Quotes and Sayings about Prison
"That is how prison is tearing me up inside. It hurts every day. Every day takes me further from my life."
- Jack Henry Abbott
(Related: Life, Day, Prison)
"To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there."
- Jack Henry Abbott
(Related: Prison)
"When I'm forced by circumstances to be in a crowd of prisoners, it's all I can do to refrain from attack."
- Jack Henry Abbott
(Related: Circumstances)
"I've wanted somehow to convey to you the sensations - the atmospheric pressure, you might say - of what it is to be seriously a long-term prisoner in an American prison."
- Jack Henry Abbott
(Related: American, Pressure, Prison, Sensations)
"So I departed and was free from imprisonment."
- Will Adams
(Related: Imprisonment)
"Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison."
- Tim Allen
(Related: Men, Women, Work, Children, Choice, Choices, Job, Now, Prison)
"Only a free West can help the prisoners of today's left- and right-wing dictatorships."
- Barbara Amiel
(Related: Help, Right, Today)
"Among those people lucky enough, if you will, to have actually been brought to trial as a political prisoner, several historians have said there has not been one acquittal since the Bolshevik Revolution."
- Barbara Amiel
(Related: People, Revolution, Historians, Will)
"Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing."
- A. R. Ammons
"It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship."
- Corazon Aquino
(Related: Power, Democracy, Dictatorship, Freedom, Light)
"Well I think after leaving prison, and having written three diaries about life in prison, it became a sort of a new challenge to write another novel, to write a new novel."
- Jeffrey Archer
(Related: Life, Challenge, Diaries, Prison)
"Well I certainly have learned and I hope I'm moving on and certainly two years of prison was a terrible punishment."
- Jeffrey Archer
(Related: Hope, Prison, Punishment, Years)
"I think my attitude to human beings has changed since leaving prison."
- Jeffrey Archer
(Related: Attitude, Prison)
"And I did wonder - because it's now three years ago since I left prison - whether there would come a time when I would forget it, or it would be in the past as anything else might be - no, it's there every day of my life."
- Jeffrey Archer
(Related: Life, Time, Day, Forget, Now, Past, Prison, Wonder, Years)
"But I certainly made mistakes, for which I regret, I think most human beings in their lifetime make mistakes, mine ended up in two years prison - two very remarkable years from which I learnt a lot."
- Jeffrey Archer
(Related: Mistakes, Prison, Regret, Remarkable, Years)
"But the thing I felt most strongly about, and put at the end of one of the prison diaries, was education."
- Jeffrey Archer
(Related: Education, Diaries, End, Prison)
"Sixty per cent of people entering prison today are illiterate."
- Jeffrey Archer
(Related: People, Prison, Today)
"I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison."
- Jeffrey Archer
(Related: First, Prison, Words)
"I will say that the prison regime is rather a good one for a writer because you have plenty of time to write."
- Mary Archer
(Related: Time, Prison, Will, Writer)
"Through my illness I learned rejection. I was written off. That was the moment I thought, Okay, game on. No prisoners. Everybody's going down."
- Lance Armstrong
(Related: Thought, Illness, Rejection)
"Within yourself deliverance must be searched for, because each man makes his own prison."
- Edwin Arnold
(Related: Man, Prison)
"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."
- Maurice Ashley
(Related: Heart, Positive, Opinion, Prison, Tenacity)
"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 realization dawns that perhaps the situation has become a little more stressful than you would like."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Being, Day, Prison, Reading)
"As we have seen, WikiLeaks is a robust organization. During my time in solitary confinement in the basement of a Victorian prison, we continue to release, our media partners continued to write stories. The important revelations from this material continue to come out. We have approximately 2,000 cables into 250,000."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Time, Media, Prison)
"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."
- Michael Badnarik
(Related: Time, War, Prison)
"To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison."
- Jim Bakker
(Related: Son, Prison, Want, World)
"When I first went to prison, I was even questioning where, God, where are you?"
- Jim Bakker
(Related: God, First, Prison, Questioning)
"The most important issue is clearly not the quality of treatment and care of these prisoners; rather it is the perplexing issue of what we now do with them."
- Charles Foster Bass
(Related: Quality, Care, Now, Treatment)
"Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them."
- Georges Bataille
(Related: Dreams, Despair, Results, Violence, Weakness)
"Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars."
- Beck
(Related: Men, Prison, Stars)
"Fines are preferable to imprisonment and other types of punishment because they are more efficient. With a fine, the punishment to offenders is also revenue to the State."
- Gary Becker
(Related: Imprisonment, Punishment, State)
"Open your newspaper - any day of the week - and you will find a report from somewhere in the world of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government."
- Peter Benenson
(Related: Government, Religion, Being, Day, Open, Opinions, Will, World)
"The candle burns not for us, but for all those whom we failed to rescue from prison, who were shot on the way to prison, who were tortured, who were kidnapped, who "disappeared". That's what the candle is for."
- Peter Benenson
(Related: Prison)
"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."
- Peter Benenson
(Related: Being, Countries, Imprisonment, Murder, World)
"The fundamental sense of freedom is freedom from chains, from imprisonment, from enslavement by others. The rest is extension of this sense, or else metaphor."
- Isaiah Berlin
(Related: Freedom, Imprisonment, Metaphor, Rest, Sense)
"I think of my brother just out of prison again. He will have spent ten years of the last 30 in prison."
- Daniel Berrigan
(Related: Brother, Prison, Will, Years)
"There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake."
- Daniel Berrigan
(Related: Death, Peace, War, Disgrace, Prison)
"We have one of our priests in prison right now, Steve Kelly, for his antiwar actions, and three of us in the community are forbidden to visit him because we're all convicted felons."
- Daniel Berrigan
(Related: Actions, Community, Forbidden, Now, Prison, Right, Visit)
"When it comes to the cause of justice, I take no prisoners and I don't believe in compromise."
- Mary Frances Berry
(Related: Cause, Compromise, Justice)
"I had a weird situation were someone used my name to extort money from a woman. He took her for 60 or 80 thousand dollars. He is in prison now. It was on Sally."
- Michael Biehn
(Related: Money, Name, Now, Prison, Woman)
"People should not be imprisoned without having the ability to challenge the legality of that imprisonment."
- Jeff Bingaman
(Related: People, Ability, Challenge, Imprisonment)
"I believe that being an actress or being involved in a movie has to be a life experience, otherwise why go for it? I have to change me, and I have to learn things, and I have to push me and my limits. By acting, I find a freedom inside of a prison in a way."
- Juliette Binoche
(Related: Change, Life, Experience, Acting, Being, Freedom, Limits, Prison)
"I'm not obsessed by looks. I think you can become a prisoner of your own image."
