quotes about Prison
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Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.
-- A. E. Housman -
Indians don't last in prison. They weren't born for it like the whites.
-- Abraham PolonskySource : "Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here", 1969.
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Happiness is the most insidious prison of all.
-- Alan MooreSource : "Fictional character: V". "V for Vendetta". Comic book series by Alan Moore, 1982 - 1986.
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The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn -
Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn -
When one is already on the edge of the grave, why not resist?
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn -
If it works, it works,' Kat told him. 'And if it doesn't?' he asked. She looked at him. 'If it doesn't, then I've heard Monaco has the nicest prisons in all of Europe.' 'It does,' both Hamish and Angus said in unison. And with that, it was decided.
-- Ally Carter -
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Not all prisons have bars
-- Amanda HockingSource : Amanda Hocking (2014). “Trylle: The Complete Trilogy”, p.238, Pan Macmillan
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Prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings…
-- Angela DavisSource : Avery Gordon, Angela Davis (2015). “Keeping Good Time: Reflections on Knowledge, Power and People”, p.54, Routledge
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Poor people, people of color - especially are much more likely to be found in prison than in institutions of higher education.
-- Angela Davis -
First of all, I didn't suggest that we should simply get rid of all prisons.
-- Angela Davis -
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I'm suggesting that we abolish the social function of prisons.
-- Angela Davis -
I'm involved in the work around prison rights in general.
-- Angela Davis -
By disobeying god, we escape from his totalitarian prison where you cannot ask any questions, where you must never question authority. We become our human selves,
-- Ann Druyan -
When we choose to live authentically we chip away at others prisons of pretend and create an opportunity for them to walk out of darkness into freedom.
-- Anthony Venn-Brown -
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Useless pursuits and conversations always about the same things absorb the better part of one's time, the better part of one's strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or getting away from it—just as though one were in a madhouse or prison.
-- Anton Chekhov -
That is my major concern: writers who are in prison for writing.
-- Antonia Fraser -
I turn and turn in my cell like a fly that doesn't know where to die.
-- Antonio Gramsci -
We have no political prisons. We have political internal exiles.
-- Augusto Pinochet -
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I'm a prison abolitionist because the prison system as it is set up is just not working. It's horrible.
-- Ava DuVernay -
Prison has taught me that there is a part of you that no-one can ever take from you, and that is your heart.
-- Babar Ahmad -
All prisons that have existed in our society to date put people away as no human being should ever be put away.
-- Barbara DemingSource : Barbara Deming (1974). “We cannot live without our lives”
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we are reaching the point, if we have not passed it already, where the largest public housing program in America will be our penitentiary system.
-- Barbara EhrenreichSource : Barbara Ehrenreich (2008). “Going to Extremes: Notes from a Divided Nation”, Granta Books (UK)
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The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.
-- Barry McCaffrey -
A lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight — and when they come out, they’re gay.
-- Benjamin Carson -
Security without liberty is called prison.
-- Benjamin Franklin -
The securest place is a prison cell, but there is no liberty
-- Benjamin Franklin -
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Going to prison is like dying with your eyes open.
-- Bernard Kerik -
Some times I think this whole world Is one big prison yeard Some of us are prisoners The rest of us are guards
-- Bob Dylan -
Whatever you hold in contempt is your jailer.
-- Brendan Behan -
We can't keep weapons out of prisons; we can't possibly expect to keep them out of airports.
-- Bruce Schneier -
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This is a darker Lex too, because he's been in prison and he wants revenge. He's not playing around.
-- Bryan Singer -
I don't think there's been a time in American history with more innocent people in prison.
-- Bryan Stevenson -
I'd like to have a boyfriend in prison so I'd always know where he is.
-- Carrie Snow -
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Only the man who has known freedom Can define his prison.
-- Catherine FisherSource : Catherine Fisher (2011). “Incarceron”, p.11, Penguin
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He had wanted so hard to Escape, to find the stars. And all he had found was a new prison.
-- Catherine FisherSource : Catherine Fisher (2010). “Sapphique”, p.36, Penguin
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If I pop everyone who calls me a diva then I'm going to spend the rest of my life in prison.
-- Chaka Khan -
I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.
-- Charles Colson -
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Purposelessness is the fruitful mother of crime.
-- Charles Henry Parkhurst -
A garden was the primitive prison, till man with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it.
-- Charles Lamb -
Your definition of who you are is your prison. You can set yourself free at any time.
-- Cheri Huber -
We need to fight for free education and defund the prisons
-- Chris Crass -
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I am now going from a prison to a palace: I have finished my work, and am now going to receive my wages.
-- Christopher LoveSource : Christopher Love (2012). “The Last Words and Letters of Christopher Love: With A Clear Vindication of His Principles and Practices”, p.125, Puritan Publications
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We are turning our prisons into living tombs, inhabited by doomed men living in everlasting blank despair.
-- Clarence Darrow -
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
-- Claudius Claudianus -
All emphasis in American prisons is on punishment, retribution, and disparagement, and almost none is on rehabilitation.
-- Conrad Black -
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I am proud of being in a U.S. federal prison and surviving it.
-- Conrad BlackSource : "Conrad Black tells Sky's "Adam Boulton: 'Stop being a jackass'" by Lisa O'Carroll, www.theguardian.com. October 23, 2012.
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Prison widens your circle of friends. In my stand-up, I can now talk about things that no one else has the right to touch.
-- Craig Charles -
Illegal immigrants are using our resources, taking our jobs, filling our schools, our hospitals and our prisons, and we are paying for it all.
