Prison Quotes - Page 21

• And as long as we believe what we believe - until that is questioned - there's no progress as a human race. Again, we still have war. So, effective rehabilitation is to question what we believe. When that happens, everyone gets out of prison.

  Byron Katie

  War, Believe, Race

  "Doing the Work". Interview with Melissa Bond, www.catalystmagazine.net. April 30, 2007.

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• If I were not a king, I would be a university man; and if it were so that I must be a prisoner, if I might have my wish, I would desire to have no other prison than that library [the Bodleian].

  King James I

  Kings, Men, Wish

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• While my chosen form of story-writing is obviously a special and perhaps a narrow one, it is none the less a persistent and permanent type of expression, as old as literature itself. There will always be a certain small percentage of persons who feel a burning curiosity about unknown outer space, and a burning desire to escape from the prison-house of the known and the real into those enchanted lands of incredible adventure and infinite possibilities which dreams open up to us, and which things like deep woods, fantastic urban towers, and flaming sunsets momentarily suggest.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Dream, Real, Writing

  H.P. Lovecraft, Digital Papyrus (2014). “H.P. Lovecraft: The Ultimate Collection (160 Works Including Early Writings, Fiction, Collaborations, Poetry, Essays & Bonus Audiobook Links)”, p.1753, eBookIt.com

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• I lost my sleep, and this is the greatest tragedy that can befall someone. It is much worse than sitting in prison.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Sleep, Tragedy, Sitting

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• Two aesthetics exist: the passive aesthetic of mirrors and the active aesthetic of prisms. Guided by the former, art turns into a copy of the environment's objectivity or the individual's psychic history. Guided by the latter, art is redeemed, makes the world into its instrument, and forges, beyond spatial and temporal prisons, a personal vision.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Art, Mirrors, Objectivity

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• 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.

  Howard Zinn

  Running, Ghetto, People

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• Well, there's a bright side to this for Ken Lay. You know, throughout the years Ken Lay has been a big campaign contributor to the Republican Party. So now, he'll be able to meet with those same people when he goes to prison.

  Jay Leno

  Party, Years, People

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• Prisons where people can't even work is the worst punishment you can think of. And I don't think we should put all convicts in such facilities where people are deprived of their freedom.

  Vladimir Putin

  Thinking, Punishment, People

  "Putin speaks out on Ukraine, Crimea and US relations with French media". Interview with Gilles Bouleau and Jean-Pierre Elkabbach, www.rt.com. June 5, 2014.

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• Public school felt like prison - cinderblock walls, fluorescent lights, metal lockers. It was so sterile and unstimulating.

  Sufjan Stevens

  Wall, School, Light

  "State trouper". Interview with Lynsey Hanley, www.theguardian.com. November 20, 2005.

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• Hitler had a police state of the first order. And those who showed any sign of being weak-kneed faced prison or often summary execution. That prevented a lot of people who knew that the war was not going to turn out well for Germany from giving up.

  Rick Atkinson

  Giving Up, War, Order

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• I have sat with the mothers who have lost addicted sons. I have sat with families of kids who have been killed in drug-related gang violence. I have been to the prisons. I have seen the effects. At some point in time, I felt I had to do something other than write a novel about it, that I needed to try to make some sort of contribution, at least try to make some sort of difference in the real world.

  Don Winslow

  Mother, Real, Kids

  "Crime novelist of ‘The Cartel’ calls for end to war on drugs". "PBS NewsHour" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. July 16, 2015.

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• 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.

  John Waters

  Gun, People, Criminals

  "An Evening With John Waters On Hitchhiking And Middle America". "Here and Now" with Robin Young, kvpr.org. June 24, 2014.

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• You can't escape from a prison until you recognize you are in one. People who have chosen to live within the limits of their old beliefs continue to have the same experiences. It takes effort and commitment to break old patterns

  Bob Proctor

  Commitment, People, Effort

  FaceBook post by Bob Proctor from Dec 14, 2012

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• People can be in a prison of their own mind. [There are] people who don't have their hearts open to other people's ideas, and can't listen to other people's ideas without feeling like they're being slapped in the face. Those people are more in a prison.

  Kathleen Hanna

  Heart, Ideas, People

  "'We Are All Pussy Riot': Kathleen Hanna Speaks on the Jailed Feminist Punk Group". Interview with Jenn Pelly, pitchfork.com. August 15, 2012.

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• I am a Quaker. And as everyone knows, Quakers, for 300 years, have, on conscientious ground, been against participating in war. I was sentenced to three years in federal prison because I could not religiously and conscientiously accept killing my fellow man.

  Bayard Rustin

  War, Men, Years

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• If we went back to the imprisonment rate we had in the early '70s, something like four out of five people employed in the prison industry would lose their jobs. That's what you're up against.

  Eugene Jarecki

  Jobs, People, Four

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Every rebel is, with us, more or less a soldier who has missed his vocation, a being made for a heroic life ... The European race is a race of masters and soldiers. If you reduce this noble race to the work in a slave's prison like Negroes or Chinamen, it will rebel.

  Ernest Renan

  Race, Soldier, Rebel

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• Boston: Clear out eight hundred thousand people and preserve it as a museum piece. New York: Prison towers and modern posters for soap and whiskey. Pittsburgh: Abandon it.

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Travel, New York, Home

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• I escaped a North Korean prison camp

  Shindong

  Korean, North Korea, Camps

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• The night in prison was novel and interesting enough.... I found that even here there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of verses which were composed by some young men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wall, Night, Men

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• "But even if he has been wicked," pursued Rose, "think how young he is; think that he may never have known a mother's love, or the comfort of a home; that ill-usage and blows, or the want of bread, may have driven him to herd with men who have forced him to guilt. Aunt, dear aunt, for mercy's sake, think of this, before you let them drag this sick child to a prison, which in any case must be the grave of all his chances of amendment."

  Charles Dickens

  Mother, Nature, Children

  Charles Dickens (2017). “The Charles Dickens Collection Volume One: Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and Bleak House”, p.251, Open Road Media

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• My time in prison only deepened my resolve against apartheid. Even while I was in prison, I fought against it, teaching my cellmates about white supremacy and how to fight against it.

  Nelson Mandela

  Teaching, Fighting, White

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• A beautifully written tale that lives somewhere between landscape and memory,
  where regret becomes a prison, and a story told often enough becomes truth.

  Brunonia Barry

  Memories, Regret, Stories

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• Under dictatorship, the people in prison are always superior to the people who put them there.

  Evan Esar

  People, Dictatorship, Superiors

  "20,000 Quips and Quotes". Book by Evan Esar, 1968.

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• It is the missed opportunity that counts, and in a love that vainly yearns from behind prison bars you have perchance the love supreme.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Love, Opportunity, Bars

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