- Juliette Binoche
"The reporter is the daily prisoner of clocked facts. On all working days, he is expected to do his best in one swift swipe at each story."
- Jim Bishop
(Related: Facts)
"It is important that people support prisoners of the Italian state like Joe in whatever way they can. I was not allowed contact with a lawyer for the first 24 hours, and no phone calls were permitted, but apparently telegrams have been getting through to Joe."
- John Blair
(Related: People, First, State, Support)
"Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion."
- William Blake
(Related: Religion, Law)
"All the asylum clothing is made by the patients, but sewing does not employ one's mind. After several months' confinement the thoughts of the busy world grow faint, and all the poor prisoners can do is to sit and ponder over their hopeless fate."
- Nellie Bly
(Related: Thoughts, Fate, Mind, Months, Poor, World)
"They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!"
- Nellie Bly
(Related: Life, Being, Fault, Living, Prison)
"Prisons are like the concentration camps of our time. So many go in and never come out, and primarily they're black and Latino."
- Lisa Bonet
(Related: Time)
"In the decline of the day, near Kentucky river, as we ascended the brow of a small hill, a number of Indians rushed out of a thick cane-brake upon us, and made us prisoners."
- Daniel Boone
(Related: Day, Kentucky)
"There was never in my mind a desire to give in on the subject of freeing the political prisoners."
- Robert Bourassa
(Related: Desire, Mind)
"If it is a crime to love the South, its cause and its President, then I am a criminal. I would rather lie down in this prison and die than leave it owing allegiance to a government such as yours."
- Belle Boyd
(Related: Government, Love, Lie, Cause, Crime, President, Prison)
"It doesn't help to fight crime to put people in prison who are innocent."
- Stephen Breyer
(Related: People, Crime, Fight, Help, Prison)
"You feel like a prisoner if you don't create. You're jailed up inside of yourself."
- Edie Brickell
"I used to think like Moses. That knocked me down for a couple years and put me in prison. Then I start thinking like Job. Job waited and became the wealthiest and richest man ever 'cause he believed in God."
- James Brown
(Related: God, Job, Man, Prison, Thinking, Years)
"Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?"
- Jerry Brown
(Related: Hell)
"There are many more serial killers living outside the prison walls than inside."
- Pat Brown
(Related: Living, Prison)
"As far as those kinds of things, I also played at the concert to call for the release of Nelson Mandela when he was a political prisoner in South Africa. We were celebrating his 70th birthday and calling for his release."
- Jackson Browne
(Related: Birthday)
"Pain dies quickly, and lets her weary prisoners go; the fiercest agonies have shortest reign."
- William C. Bryant
(Related: Pain)
"The biggest kick I get is to communicate with those who are exiled from the game - in hospitals, homes, prisons - those who have seldom seen a game, who can't travel to a game, those who are blind."
- Jack Buck
(Related: Travel, Blind, Hospitals)
"Hemingway was a prisoner of his style. No one can talk like the characters in Hemingway except the characters in Hemingway. His style in the wildest sense finally killed him."
- William Burroughs
(Related: Sense, Style, Talk)
"Little islands are all large prisons: one cannot look at the sea without wishing for the wings of a swallow."
- Richard Burton
(Related: Islands, Sea, Wishing)
"They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping."
- Steve Buscemi
(Related: Prison)
"With Animal Factory you'd think that because it's mostly interiors, you could shoot it anywhere. So we shot this in Philadelphia, and we had the cooperation of the prison system."
- Steve Buscemi
(Related: Cooperation, Prison)
"The once all-powerful ruler of Iraq was found in a hole, and now sits in a prison cell."
- George W. Bush
(Related: Iraq, Now, Prison)
"America is the land of the second chance - and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life."
- George W. Bush
(Related: Life, America, Chance, Land, Open, Prison)
"Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them."
- Samuel Butler
(Related: Books)
"Better to make prime ministers out of prisoners than prisoners out of prime ministers."
- Lord Caradon
"For the past seven years we have been cracking down on crime in Missouri, passing tougher laws for drug crimes and sex offenses and requiring prisoners to serve more time."
- Mel Carnahan
(Related: Time, Sex, Crime, Laws, Past, Years)
"With my somewhat vague aspiring mind, to be imprisoned in the rude details of a most material life was often irksome."
- Edward Carpenter
(Related: Life, Mind)
"What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself - life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose."
- Willa Cather
(Related: Art, Life, Past, Running)
"Communism feeds on aggression, hatred, and the imprisonment of men's minds and souls. This shall not take root in the United States."
- Emanuel Celler
(Related: Men, Aggression, Communism, Hatred, Imprisonment, states, United)
"I am a President held prisoner, that I haven't resigned and I will not resign."
- Hugo Chavez
(Related: President, Will)
"Both sides were supposed to release all their prisoners, those were unconditional. There was some prisoner release that took place but it's not been satisfactory."
- Warren Christopher
"A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him."
- Winston Churchill
(Related: War, Man)
"Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization."
- Winston Churchill
(Related: Civilization, Democracy, Nothing, Prison)
"Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to overcome it, adapt it to our needs; once acquired it can imprison us."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Habit, Negative, First, Freedom, Mind, Needs)
"I am George Rogers Clark. You have just become a prisoner of the Commonwealth of Virginia."
- George Rogers Clark
"My main point here is that if you are the child of God and God is a part of you, the in your imagination God suppose to look like you. And when you accept a picture of the deity assigned to you by another people, you become the spiritual prisoners of that other people."
- John Henrik Clarke
(Related: Imagination, God, People, Spiritual)
"In prison, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all."
- Eldridge Cleaver
(Related: Prison)
"Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man."
- Johnnie Cochran
(Related: Money, Man, Prison, Will)
"I can work for the Lord in or out of prison."
- Charles W. Colson
(Related: Work, Prison)
"Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether."
- Cyril Connolly
(Related: People, Civilization, Bombs)
"Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signaling to be let out."
- Cyril Connolly
(Related: Man)
"If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!"
- James Connolly
(Related: Force, Spirit, Will)
"I remember the people I knew in prison; I was very fortunate to know them - they came from 1910, 1920, 1930."
- Gregory Corso
(Related: People, Prison)
"Sadly, every year hundreds of children are victimized by a convicted sexual offender. Convicted predators should be put in prison where they belong and kept away from our Nation's children."
- Jim Costa
(Related: Children, Nation, Prison)
"Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis - once that crisis can be recognized and understood."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Habit, Crisis, Man)
"It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations."
- Jacques Yves Cousteau
(Related: Psychology, Study)
"First of all, I didn't suggest that we should simply get rid of all prisons."
- Angela Davis
(Related: First)
"I'm involved in the work around prison rights in general."
- Angela Davis
(Related: Work, Rights, Prison)
"Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo - obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other."
