Prison Quotes - Page 29

• 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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• There are countries in which public establishments are considered by the government as its own personal affair, so that it admits persons to them only according to its pleasure, just as a proprietor refuses at his pleasure admission into his house; they are a sort of administrative sanctuaries, into which no profane person can penetrate. These establishments, on the contrary, in the United States, are considered as belonging to all. The prisons are open to everyone who chooses to inspect them ad every visiter may inform himself of the order which regulates the interior.

  Gustave de Beaumont

  Country, Government, Order

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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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• Not all psychopaths are in prison - some are in the boardroom.

  Robert D. Hare

  Psychopath

  "Bad bosses: The Psycho-path to Success?" by Kevin Voigt, www.cnn.com. January 20, 2012.

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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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• "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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• I escaped a North Korean prison camp

  Shindong

  Korean, North Korea, Camps

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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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• How is the soul profited by the strife of Hector, the arguments of Plato, the poems of Virgil, or the elegies of Ovid, who, with others like them, are now gnashing their teeth in the prison of the infernal Babylon, under the cruet tyranny of Pluto?

  Honorius Augustodunensis

  Plato, Scary, Soul

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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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• Social questions are too sectional, too topical, too temporal to move a man to the mighty effort which is needed to produce greatpoetry. Prison reform may nerve Charles Reade to produce an effective and businesslike prose melodrama; but it could never produce Hamlet, Faust, or Peer Gynt.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Moving, Men, Effort

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• 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.

  Maya Angelou

  Leadership, Wisdom, Country

  'His Day Is Done' - Poem in Tribute to Nelson Mandela, delivered December 2013

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• I find very reasonable the Celtic belief that the souls of our dearly departed are trapped in some inferior being, in an animal, aplant, an inanimate object, indeed lost to us until the day, which for some never arrives, when we find that we pass near the tree, or come to possess the object which is their prison. Then they quiver, call us, and as soon as we have recognized them, the spell is broken. Freed by us, they have vanquished death and return to live with us.

  Marcel Proust

  Death, Animal, Broken

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• What do people have against convicts? Is living together in the pen of freedom, where young people engage in mutual psychology, any more beautiful?

  Karl Kraus

  Beautiful, Freedom, People

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

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• Fear, coercion, punishment, are the masculine remedies for moral weakness, but statistics show their failure for centuries. Why not change the system and try the education of the moral and intellectual faculties, cheerful surroundings, inspiring influences? Everything in our present system tends to lower the physical vitality, the self-respect, the moral tone, and to harden instead of reforming the criminal.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Punishment, Self, Intellectual

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1898). “Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences, 1815-1897”, p.304, UPNE

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• Whatever success I have achieved, whatever positions of leadership I have held have depended less on Ivy League degrees or SAT scores or GPAs and have instead been due to that sense of connection and empathy, the special obligation I felt as a black man like you to help those who need it most, people who didn't have the opportunities that I had because there, but for the grace of God go I. I might have been in their shoes. I might have been in prison. I might have been unemployed. I might not have been able to support a family. And that motivates me.

  Barack Obama

  Opportunity, Men, Gpa

  "Around The World" with Michael Holmes and Suzanne Malveaux, www.cnn.com. May 20, 2013.

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• I pulled the boy close to me and said you see that girl, thats my only lil girl. So if you think about huggin or kissin. Remember these words. I aint afraid to go back to prison.

  Bill Engvall

  Funny, Girl, Humor

  FaceBook post by Bill Engvall from Jan 23, 2013

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• Listening to the radio every day for an entire year was a prison sentence. It was the most depressing, annoying, debilitating project I have ever undertaken, and I have a master's degree in art history.

  Sarah Vowell

  Depressing, Art, Years

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• I relate to any prison movie, as long as it has some authenticity.

  Danny Trejo

  Long, Authenticity, Relate

  Source: collider.com

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• I started out in 1985, and I was Inmate #1 in every prison movie made from '85 to '93.

  Kim Coates

  Inmates, Made

  Source: collider.com

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• That's for the best. Otherwise they might realize they're in prison. It can't be helped. You women are used to harems and prisons. A person can spend his whole life between four walls. If he doesn't think or feel that he's a prisoner, then he's not a prisoner. But then there are people for whom the whole planet is a prison, who see the infinite expanse of the universe, the millions of stars and galaxies that remain forever inaccessible to them. And that awareness makes them the greatest prisoners of time and space.

  Vladimir Bartol

  Stars, Wall, Thinking

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• Why should a man deliberately encircle his mind with needless prison walls. No man can reach highest excellence who puts limits to his own thought.

  Arthur Desmond

  Wall, Men, Mind

  "Rival Caesars". Book by Arthur Desmond, 1903.

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• Have you seen the cover of Newsweek? They have Martha Stewart on the cover, but it's not actually Martha. It's a doctored photo. They put Martha's head on a slimmer woman's body. And Martha was very upset about this. She said, 'Hey, if I wanted my face on another woman's body, I'd stay in prison.'

  Jay Leno

  Upset, Hey, Body

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• 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.

  Conan O'Brien

  Mean, Years, Serious

  "This Week's 'The List' -- Martha Guilty", abcnews.go.com.

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• We are not taught to fear our politicians, who can debase our currency, throw us in prison and send us to war - but rather we are taught to fear each other. We are taught to imagine that the real predators in this world are not those who control prison cells, national debts and nuclear weapons, but rather our fellow citizens, who in the absence of brutal control would surely tear us apart!

  Stefan Molyneux

  Real, War, Cells

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