Prison Life Quotes

• I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice.

  Morgan Freeman

  Struggle, Bird, Doe

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• 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

  Literature, Crime, Prisoner

  Henry Miller (2007). “Sexus: The Rosy Crucifixion I”, p.341, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• We are all conceived in close prison; in our mothers wombs, we are close prisoners all; when we are born, we are born but to the liberty of the house; prisoners still, though within larger walls; and then all our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death.

  John Donne

  Mother, Wall, Jail

  John Donne, John Carey (2000). “John Donne: The Major Works”, p.280, Oxford University Press, USA

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• I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright.

  Stephen King

  Bird, Redemption, Fly Away

  "The Shawshank Redemption". www.imdb.com. 1994.

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• All our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death.

  John Donne

  Life And Death, Going Out, Execution

  John Donne, Henry Alford (1839). “The Works of John Donne: With a Memoir of His Life”, p.500

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• Prison life, fortunately, I spent a lot of years, about 18 years with other prisoners, and, as I say, they enriched your soul.

  Nelson Mandela

  Years, Soul, Prisoner

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• The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.

  Stendhal

  Doors, Able, Worst

  1830 Le Rouge et le noir, bk.2, ch.44.

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• I found solitary confinement the most forbidding aspect of prison life. There is no end and no beginning; there is only one's mind, which can begin to play tricks. Was that a dream or did it really happen? One begins to question everything.

  Nelson Mandela

  Dream, Play, Mind

  Nelson Mandela (2013). “Long Walk To Freedom”, p.264, Hachette UK

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• I would like to say prison life at its very best and worst infinitely sucks.

  Leonard Peltier

  Prison, Worst

  Source: montanapioneer.com

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• Prison life taught him how little one can get along with, and what extraordinary spiritual freedom and peace such simplification can bring. I remember again, ironically, that today more of us in the world have the luxury of choice between simplicity and complication of life. And for the most part, we, who could choose simplicity, choose complication. War, prison, survival periods, enforce a form of simplicity on us. The monk and the nun choose it of their own free will. But if one accidentally finds it, as I have for a few days, one finds also the serenity it brings.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Spiritual, War, Luxury

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• The Stanford prison experiment came out of class exercises in which I encouraged students to understand the dynamics of prison life.

  Philip Zimbardo

  Life, Exercise, Class

  "Emperor of the Edge". Interview with Christina Maslach, www.psychologytoday.com. September 1, 2000.

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• The prison life of the past looks in our own time like liberation itself.

  Christopher Lasch

  Past, Looks, Liberation

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