- Angela Davis
(Related: Population)
"May was young and beautiful, we were legally married, but she was caught in the prison of my skin."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: May, Prison, Skin)
"While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
- Eugene V. Debs
(Related: Soul, Class, Prison)
"After the revolution, let us hope, prisons simply would not exist - if by prisons we mean places that could be experienced by the men and women in them at all as every place that goes by that name now is bound to be experienced."
- Barbara Deming
(Related: Men, Women, Hope, Revolution, Name, Now)
"All prisons that have existed in our society to date put people away as no human being should ever be put away."
- Barbara Deming
(Related: Society, People, Being)
"But you see, that's the gilded prison of fashion. We're riding in private jets, and meantime I was so incredibly, painfully sad and lonely."
- Janice Dickinson
(Related: Fashion, Lonely, Prison)
"Saddam's fate should be in the hands of his country men. They were the major victims of his brutal reign and should decide his life, death, or permanent imprisonment. Personally, I would lock him away forever."
- Ronnie James Dio
(Related: Death, Life, Men, Country, Fate, Imprisonment, Victims)
"He who sells what isn't his'n, Must buy it back or go to prison."
- Daniel Drew
(Related: Prison)
"Why would anyone expect Tyson to come out smarter? He went to prison for four years, not Princeton."
- Lou Duva
(Related: Prison, Years)
"I will be a model prisoner, as I have been a model citizen."
- Edwin Edwards
(Related: Will)
"If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
(Related: Medical, Care, Freedom, Prison, Security, Want)
"In the final choice a soldier's pack is not so heavy as a prisoner's chains."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
(Related: Choice)
"If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to blind, imprison, and destroy."
- Ralph Ellison
(Related: Power, Blind, Word)
"Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger."
- Philip Emeagwali
(Related: Prison)
"Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger."
- Philip Emeagwali
(Related: People, Being, Prison)
"The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Related: Fame, Martyr, Prison, Tongue)
"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%."
- Mike Epps
(Related: Friend, Being, Prison, Reason)
"It wasn't conscious, but I guess that one book is the reaction to the other. The first is so imprisoned in a male point-of-view, and the second is a point-of-view that can go anywhere it wants."
- Jeffrey Eugenides
(Related: First)
"I was separated from my wife at the time. A lot of people think I wrote it about prison."
- Freddy Fender
(Related: Time, Wife, People, Prison)
"I'm still friendly with Dean. He still calls me on the phone from time to time. John Dean was fired and later ended up spending some time in prison for his role in Watergate."
- Fred F. Fielding
(Related: Time, Prison)
"I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison."
- W. C. Fields
(Related: Father, Electricity, Prison, State)
"I don't believe in depriving myself of any food or being imprisoned by a diet."
- Joely Fisher
(Related: Diet, Food, Being)
"When you look at the startling ruins of Nuremberg, you are looking at a result of the war. When you look at the prisoners on view in the courthouse, you are looking at 22 of the causes."
- Janet Flanner
(Related: War, Causes, Result)
"I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power."
- Fernando Flores
(Related: Power, Trust, Truth, Heart, Communication, Imprisonment)
"When I left prison, I had to figure out how to embrace my past."
- Fernando Flores
(Related: Past, Prison)
"It is all one to me if a man comes from Sing Sing Prison or Harvard. We hire a man, not his history."
- Malcolm Forbes
(Related: History, Man, Prison)
"Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it."
- Harry Emerson Fosdick
(Related: Love, Life, Bitterness)
"Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline."
- Michel Foucault
(Related: Society, Work, Discipline, Prison)
"A prisoner in the Inquisition is never allowed to see the face of his accuser, or of the witnesses against him, but every method is taken by threats and tortures, to oblige him to accuse himself, and by that means corroborate their evidence."
- John Foxe
"A defence in the Inquisition is of little use to the prisoner, for a suspicion only is deemed sufficient cause of condemnation, and the greater his wealth the greater his danger."
- John Foxe
(Related: Wealth, Cause, Danger, Suspicion)
"That is my major concern: writers who are in prison for writing."
- Antonia Fraser
(Related: Prison, Writers, Writing)
"We are imprisoned in the realm of life, like a sailor on his tiny boat, on an infinite ocean."
- Anna Freud
(Related: Life, Infinite, Ocean)
"By the fulfillment of my legal and moral duty I think I have earned punishment just as little as the tens of thousands of dutiful German officials who have now been imprisoned only because they carried out their duties."
- Wilhelm Frick
(Related: Legal, Duty, Fulfillment, Now, Punishment)
"We've got to clear some of the room out of the prisons so we can put the bad guys in there, like the pedophiles and the politicians."
- Kinky Friedman
(Related: Politicians)
"Your secret is your prisoner; once you reveal it, you become its slave."
- Solomon Ibn Gabirol
"You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind."
- Mohandas Gandhi
(Related: Body, Mind, Will)
"I stagnated in prison a long time, and I have wasted most of my life."
- Gary Gilmore
(Related: Life, Time, Prison)
"There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison."
- William Glasser
(Related: Time, Job, Prison, School, World)
"Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row."
- Danny Glover
(Related: Death, People, African, Americans, Country, Population, Prison, Unemployment)
"If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country."
- Danny Glover
(Related: Men, Country, Houston, Prison)
"Prostitution, although hounded, imprisoned, and chained, is nevertheless the greatest triumph of Puritanism."
- Emma Goldman
(Related: Prostitution)
"I am not a prisoner of my sexuality like men younger than myself although I write about being a prisoner."
- Al Goldstein
(Related: Men, Being, Sexuality)
"Detainee policy in this war is hard, it's complicated, but we must get it right. We would be better off as a nation if we could close Gitmo safely and start a new prison that he could use that the world would see as a better way to doing business."
- Lindsey Graham
(Related: Business, War, Policy, Nation, Prison, Right, World)
"It is also asserted that the election settled the matters of the war and the torture of prisoners. These are dead issues that no longer need be addressed."
- Andrew Greeley
(Related: War)
"It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself."
- Graham Greene
(Related: Life)
"Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release."
- Germaine Greer
(Related: Man, Prison, Security)
"In the deregulated realm of US banking and finance, crime does occasionally pay for its foul deeds, not in prison time but by making modest rebates to the victims."
- William Greider
(Related: Time, Finance, Crime, Deeds, Prison, Victims)
"There was a war crimes trial because an American prisoner had been shot trying to escape. He had obviously been recaptured and shot, and that violated the Geneva Convention."
- Charles Guggenheim
(Related: War, American, Trying)
"I was at a benefit for some imprisoned students in the '60s at San Francisco State, and there were lots of poets reading for the benefit: one was Elizabeth Bishop."
- Thom Gunn
(Related: Poets, Reading, State, Students)
"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."
