Prison Quotes - Page 20

• Today the United States has the highest prison population in the world, over 2.1 million people. ... We lock people up at a rate that is seven to ten times that of any other democracy.

  Eve Ensler

  Prison Population, People, Democracy

  Eve Ensler (2006). “Insecure at Last: Losing It in Our Security-Obsessed World”, p.124, Villard

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• I am not saying people shouldn't be held accountable for terrible acts. But holding people in prisons does not necessarily make them responsible or accountable. It makes them bad. It makes them evil. It puts an end to any process of transformation. It hardens them spiritually and psychologically.

  Eve Ensler

  People, Evil, Doe

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• The supreme value is not the future but the present. The future is a deceitful time that always says to us, 'Not Yet,' and thus denies us... Whoever builds a house for future happiness builds a prison for the present.

  Octavio Paz

  House, Future Happiness, Deceitful

  Octavio Paz (1985). “The Labyrinth of Solitude: And the Other Mexico ; Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude ; Mexico and the United States ; The Philanthropic Ogre”, p.283, Grove Press

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• Regardless of nationality, all men are brothers. God is "our Father who art in heaven." The commandment "Thou shalt not kill" is unconditional and inexorable. ... The lowly Nazarene taught us the doctrine of non-resistance, and so convinced was he of the soundness of that doctrine that he sealed his belief with death on the cross. ... When human law conflicts with Divine law, my duty is clear. Conscience, my infallible guide, impels me to tell you that prison, death, or both, are infinitely preferable to joining any branch of the Army.

  Ben Salmon

  Brother, Art, Father

  "Letter To President Wilson" by Ben Salmon, June 5, 1917.

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• And I think about my cell at the Pawiak prison. During the first week I felt I would not be able to endure a day without a book, without the circle of light under the parafin lamp in the evening, without a sheet of paper, without you. . . .

  Tadeusz Borowski

  Book, Thinking, Light

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• The essence of justice is mercy. Making a child suffer for wrong-doing is merciful to the child. There is no mercy in letting the child have its own will, plunging headlong to destruction with the bits in its mouth. There is no mercy to society nor to the criminal if the wrong is not repressed and the right vindicated. We injure the culprit who comes up to take his proper doom at the bar of justice, if we do not make him feel that he has done a wrong thing. We may deliver his body from the prison, but not at the expense of justice nor to his own injury.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Children, Essence, Justice

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• People in England who do not like gardening are very few, and of the few there are, many do not own to it, knowing that they might just as well own to having been in prison, or got drunk at Buckingham Palace.

  E. M. Delafield

  Knowing, People, Drunk

  E. M. Delafield (2016). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Delafield (Illustrated)”, p.4805, Delphi Classics

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• Reflecting on his years in prison, Nelson Mandela wrote that there were dark moments that tested his faith in humanity, but he refused to give up.

  Barack Obama

  Giving Up, Dark, Years

  Barack Obama's remarks at Young African Leaders Initiative Town Hall in Washington, D.C., obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. June 29, 2013.

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• I believe the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight. That is a source of our strength. That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America's commitment to abide by the Geneva conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend.

  Barack Obama

  War, Believe, Commitment

  Nobel Prize for Peace Acceptance Speech and Lecture, delivered 10 December 2009, Oslo City Hall, Oslo, Norway

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• The only way I thought I could do a greatest hits album is to do it in a prison where they have no f**king idea who I am. I'd do what I consider the best of those old, early CDs before I did DVDs. A women's prison would be even better, but it has to be English-speaking.

  Doug Stanhope

  Kings, Cds, Ideas

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• You have a great many things to do when you are under house arrest. On the one hand, it is more comfortable than sitting in prison; on the other hand, you have to look after a household, which is strenuous under such circumstances.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Hands, House, Looks

  "'We Have to Tackle This -- With Peaceful Means'". Interview with Thilo Thielke, www.spiegel.de. November 22, 2010.

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• 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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• 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

  Be Good, Shipwreck, Hostage

  "David Letterman's 1984 Playboy Interview. A Candid Conversation with the Comedy Genius In His Youth". Playboy Interview, playboysfw.kinja.com. 1984.

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• I don't think anyone is free - one creates one's own prison.

  Graham Sutherland

  Thinking

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• Most prisons have wide gates!

  Katherine Cecil Thurston

  Gates, Wide

  Katherine Cecil Thurston (2008). “The Masquerader (EasyRead Super Large 18pt Edition)”, p.72, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Become placeless, for to change this place of water and clay is but to move from one prison to another.

  Saib Tabrizi

  Travel, Moving, Water

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• Language becomes a prison house only poets can escape...if we do not reject any strict distinctions between ordinary usage and figures of speech.

  Arthur Quinn

  House, Speech, Ordinary

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• I know that you observe Christmas Day as you learned it at home. I do not observe it. However, as assistant director of this prison, I allow all the Catholics to observe freely and with some joy this day in this home.

  Odilo Globocnik

  Home, Joy, Catholic

  "In Tito's Death Marches and Extermination Camps" by Joseph Hecimovic, John Prcela, (p. 163), 1962.

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• How can one not succumb and allow one's courage to fail when everything is shut tight, when all meaningful things are walled up, and when you constantly knock against bricks, as against the walls of a prison?

  Bruno Schulz

  Meaningful, Wall, Bricks

  Bruno Schulz, Jonathan Safran Foer, David Goldfarb (2008). “The street of crocodiles and other stories”, Penguin Classics

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• It is not every calamity that is a curse, and early adversity is often a blessing. Perhaps Madame de Maintenon would never have mounted a throne had not her cradle been rocked in a prison. Surmounted obstacles not only teach, but hearten us in our future struggles; for virtue must be learnt, though, unfortunately, some of the vices come as it were by inspiration.

  James Sharp

  Struggle, Inspiration, Adversity

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• School is established, not in order that it should be convenient for the children to study, but that teachers should be able to teach in comfort. The children's conversations, motion, merriment are not convenient for the teacher, and so in the schools, which are built on the plan of prisons, are prohibited.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Teacher, Children, School

  graf Leo Tolstoy (1967). “Tolstoy on Education”

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• 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

  Teeth, Asking, Too Much

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• No love is foule, nor prison fair.

  George Herbert

  Love Is, Fairs, No Love

  George Herbert (1861). “The Poetical Works of G. H. and R. Heber. With Memoir”, p.277

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• People who meet me as an adult are often surprised that I'm alive and have never been in prison or rehab. Sometimes they're disappointed I'm not cooler.

  Mara Wilson

  People, Adults, Alive

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• I'm not excusing crime or those who bring poison into the community, but I do want brothers and sisters in prison to know someone cares.

  Hill Harper

  Brother, Community, Poison

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