-- Dan Benishek -
The world of the Takers is one vast prison, and except for a handful of Leavers scattered across the world, the entire human race is now inside that prison.
-- Daniel Quinn -
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Our schools are much like our prisons: they disappoint us because they only do what they're designed to do, and it annoys us that they don't do something else!
-- Daniel Quinn -
What is crucial to your survival as a race is not the redistribution of power and wealth within the prison but rather the destruction of the prison itself.
-- Daniel Quinn -
I never imagined that I'd be out of prison.
-- Danny TrejoSource : Source: collider.com
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I would have been content with still playing Inmate #1. I worked on every prison movie made, from 1985 to 1991. I would go from movie to movie to movie.
-- Danny Trejo -
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Well I've always said that fame and fortune - the two things that one seems to go after when they go into show business was not at all what it was cracked up to be as far as I was concerned. I found fame to be somewhat of a prison. The more famous you were, the smaller the cell that you had to live in.
-- Dave Madden -
I found fame to be somewhat of a prison. The more famous you were, the smaller the cell that you had to live in.
-- Dave Madden -
Prison for the crime of puberty -- that was how secondary school had seemed.
-- David BrinSource : David Brin (2009). “Earth”, p.367, Spectra
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Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.
-- David Cameron -
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The greatest prison people live in is the fear of what other people think.
-- David Icke -
Marriage can either be a classroom where people become wiser and better, or a prison where people become resentful; and bitter.
-- David Jeremiah -
I'm very resourceful. I'd be good in prison. I'd be good in a shipwreck. I'd make a great hostage.
-- David Letterman -
Maybe then you comprehend, speaking one language only is a prison!
-- David MitchellSource : David Mitchell (2008). “Black Swan Green”, p.153, Hachette UK
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We don't want you convicted for condiment theft. You go to that prison, you'll meet big-time operators. Maple syrup stealers.
-- Deb Caletti -
All during that prison time I really lived by prayer. Be in prayer always, we're told, and back then I was.
-- Diet Eman -
Depression is a prison where you are both the suffering prisoner and the cruel jailer.
-- Dorothy RoweSource : Dorothy Rowe (2003). “Depression: The Way Out of Your Prison”, p.1, Psychology Press
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Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.
-- Douglas Hurd -
The closest thing to hell on earth is prison. It's the worst experience I've ever had in my life. Besides death.
-- Duane ChapmanSource : "Duane "Dog" Chapman: What I've Learned" by Kendall Hamilton, www.esquire.com. January 7, 2009.
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What the cops did to Rodney King was wrong, and the officers who beat him should be sent straight to prison.
-- Eazy-E -
The more freedom is extended to business, the more prisons have to be built for those who suffer from that business.
-- Eduardo Galeano -
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Within yourself deliverance must be searched for, because each man makes hiw own prison.
-- Edwin Arnold -
In prison, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
-- Eldridge Cleaver -
Yeah, I've gotten a few letters from prison.
-- Elisha CuthbertSource : "Elisha Cuthbert says people will 'get a kick out of' abduction flick" by Larry Carroll, www.mtv.com. July 11, 2007.
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...the way to reform has always led through prison.
-- Emmeline Pankhurst -
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The United States now has more prison inmates than full-time farmers.
-- Eric SchlosserSource : Eric Schlosser (2001). “Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal”, p.8, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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I died in 1960 from a prison sentence and poetry brought me back to life.
-- Etheridge KnightSource : Etheridge Knight (1968). “Poems from prison”
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A prison is a cross section of society in which every human strain is clearly revealed.
-- Eugene V. Debs -
The general public knows practically nothing about the prison and appears to be little concerned about how it is managed and how prisoners are treated.
-- Eugene V. Debs -
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The prison, above all others, should be the most human of institutions.
-- Eugene V. Debs -
Under dictatorship, the people in prison are always superior to the people who put them there.
-- Evan Esar -
When I left prison, I had to figure out how to embrace my past,
-- Fernando Flores -
I did almost a year in prison, a year in prison, just because my name is Foxy Brown.
-- Foxy BrownSource : "Jail time fails to curb Foxy's shopping habit" by Sean Michaels, www.theguardian.com. April 21, 2008.
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Those who are themselves incapable of great crimes are ever backward to suspect others.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld -
That there is also freedom in captivity, only a prisoner can claim. Coming from a prison guard, this statement would be blasphemy.
-- Friedrich Durrenmatt -
The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky -
A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky -
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We must stop the trend of closing schools and building prisons.
-- Gale Sayers -
I stagnated in prison a long time, and I have wasted most of my life.
-- Gary Gilmore -
This is illegal. If you don't let me out, you'll be arrested. I swear you will. You'll go to prison and be forced to have intimate relations with a man named Butch. Let. Me. Out.
-- Gena Showalter -
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
-- George Bernard Shaw -
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The belief that all wealth comes from stealing is popular in prisons and at Harvard.
-- George Gilder -
Danbury wasnt a prison, it was a crime school. I went in with a Bachelor of marijuana, came out with a Doctorate of cocaine.
-- George Jung -
As far as I am concerned I would rather spend the rest of my life in prison than marry again.
-- George SandSource : George Sand (1977). “The Intimate Journal of George Sand”, Chicago Review Press
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Pardon is the virtue of victory.
-- Giuseppe MazziniSource : Giuseppe Mazzini (1872). “Joseph Mazzini His Life, Writings, and Political Principles”, p.84
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I don't think anyone is free - one creates one's own prison.
-- Graham Sutherland -
The irony of prison is that it takes years and years and years to plan an elaborate escape, but all you have is years and years and years.
-- Greg Gutfeld -