- William Gurnall
(Related: Devil, Open, Poor, Preaching, Prison, Satan)
"We have peace with God as soon as we believe, but not always with ourselves. The pardon may be past the prince's hand and seal, and yet not put into the prisoner's hand."
- William Gurnall
(Related: Peace, God, May, Past)
"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."
- William Gurnall
(Related: Work, God, Court, Friends, Prison, Saints)
"I made a movie where I played a girl that just got out of prison and we shot it very very quickly but very intensely-that took me a long time to get over."
- Maggie Gyllenhaal
(Related: Time, Prison)
"In 1960, when I came out of prison as an ex-convict, I had more freedom under parolee supervision than there's available... in America right now."
- Merle Haggard
(Related: America, Freedom, Now, Prison, Right)
"A person may dwell so long upon a thought that it may take him a prisoner."
- Edward F. Halifax
(Related: Thought, May)
"Why you kill me? I never did you anything. Not kill me! I beg not to be locked up. Never let me out of my prison - not kill me! You kill me before I understand what life is. You must tell me why you locked me up!"
- Kaspar Hauser
(Related: Life, Prison)
"Rock 'n' roll was two pegs below being a prisoner of war back then."
- Ronnie Hawkins
(Related: War, Being)
"The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison."
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
(Related: Happiness, Virtue, Prison, Project, Utopia)
"Already this war on gangs in California is taking money from universities to build prisons, and the universities have some clout."
- Tom Hayden
(Related: Money, War)
"If people around the world knew how well people at Guantanamo Bay are treating prisoners, they would not fall prey to the accusations that some in our Chamber are making. They are all receiving judicial review."
- Robin Hayes
(Related: People, Accusations, World)
"If anyone has it rough at Guantanamo, it is the guards. They are constantly harassed and threatened by some of these terrorists. Prisoners tell guards, we know where your families are. We know where your wife is, your children, and we are going to kill them."
- Robin Hayes
(Related: Wife, Children)
"The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison wall."
- Denis Healey
(Related: Difference, Tax, Prison)
"It might be argued that genuine spontaneity is not really possible or desirable so long as printed scores of great works exist. All modern musicians are, for better or worse, prisoners of Gutenberg."
- Donal Henahan
(Related: Musicians, Spontaneity)
"The only dead bodies from marijuana are in the prisons and at the hands of the police. This is ridiculous."
- Jack Herer
(Related: Police)
"And don't forget, a prisoner's wife must always think good thoughts."
- Nazim Hikmet
(Related: Wife, Thoughts, Forget)
"Although I wasn't able to get a visa for Vietnam, I was able to talk with swift boat veterans to get a feel for the time and place, and I visited a tropical prison in the Philippines to get a sense of what a Vietnamese prison might have been like."
- Tony Hillerman
(Related: Time, Prison, Sense, Talk, Veterans, Vietnam)
"It would be like the films I've seen where wardens would decide to be in a jail cell for a week, to get a sense of what it would be like to be a prisoner."
- Gregory Hines
(Related: Sense)
"He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still an enemy."
- Thomas Hobbes
(Related: Enemy, Prison)
"Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like."
- Laurence Housman
(Related: Court, Police, Prison, Regret)
"He who opens a school door, closes a prison."
- Victor Hugo
(Related: Prison, School)
"God help us from those who believe that they are the sole possessors of truth. How we manage at times to agree willingly to become prisoners within our own minds and souls of beliefs and ideas on which we can never be flexible."
- King Hussein I
(Related: God, Truth, Ideas, Beliefs, Help)
"A liberal education... frees a man from the prison-house of his class, race, time, place, background, family and even his nation."
- Robert M. Hutchins
(Related: Family, Education, Time, Class, Liberal, Man, Nation, Prison, Race)
"And why do we, who say we oppose tyranny and demand freedom of speech, allow people to go to prison and be vilified, and magazines to be closed down on the spot, for suggesting another version of history."
- David Icke
(Related: History, People, Freedom, Prison, Speech, Tyranny)
"I have to say when we talk about the treatment of these prisoners that I would guess that these prisoners wake up every morning thanking Allah that Saddam Hussein is not in charge of these prisons."
- James Inhofe
(Related: Talk, Treatment)
"If they're in cell block 1A or 1B, these prisoners - they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands. And here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals."
- James Inhofe
(Related: American, Blood, Treatment)
"There is no religion in which everyday life is not considered a prison; there is no philosophy or ideology that does not think that we live in alienation."
- Eugene Ionesco
(Related: Life, Religion, Alienation, Ideology, Philosophy, Prison)
"Destiny is the prison and chain of the ignorant. Understand that destiny like the water of the Nile: Water before the faithful, blood before the unbeliever."
- Muhammad Iqbal
(Related: Blood, Destiny, Prison, Water)
"America has the longest prison sentences in the West, yet the only condition long sentences demonstrably cure is heterosexuality."
- Bruce Jackson
(Related: America, Cure, Prison)
"Very few men imprisoned for economic crimes or even crimes of passion against the oppressor feel that they are really guilty."
- George Jackson
(Related: Men, Passion)
"The past is a great place and I don't want to erase it or to regret it, but I don't want to be its prisoner either."
- Mick Jagger
(Related: Past, Regret, Want)
"We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime against humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls of the houses as prisoners. There is no sanction anywhere for the deplorable condition in which our women have to live."
- Muhammad Ali Jinnah
(Related: Women, Crime, Evil, Houses, Humanity, Victims)
"I began to feel that, in a sense, we were all prisoners of our own history."
- Roland Joffe
(Related: History, Sense)
"The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men."
- Lyndon B. Johnson
(Related: Men, Injustice, Man, Vote)
"I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator."
- Mary Harris Jones
(Related: Man, Prison, states, United)
"There is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear."
- Ben Jonson
(Related: Fear, Hell)
"Most of us are imprisoned by something. We're living in darkness until something flips on the switch."
- Wynonna Judd
(Related: Darkness, Living)
"Interesting enough, we had a reunion of the 12 of us who graduated, right? The only one who wasn't there was the guy who became a priest, and he was literally in prison in Libya, for being a Catholic priest. Isn't that interesting? Everybody else made the reunion but that guy."
- Peter Jurasik
(Related: Being, Prison, Right)
"Without history we are the prisoners of the accident of where and when we were born."
- Donald Kagan
(Related: History, Accident)
"I had 16 other prisons that I needed to pay attention to, and we did. And I had 3,400 soldiers who were depending on me to take care of them, and I did."
- Janis Karpinski
(Related: Attention, Care, Soldiers)
"I knew how many MPs I had assigned to the brigade, how many military prison operations I would be running, but we needed to evaluate how many criminal prison operations we could support."
