, and early adversity is often a blessing. Perhaps Madame de Maintenon would never have mounted a throne had not her cradle been rocked in a prison. Surmounted obstacles not only teach, but hearten us in our future struggles; for virtue must be learnt, though, unfortunately, some of the vices come as it were by inspiration.
James SharpI'm enjoying prison ministry, particularly with the women in Hudson County Jail who have suffered tremendously in their lives.
James McGreeveyWe 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 GattoChildhood is the one prison from which there's no escape, the one sentence from which there's no appeal. We all serve our time.
P. D. JamesThe reason Vladimir Putin released Pussy Riot, the Greenpeace activists who were kidnapped in international waters and kept in prison for two months, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's best-known and longest-serving political prisoner, was because he finally started panicking and realized that he may not have anyone to take pictures with.
Masha GessenYes, business really does change. 400 years ago, corporations were formed by royal decree. 300 years ago, many countries were powered by slave labour, or its closest moral equivalent. 200 years ago, debtors didn't go bankrupt, they went to prison. 100 years ago - well, business is largely the same as it was a century ago. And that's exactly the problem. Business hasn't changed, but today's array of tectonic global shocks demands a different, radically better kind of business. Yesterday's corporations visibly cannot meet today's economic challenges.
Umair HaqueThe 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.
Henry MillerI had a lot of time and the first year I was in prison, I tried to get the party to stop the shooting, to stop the talk about the gun thing.
Huey NewtonOne of the greatest evils of the day among those outside of prison is their sense of futility. Young people say, What is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment.
Dorothy DayMen are tied up to their families and possessions more helplessly than in a prison. There is an occasion for the prisoner to be released, but householders entertain no desire to be relieved from the ties of family. When a man's passion is aroused nothing prevents him from ruining himself. Even into the jaws of a tiger will he jump. Those who are thus drowned in the filth of passion are called the ignorant. Those who are able to overcome it are saintly Arhats.
Gautama BuddhaBe empty of worrying. Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison When the door is so wide open?
RumiToday begins a new saga in my life which I expect to strengthen me and allow me time for reflection... I plan to write music while in prison, read and pray regularly and will come out a stronger, more confident woman.
Lil' KimPrison Break is so far-fetched, I had to make viewers believe that Michael is capable of making the impossible possible.
Wentworth MillerI have been shown in darkness, light [and] have learned that, even in prison, one can be free.
Kayla MuellerI live a much better life without having to worry about people chasing me. I spent five years in prison from 21 to 26, which is probably the best part of my youth behind bars. I was in some very bad prisons overseas as well. It was not a fun life, it was a very lonely life in reality. I was a smart enough kid to know that I was going to get caught. The law sometimes sleeps, but the law never dies. I knew it was just a matter of time. I would be caught and I'd get punished and face the consequences.
Frank Abagnale