Quotes About Prison

There is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school. To begin with, it is a prison. But in some respects more cruel than a prison. In a prison, for instance, you are not forced to read books written by the warders and the governor. . . .In the prison you are not forced to sit listening to turnkeys discoursing without charm or interest on subjects that they don't understand and don't care about, and therefore incapable of making you understand or care about. In a prison they may torture your body; but they do not torture your brains.

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.

Prison 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 inconvenient—people 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.

We went down [Folsom Prison] and there's a rodeo at all these shows that the prisoners have there. And in between the rodeo things, they asked me to set up and do two or three songs. So that was what I did. I did "Folsom Prison Blues," which they thought was their song - you know? - and "I Walk The Line," "Hey Porter," "Cry, Cry, Cry." And then the word got around on the grapevine that Johnny Cash is all right and that you ought to see him.

Doth not a man die even in his birth? The breaking of prison is death, and what is our birth, but a breaking of prison?

The thing is, Guantánamo is also a naval base, and they're under the delusion - especially the people on the naval side who are not dealing with the prison - that they can just pretend this is an ordinary Caribbean naval base. For them, it's: "Why are you making such a big deal out of the most notorious prison in the world?" It's like if people living near Buchenwald said they wanted to talk about the other lovely things in the region besides the camp.

A lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight - and when they come out, they're gay.

A prison does not only lock its inmates inside, it keeps all others out. Her strongest prison is of her own construction.

We have a number of brothers left in the prisons, about 15 of them. And for the most part, they're in bad condition. Most of us are getting older, you know. I believe all of them is 60 years or older. They've been in prison for long periods of time. Many of them should have never been in prison at all. They were framed and illegally convicted.

This is serious, if Martha gets the maximum sentence on all counts, she could serve 20 years in prison. Of course, you have to take off time off for good behavior, which means 20 years in prison.

When Allah granted Prophet Yoosuf (`alayhis-Salaam) physical beauty it caused him to be locked up in the prison; but when Allah granted him knowledge (when he interpreted the dream of the king) it not only took him out of prison, but elevated his rank in society, clearly showing us the virtue of knowledge and that physical beauty does not mean anything.

A Jesus had to be crucified because he was an alive man. He must have called in his childhood, "Jesus, don't be befooled by others." And he was not befooled, so others had to crucify him, because he was not part of the game. Socrates had to be poisoned and killed, Mansoor had to be murdered. These are people who have escaped from the prison, and whatsoever you say you cannot persuade them to come back. They will not come into the prison. They have known the freedom of the open sky.

I had a song called "Folsom Prison Blues" that was a hit just before "I Walk The Line." And the people in Texas heard about it at the state prison and got to writing me letters asking me to come down there. So I responded and then the warden called me and asked if I would come down and do a show for the prisoners in Texas.

You 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.

I 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.

You know, what makes the prison disappear is every deep, serious attachment. To be friends, to be brothers, to love; that opens the prison through sovereign power, through a most powerful spell. But he who doesn't have that remains in death. But where sympathy springs up again, life springs up again.

They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

The only way I thought I could do a greatest hits album is to do it in a prison where they have no f**king idea who I am. I'd do what I consider the best of those old, early CDs before I did DVDs. A women's prison would be even better, but it has to be English-speaking.

And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.

The most miserable prison in the world is the prison we make for ourselves when we refuse to show mercy. Our thoughts become shackled, our emotions are chained, the will is almost paralyzed. But when we show mercy, all of these bonds are broken, and we enter into a joyful liberty that frees us to share God's love with others.

It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.

The first day I walked into prison, and he slammed that door, I knew the magnitude of the decision that I made, and the poor judgment, and what I allowed to happen to the animals. And, you know, its no way of explaining the hurt and the guilt that I felt. And that was the reason I cried so many nights.

If 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.

Yet there were times when he did love her with all the kindness she demanded, and how was she to know what were those times? Alone she raged against his cheerfulness and put herself at the mercy of her own love and longed to be free of it because it made her less than he and dependent on him. But how could she be free of chains she had put upon herself? Her soul was all tempest. The dreams she had once had of her life were dead. She was in prison in the house. And yet who was her jailer except herself?

I 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.

One man runs to his neighbor because he is looking for himself, and another because he wants to loose himself. Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison for you.

God sees us in secret, therefore, let, us seek his face in secret. Though heaven be God's palace, yet it is not his prison.

Closing the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is a promise President [Barack] Obama made it but has yet to fulfill.

Spiritual models for me are the communities of Tibetans living in exile in India, or the banjars of Bali, which exist in times of difficulty, oppression. Alternative spaces-perhaps this kind of communication can take place over the Net? Probably only up to a point as the Net's controlled by the military. But the idea is to live outside multi-national, monocultural, commodification prison, outside the grey areas of power-mad, monied collusion.

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.

I 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.

When it comes to the point where you occasionally look forward to being in prison on the basis that you might be able to spend a day reading a book, the realisation dawns that perhaps the situation has become a little more stressful than you would like.

I have somewhere read that conscience not only sits as witness and judge within our bosoms, but also forms the prison of punishment.

It's best that I hide my real personality. I cannot tell you what it is because I don't want to go to prison.

The 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.

Psychedelics helped me to escape.. albeit momentarily.. from the prison of my mind. It over-rode the habit patterns of thought and I was able to taste innocence again. Looking at sensations freshly without the conceptual overly was very profound.

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

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.

Being young is an 18 year prison sentence for a crime your parents committed. But you do get time off for good behavior.

Depression is a prison where you are both the suffering prisoner and the cruel jailer.

Growth is a funny sort of concept. For example, our GNP increases every time we build a prison. Well, okay, it's growth in a sense.

It might be hard to believe, but the air in prison is different. There's like one thousand people sucking on the one little piece of fresh air until it turns stale.

Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.

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!

For most Black people there is still poverty and desperation. The Ghettos still exist, and the proportion of Blacks in prison is still much greater than Whites. Today, there is less overt racism, but the economic injustices create an "institutional racism" which exists even while more Blacks are in high places, such as Condoleeza Rice in Bush's Administration and Obama running for President.

Even here in America, we felt the cool, refreshing breeze of freedom when Nelson Mandela took the seat of Presidency in his country where formerly he was not even allowed to vote. We were enlarged by tears of pride as we saw Nelson Mandela's former prison guards invited, courteously, by him to watch from the front rows his inauguration.

Note to conservatives: sometimes you just have to give up. Do you really care that much about killing lots of bad guys as opposed to letting them rot in prison for the rest of their lives? It might be time to let go and save your energy for other battles. This one is getting absurd.