- Janis Karpinski
(Related: Evaluate, Military, Prison, Running, Support)
"The vast majority of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, even after interrogation, had no further intel value whatsoever."
- Janis Karpinski
(Related: Majority, Value)
"Military police know what to do, they know the Geneva Conventions, and their objective is to provide a safe, secure, fair environment for prisoners under their control."
- Janis Karpinski
(Related: Control, Environment, Military, Police)
"Shortly after we arrived in Baghdad, we had another conversation with the ambassador. He said that he wanted us to give him the timeline, because we had 90 days to get these prisons operational and transfer responsibility back to the Iraqis."
- Janis Karpinski
(Related: Conversation, Responsibility)
"The day after the prison was transferred to the military intelligence command, they had an entire battalion - 1,200, 1,500 soldiers - arrive at Abu Ghraib just for force protection alone."
- Janis Karpinski
(Related: Intelligence, Day, Force, Military, Prison, Protection, Soldiers)
"They transfer the prison, and all of a sudden all this money cuts loose, all these people cut loose."
- Janis Karpinski
(Related: Money, People, Prison)
"There was a military police brigade with over 3,400 soldiers getting ready to go home because their mission - prisoner-of-war operations - was finished."
- Janis Karpinski
(Related: Home, Military, Mission, Police, Soldiers)
"Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that."
- Philip Kaufman
(Related: Death, Answers, Prison)
"Similarly, the Marquis is presented in this film as someone who would disturb the status quo and therefore must be kept imprisoned."
- Philip Kaufman
(Related: Film)
"Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: 'It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity."
- James Keller
(Related: Adversity, Impatience, London, Sentiment, Spirits, Years)
"There's no doubt I expect to die in prison."
- Jack Kevorkian
(Related: Doubt, Prison)
"Maybe I won't stay out of prison. Who knows?"
- Jack Kevorkian
(Related: Prison)
"Today 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' Kim
(Related: Life, Music, Time, Prison, Reflection, Today, Will, Woman)
"The witty woman is a tragic figure in American life. Wit destroys eroticism and eroticism destroys wit, so women must choose between taking lovers and taking no prisoners."
- Florence King
(Related: Women, Life, American, Lovers, Wit, Witty, Woman)
"An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Related: Community, Conscience, Imprisonment, Injustice, Law, Order, Reality, Respect)
"One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Related: Community, Conscience, Imprisonment, Injustice, Law, Order, Reality, Respect)
"In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you."
- Suge Knight
(Related: Chance, Prison)
"I'm in prison. But my heart and mind is free. Gangsta haters on the streets are doing more time than me. They need 30 police escorts with them every time they walk down the street."
- Suge Knight
(Related: Time, Heart, Mind, Police, Prison)
"Prison make you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster."
- Suge Knight
(Related: People, Character, Prison)
"To call something an 'enhanced interrogation technique' doesn't alter the fact that we thought it was torture when the Japanese used it on American prisoners, we thought it was torture when the North Koreans used it, we thought it was torture when the Soviets used it. You know, it's almost the moral equivalent of saying that rape is an enhanced seduction technique."
- Ted Koppel
(Related: Thought, American, Fact, Saying, Seduction)
"Have not prisons - which kill all will and force of character in man, which enclose within their walls more vices than are met with on any other spot of the globe - always been universities of crime?"
- Peter Kropotkin
(Related: Character, Crime, Force, Man, Vices, Will)
"I do not come bearing a party label on my sleeve - or a quick fix in my back pocket. I do not come with a rigid ideology in my heart - or a soul that tells me to go it alone. I do not come to uproot tradition - or to be imprisoned by it."
- Ted Kulongoski
(Related: Soul, Heart, Ideology, Party, Quick, Tradition)
"Playing a prisoner of war trapped in Pakistan for three years was a novelty for me. We made sure that we didn't talk about India versus Pakistan but about the emotions of people on both sides and how terrorism affects us all."
- Akshay Kumar
(Related: War, People, Emotions, Novelty, Talk, Terrorism, Years)
"Women are dominating the charts, and women are doing it for themselves. We're kicking butt and taking no prisoners."
- Patti LaBelle
(Related: Women)
"Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously."
- Judge Mills Lane
"Let me start with Yahoo. As we meet today, a Chinese citizen who had the courage to speak his mind on the Internet is in prison because Yahoo chose to share his name and address with the Chinese Government."
- Tom Lantos
(Related: Government, Courage, Internet, Mind, Name, Prison, Today)
"Workers of France, it is for the freedom of the prisoners that you will go to work in Germany! It is for our country that you will go in large numbers!"
- Pierre Laval
(Related: Work, Country, France, Freedom, Will, Workers)
"The burning of an author's books, imprisonment for opinion's sake, has always been the tribute that an ignorant age pays to the genius of its time."
- Joseph Lewis
(Related: Age, Time, Genius, Books, Imprisonment, Opinion, Tribute)
"The middle class, that prisoner of the barbarian 20th century."
- Sinclair Lewis
(Related: Class, Middle class)
"You shouldn't be a prisoner of your own ideas."
- Sol LeWitt
(Related: Ideas)
"I am now going from a prison to a palace: I have finished my work, and am now going to receive my wages."
- Christopher Love
(Related: Work, Now, Prison, Wages)
"Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage."
- Richard Lovelace
(Related: Prison)
"Hundreds of political prisoners still suffer in Tibetan prisons. Freedom of speech is not allowed in any sense. It is illegal to possess a photo of the Dalai Lama."
- Joanna Lumley
(Related: Freedom, Sense, Speech)
"Men who are in prison for rape think it's the dumbest thing that ever happened... they were put in jail for something very little different from what most men do most of the time and call it sex. The only difference is they got caught. It may also be true."
- Catharine MacKinnon
(Related: Men, Time, Sex, Difference, May, Prison)
"To be a prisoner means to be defined as a member of a group for whom the rules of what can be done to you, of what is seen as abuse of you, are reduced as part of the definition of your status."
- Catharine MacKinnon
(Related: Abuse, Rules)
"Until the year 1967, it was a crime, for which you could be put in prison, to make homosexual love to someone in your own house. If they came in and caught you at it, you could be put into prison. This has changed - I'm talking about England, incidentally."
- Patrick Macnee
(Related: Love, Crime, England, Prison, Talking)
"And now, dear sister, I must leave this house or the retreating army will make me a prisoner in it by filling up the road I am directed to take."
- Dolley Madison
(Related: Sister, Army, Now, Road, Will)
"History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself."
- Naguib Mahfouz
(Related: History, Society, People, Ideas, Prison)
"I refuse to imprison our acts in the rigid mould of sentences."
- Ella Maillart
"There is no man who desires as passionately as a Russian. If we could imprison a Russian desire beneath a fortress, that fortress would explode."
- Joseph De Maistre
(Related: Desire, Man)
"You utter a vow or forge a signature and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman or prison."
- Bronislaw Malinowski
(Related: Life, May, Prison, Vow, Woman)
"In my country we go to prison first and then become President."
- Nelson Mandela
(Related: Country, First, President, Prison)
"Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated."
- Nelson Mandela
(Related: Men, Freedom)
"In Vietnam we have no political prisoners. No one is arrested or jailed for his or her speech or point of view. They are put in jail because they violated the law."
- Nong Duc Manh
(Related: Law, Speech, Vietnam)
"Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former."
- Horace Mann
(Related: Schools)
"The photographs of Iraqi prisoners being subjected to degrading and humiliating treatment by their captors, and the reports of acts of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and other acts of maltreatment shock the conscience."
- Ed Markey
(Related: Abuse, Being, Conscience, Treatment)
"Otherwise, to be a movie star, it's a lot of compromise and also a lot of headaches. You can't do what you want. You become a prisoner of your fame. This happened to me in France and I don't want it."
- Olivier Martinez
(Related: Compromise, Fame, France, Want)
"An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc."
- Henri Matisse
(Related: Success, Artist, Reputation, Style)
"There are times when I flick through magazines and think I'm in danger of becoming a prisoner of my own hair."
- Brian May
(Related: Danger, Hair)
"Free and civilized societies do not hold prisoners incommunicado."
- Tom McClintock
"I believe that free and civilized societies do not hold prisoners incommunicado."
- Tom McClintock
"Questions are a burden to others; answers are a prison for oneself."
- Patrick McGoohan
(Related: Answers, Burden, Prison, Questions)
"In prison, inmates sometimes use Cheetos and grape juice as makeup. I wouldn't use that beauty regimen around Britney Spears - she might lick your face off!"
- Joel McHale
(Related: Beauty, Makeup, Prison)
"Just about every year, Congress passes another crime bill - spending billions of dollars to build more prisons, to place more band-aids on society's scars."
- Carrie P. Meek
(Related: Society, Congress, Crime)
"It may seem a hard task to condemn fellow creatures to long years of confinement in prison, but it is not so hard if they clearly deserve it."
- Thomas Mellon
(Related: May, Prison, Years)
"A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents."
- H. L. Mencken
(Related: Children, Conscience, Evil, Parents, Prison, School)
"Men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread."
- John Stuart Mill
(Related: Men)
"The prisoner is not the one who has commited a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over."
- Henry Miller
(Related: Crime)
"My character in 'Prison Break' needs to be formidable. In reality, I'm not very tough at all."
- Wentworth Miller
(Related: Character, Needs, Reality)
"Prison Break is so far-fetched, I had to make viewers believe that Michael is capable of making the impossible possible."
- Wentworth Miller
(Related: Prison)
"There'll be moments when I'm out in the prison yard, chatting with the cast and the crew, getting ready to shoot a scene. And then I'll remember if I were actually an inmate, I'd only be out there an hour. The other 23 hours of the day, I'd be in my cell. It's kind of a downer."
- Wentworth Miller
(Related: Day, Moments, Prison)
"I hadn't worked for a year when I had my Prison Break audition and it was the easiest audition I've ever had. I got the script on Friday, went to the audition on Monday and got the part on Tuesday. I was shooting the pilot a week later. I didn't have time to be nervous - it happened so quickly."
- Wentworth Miller
(Related: Time, Prison)
"I've never seen American Idol but I am grateful to them. That show is one of Fox's biggest moneymakers, and some of that money goes to pay for shows like Prison Break. Simon Cowell's been signing my paychecks and for that I say thanks."
- Wentworth Miller
(Related: Money, American, Prison)
"When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out."
- Ho Chi Minh
(Related: Prison, Will)
"We are no more free agents than the queen of clubs when she victoriously takes prisoner the knave of hearts."
- Mary Wortley Montagu
(Related: Knave, Queen)
"Art led the way for me to recover. He got out of prison before me and started traveling all over the world before I did. He showed me by example that it could be done, and I'll always love him for that."
- Frank Morgan
(Related: Art, Love, Example, Prison, Traveling, World)
"Blake said that the body was the soul's prison unless the five senses are fully developed and open. He considered the senses the 'windows of the soul.' When sex involves all the senses intensely, it can be like a mystical experence."
- Jim Morrison
(Related: Sex, Soul, Body, Open, Prison, Senses)
"Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them."
- Edward R. Murrow
"Many countries persecute their own citizens and intern them in prisons or concentration camps. Oppression is becoming more and more a part of the systems."
- Alva Myrdal
(Related: Countries, Oppression)
"You can look at the West Bank. Cities are like prisons. They can be closed quickly by the Israeli forces, and everything stops in these cities. This is the result of Oslo."
- Hassan Nasrallah
(Related: Cities, Result)
"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."
- Ted Nelson
(Related: Idea, Prison, Spring)
"There will be no prison which can hold our movement down."
- Huey Newton
(Related: Prison, Will)
"To Mr. Seward: It is my desire that, in case Maximillian will surrender, he be sent here a prisoner of war, but that in the event of his continuing the war, or refusing to surrender, then he be shot."
- Joshua A. Norton
(Related: War, Desire, Surrender, Will)
"Being here feels like I'm out of prison. This is the right place, the right time, the right team."
- Shaquille O'Neal
(Related: Time, Being, Prison, Right)
"I did a book signing when we were in New York the day before yesterday. A lady came through and she was just weeping, and said, 'I wish this would have been brought out sooner, my sister is in prison for suffocating her child.'"
- Marie Osmond
(Related: Sister, Day, Lady, Prison, Weeping, Yesterday)
"Every one with this writ may be a tyrant; if this commission be legal, a tyrant in a legal manner, also, may control, imprison, or murder any one within the realm."
- James Otis
(Related: Legal, Control, May, Murder)
"Everybody seems to be imprisoned in their own sectarian or political affiliations. They don't seem to be able to rise above these things."
- Adnan Pachachi
"I was never a prisoner to my footballing status."
- Michel Patini
"By 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 Payne
(Related: Girls, Nothing, Prison, Sun, Vice)
"A political prisoner is someone who is out fighting for his or her people's rights and freedom and is imprisoned for that alone."
- Leonard Peltier
(Related: People, Fighting, Freedom, Rights)
"Casting directors now just see me as the hard-core sniper or prison guard."
- Barry Pepper
(Related: Now, Prison)
"Here we are to remember that in consequence of our opinion that labor is the Father and active principle of wealth, as lands are the Mother, that the state by killing, mutilating, or imprisoning their members do withal punish themselves."
- William Petty
(Related: Mother, Father, Wealth, Killing, Labor, Opinion, State)
"If we go to Chihuahua we must be considered as prisoners of war?"
- Zebulon Pike
(Related: War)
"Strict justice would demand total confiscation of your property, personal imprisonment and fines."
- Zebulon Pike
(Related: Imprisonment, Justice, Property)
"More than 90 percent of all the prisoners in our American prisons have been abused as children."
- John Powell
(Related: American, Children)
"I won't talk about what it was like in prison, except to say I'm glad I'm out and that I plan never to go back and to pay my taxes every day."
- Richard Pryor
(Related: Day, Prison, Talk, Taxes)
"We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them."
- Vladimir Putin
(Related: Fight)
"But recently I began to feel that maybe I wouldn't be able to do what I want to do and need to do with American musicians, who are imprisoned behind these bars; music's got these bars and measures you know."
- Sun Ra
(Related: Music, American, Musicians, Want)
"When al-Qaeda was on the run from Afghanistan crossing through Iran, some were arrested and they are imprisoned. Some of them are charged with some actions in Iran."
- Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
(Related: Actions, Afghanistan)
"The problem is that the Iraqi people are facing atrocities from both sides - Zarqawi and also the American troops at times. The Zarqawi groups uses car bombs, the Americans use other bombs. You also know what they do in the prisons."
- Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
(Related: Car, People, American, Americans, Bombs, Troops)
"I mean, we've had all these awful pictures from the prison in Iraq and these sort of memos floating around about justifying torture, all this kind of stuff. And it makes you want to take a shower, you know?"
- Ron Reagan
(Related: Iraq, Prison, Want)
"That kind of thing happens to black people every day in this country, and they don't receive that kind of sentence he did, which was to go to prison on the weekends; I think he lectured there-an outside lecturer."
- Ishmael Reed
(Related: People, Country, Day, Prison)
"We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community."
- Janet Reno
(Related: Positive, Community, Prison, Want, Will, Years)
"My movies were the kind they show in prisons and airplanes, because nobody can leave."
- Burt Reynolds
(Related: Movies, Airplanes)
"But in this Second Work if thou extract our Air and our Fire with the phlegm water, they will the more naturally and easily be drawn out of their infernal prison, and with less losse of their Spirits, than by the former way before described."
- George Ripley
(Related: Work, Fire, Prison, Spirits, Water, Will)
"American POWs from the last Iraq war, who were held prisoner and tortured by Iraq, are now being prevented by our government from suing the Iraqis who tortured them."
- Dana Rohrabacher
(Related: Government, War, American, Being, Iraq, Now)
"Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
(Related: Men, Fate)
"I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse."
- Valentino Rossi
(Related: Being, Driving, Famous, Prison)
"If you meet somebody who's spent any length of time in prison, you don't let your guard down. Ever. And really, that's what that was about-if you open up too much, you're asking to get your teeth kicked in."
- Tim Roth
(Related: Time, Open, Prison)
"Torture has been privatized now, so you have obviously the whole scandal in America about the abuse of prisoners and the fact that, army people might be made to pay a price, but who are the privatized torturers accountable too?"
- Arundhati Roy
(Related: People, Abuse, America, Army, Fact, Now, Scandal)
"Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons."
- John Ruskin
(Related: Reform, Schools)
"One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny."
- Bertrand Russell
(Related: Opinion, Prison, Public, Public opinion, Respect, Starvation, Tyranny)
"Imprisonment hit me so hard - much harder than I had thought."
- Mathias Rust
(Related: Thought, Imprisonment)
"Jesus Christ came into my prison cell last night, and every stone flashed like a ruby."
- Samuel Rutherford
(Related: Christ, Night, Prison)
"Most people are prisoners, thinking only about the future or living in the past. They are not in the present, and the present is where everything begins."
- Carlos Santana
(Related: People, Future, Living, Past, Present, Thinking)
"I could not have the honour of being a German soldier because of my imprisonment in the First World War. And in this world war the Fuehrer refuses to allow me to serve as a soldier."
- Fritz Sauckel
(Related: War, Being, First, Imprisonment, World, World war)
"It so happened that I was on a German sailing vessel on the way to Australia when the ship was captured, and on the high seas I was made prisoner by the French."
- Fritz Sauckel
"A man man may dwell so long upon a thought that it may take him prisoner."
- George Savile
(Related: Thought, Man, May)
"We must stop the trend of closing schools and building prisons."
- Gale Sayers
(Related: Building, Schools)
"That means presenting the issues in certain ways that will appeal to those people and then becoming a prisoner of your own language and thought process. That has always happened - it's just been intensified."
- Robert Scheer
(Related: Thought, People, Language, Will)
"The Federal prison population has increased more than 7-fold over the past 20 years."
- Bobby Scott
(Related: Past, Population, Prison, Years)
"Studies have shown that inmate participation in education, vocational and job training, prison work skills development, drug abuse, mental health and other treatment programs, all reduce recidivism, significantly."
- Bobby Scott
(Related: Health, Work, Education, Development, Abuse, Job, Mental health, Participation, Prison, Training, Treatment)
"We can't let somebody rise to the top who will pardon these war criminals. Because they need to go to prison for what they've done in this world. We can't have a pardon. They need to pay for what they've done."
- Cindy Sheehan
(Related: War, Prison, Will, World)
"It's up to us, the people, to break immoral laws, and resist. As soon as the leaders of a country lie to you, they have no authority over you. These maniacs have no authority over us. And they might be able to put our bodies in prison, but they can't put our spirits in prison."
- Cindy Sheehan
(Related: Lie, People, Authority, Country, Laws, Leaders, Prison, Spirits)
"I visited my father for the full ten years that he was in prison, so we already had a deep and loving relationship, and remembered our mother at those times."
- Sam Sheppard
(Related: Mother, Father, Deep, Prison, Years)
"People come from a certain generation and a certain whole way of looking at things, and you really do become a prisoner of your own world."
- Matthew Shipp
(Related: People, World)
"The Pentagon said that these prisoners were kept in accordance with the Geneva Convention, and of course I was not reassured by that, but I couldn't prove that that was wrong; so we're clearer about that."
- Peter Singer
(Related: Wrong)
"Bush sees the evil as out there in the wider world, residing in people who 'hate freedom'. Look at his immediate response to the pictures of prisoner abuse; this is not what Americans do, these are not our values."
- Peter Singer
(Related: People, Values, Abuse, Americans, Evil, Freedom, World)
"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you."
- Lewis B. Smedes
"So I had to be the doctor to these wounded men until we could remove them to the hospital. There were fifty-four women and forty little boys with the Red Army prisoners, and I went daily to take care of them also."
- Agnes Smedley
(Related: Men, Women, Army, Boys, Care)
"Homosexuality in Russia is a crime and the punishment is seven years in prison, locked up with the other men. There is a three year waiting list."
- Yakov Smirnoff
(Related: Men, Crime, Homosexuality, Prison, Punishment, Russia, Waiting, Years)
"Some artists imagine they've got a hold on this apparatus, which in fact has got a hold of them. As a result, they end up supporting a cultural prison that is out of their control."
- Robert Smithson
(Related: Control, Artists, End, Fact, Prison, Result)
"With no other security forces on hand, U.S. military was left to confront, almost alone, an Iraqi insurgency and a crime rate that grew worse throughout the year, waged in part by soldiers of the disbanded army and in part by criminals who were released from prison."
- John Spratt
(Related: Army, Crime, Military, Prison, Security, Soldiers)
"The prisoners for better security against conversation shall have a canvas bag put over the head of each and tied around the neck, with a holes for proper breathing and eating, but not seeing."
- Edwin M. Stanton
(Related: Conversation, Eating, Security)
"A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space."
- Gloria Steinem
(Related: Prison, Space)
"No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever."
- J. Michael Straczynski
(Related: Force, Population)
"Playing the role of Christ was like being in a prison. It was the hardest part I've ever had to play in my life. I couldn't smoke or drink in public. I couldn't."
- Max von Sydow
(Related: Life, Being, Christ, Play, Prison, Public)
"When I finished the role of Christ, I felt as though I'd been let out on parole. A man who has served 18 months isn't eager to go back to prison."
- Max von Sydow
(Related: Christ, Man, Months, Prison)
"The percentage of Americans in the prison system, has doubled since 1985."
- Serj Tankian
(Related: Americans, Prison)
"The prisoners eyed the clothes some time, and laughed a good deal among themselves before they put them on."
- Lewis Tappan
(Related: Time, Clothes)
"The curiosity to see the prisoners appears to be unabated."
- Lewis Tappan
(Related: Curiosity)
"The African prisoners are orderly and peaceable among themselves."
- Lewis Tappan
(Related: African)
"One of the men attached to the prison was the occasion of great amusement on the part of the prisoners, as well as the spectators, by taking a large lump of ice to show these strangers from the tropics."
- Lewis Tappan
(Related: Men, Amusement, Prison, Strangers)
"Most of the prisoners told the interpreter that they are from Mandingo."
- Lewis Tappan
"I think for Beecher specifically, Keller was with him when his wife died. Beecher had decided after he first got into prison that he had to shut off everybody. You can't let anybody in and you have to become like them and you have to be threatening and all that."
- Lee Tergesen
(Related: Wife, First, Prison)
"I know what it's like to be ignored, and I think that is the big problem about the prison system: These people are being thrown away. There is no sense of rehabilitation. In some places, they are trying to do things. But, in most cases, it's a holding cell."
- Lee Tergesen
(Related: People, Being, Prison, Sense, Trying)
"You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison."
- Craig L. Thomas
(Related: Dream, American, Prison)
"I have become a prisoner of the peace movement. But you can't say that the termination is coming and then say that you are going back to your own garden to dig."
- E. P. Thompson
(Related: Peace, Garden)
"If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism."
- Hunter S. Thompson
(Related: Truth, People, Journalism, Past, Prison, Today, Years)
"Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them."
- Henry David Thoreau
(Related: Houses, Property)
"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison."
- Henry David Thoreau
(Related: Government, Man, Prison)
"I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind."
- Gene Tierney
(Related: Mind, Prison, World)
"So what really works? Treatments in jail do some good, but it's mostly too late: finding a family and a job or just growing older make most prisoners eventually give up crime."
- Polly Toynbee
(Related: Family, Crime, Job)
"The White House is the finest prison in the world."
- Harry S. Truman
(Related: Prison, World)
"When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff."
- Mike Tyson
(Related: People, Books, Deep, Prison)
"Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well."
- Peter Ustinov
(Related: Duty, Mind, Prison)
"We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions."
- Lech Walesa
(Related: People, Prison, Violence, Yield)
"I live a very dull life here... indeed I think I am more like a state prisoner than anything else."
- Martha Washington
(Related: Life, State)
"Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link."
- Simone Weil
(Related: God, Communication, Separation)
"A mind enclosed in language is in prison."
- Simone Weil
(Related: Language, Mind, Prison)
"No funding for alternative sentencing instead of more prisons."
- Jerry Weller
"More prisons, more enforcement, effective death penalty."
- Jerry Weller
(Related: Death)
"One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be."
- Oscar Wilde
(Related: Prison, Will)
"Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country."
- Ellen Wilkinson
(Related: Time, Women, Country, Prison)
"Today more Americans are imprisoned for drug offenses than for property crimes."
- George Will
(Related: Americans, Property, Today)
"In our natural state, we are glorious beings. In the world of illusion, we are lost and imprisoned, slaves to our appetites and our will to false power."
- Marianne Williamson
(Related: Power, Illusion, State, Will, World)
"On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break."
- Robert Anton Wilson
(Related: Choice, Prison, Security)
"A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
(Related: Man, Will)
"Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison."
- Mary Wollstonecraft
(Related: Beauty, Body, Mind, Prison, Woman)
"The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages."
- Virginia Woolf
(Related: Thoughts, Eyes)
"Men simply copied the realities of their hearts when they built prisons."
- Richard Wright
(Related: Men)
"Without territory, it does not even have the resources to provide detention facilities for prisoners, even if it were interested in holding captured POWs."
- John Yoo
"American soldiers had to guard prisoners on the inside while receiving mortar and weapons fire from the outside. Guantanamo is distant from any battlefield, making it far more secure."
- John Yoo
(Related: American, Fire, Soldiers, Weapons)
"Human-rights advocates, for example, claim that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is of a piece with President Bush's 2002 decision to deny al Qaeda and Taliban fighters the legal status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions."
- John Yoo
(Related: Legal, War, Decision, Example, President)
"In light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, critics are arguing that abuses of Iraqi prisoners are being produced by a climate of disregard for the laws of war."
- John Yoo
(Related: War, Being, Climate, Laws, Light, Prison, Scandal)
"It has never demonstrated any desire to provide humane treatment to captured Americans. If anything, the murders of Nicholas Berg and Daniel Pearl declare al Qaeda's intentions to kill even innocent civilian prisoners."
- John Yoo
(Related: Americans, Desire, Intentions, Treatment)
"Every invalid is a prisoner."
- Marguerite Yourcenar
"The Past: Our cradle, not our prison; there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition."
- Israel Zangwill
(Related: Inspiration, Danger, Glamour, Imitation, Past, Prison, Repetition)
"The Stanford prison experiment came out of class exercises in which I encouraged students to understand the dynamics of prison life."
- Philip Zimbardo
(Related: Life, Class, Prison, Students)