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Prison Quotes

I like visiting people in prison. I can say whatever I want to them, and they can’t do anything abou...

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Brightlord Adolin insisted. So long as you were in here, he wouldn't leave. We tried to stop him, bu...

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Kaladin frowned. “Wait. Are you wearing cologne? In prison?”“Well, there was no need to be barbaric,...

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He was a very private person, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was no longer interested in the ...

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But life, they said, means life. Dying inside.The Devil was evil, mad, but I was the Devil's wifewhi...

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Don’t sanctuaries become prisons, and vice versa, foremost in the mind?

All others are outside myself;I lock my door and bar them outThe turmoil, tedium, gad-about.I lock m...

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Half the published articles on Gaza contain a standard reference to its resemblance to a vast open-a...

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Should I, too, prefer the title of 'non-Jewish Jew'? For some time, I would have identified myself s...

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These men are in prison: that is the Outsider’s verdict. They are quite contented in prison—caged an...

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What a world it is, Cora thought, that makes a living prison into your only haven. Was she out of bo...

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It's time to get healed. It's time to confess. Falling for the bait doesn't make you the worst perso...

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Picture of Craig Groeschel
Craig GroeschelWeird: Because Normal Isn't Working

In American prisons, which are extraordinarily violent places, the most vicious form of punishment i...

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Picture of David Graeber
David GraeberThe Utopia of Rules: On Technology

Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.

If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. T...

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While there is a lower class I am in it. While there is a criminal element I am of it. While there i...

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...any one who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison...

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The fact is, when men carry the same ideals in their hearts, nothing can isolate them - neither pris...

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One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbea...

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Picture of Franz Kafka
Franz KafkaBlue Octavo Notebooks

Generally speaking, punishment makes men hard and cold; it concentrates; it sharpens the feeling of ...

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While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.

I see now the virtue in madness, for this country knows no law nor any boundary. I pity the poor sha...

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Picture of Grant Morrison
Grant MorrisonBatman: Arkham Asylum - A Serious House on Serious Earth

Cage an eagle and it will bite at the wires, be they ofiron or of gold.

Picture of Henrik Ibsen
Henrik IbsenThe Vikings of Helgeland

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly the true place for a just man is also a prison.

The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free...

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Picture of Henry David Thoreau
Henry David ThoreauI to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau

That is just what life is when it is beautiful and happy - a game! Naturally, one can also do all ki...

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Picture of Hermann Hesse
Hermann HesseThe Journey to the East

I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothi...

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Picture of Howard Zinn
Howard ZinnYou Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

I think the only reason I never lost my mind is that I knew I was innocent. That wasn't a happy thou...

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In seeking to severely penalize criminals society by putting the criminals away behind safe walls ac...

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The Brinktown jail is one of the most ingenious ever propounded by civic authorities. It must be rem...

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Well I certainly have learned and I hope I'm moving on and certainly two years of prison was a terri...

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I think my attitude to human beings has changed since leaving prison.

Life is a movement, a constant movement in relationship; and thought, trying to capture that movemen...

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Put 'em who threaten possessions and power together with 'em who offend our tastes in sex and dope. ...

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This shit about being fearless before death ain't got no quality. How could you say you were fearles...

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Farragut's first visitor was his wife. He was raking leaves in yard Y when the PA said that 734-508-...

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Wickedness never rests easily so, in a way, one might almost feel pity for the wicked, for they are ...

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I went to visit Alcatraz years ago when I was on tour with the Pistols, and I really liked the atmos...

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I mean, what is prison, really, except a good bar without the liquor?

Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.

In terms of having an experience, seriously contemplating a murder was almost as good as going throu...

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The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

Well, one thing, you got to stand in a courtroom and listen to a judge sentencing you to 25 years in...

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The only thing that had saved her then was knitting. In prison she had become a compulsive knitter. ...

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Proshka was a man of self-esteem. He considered himself a cut above the rest, and had a degree of pe...

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Jail didn't make me find God, He's always been there. They can lock me up, but my spirit and my love...

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When the meat platter was passed to me, I didn't even know what the meat was; usually, you couldn't ...

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Picture of Malcolm X
Malcolm XThe Autobiography of Malcolm X

I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there, in prison,...

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I want to say before I go on that I have never previously told anyone my sordid past in detail. I ha...

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In the case of Albertine, I felt that I should never discover anything, that, out of that tangled ma...

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We should never forget that everything Adolph Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the H...

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Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming ...

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When you lose your freedom, you lose, first and foremost, the opportunity to choose the company you ...

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Picture of Masha Gessen
Masha GessenWords Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot

In 1960, when I came out of prison as an ex-convict, I had more freedom under parolee supervision th...

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Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authori...

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Yet our ability to exercise free will and transcend the most extraordinary obstacles does not make t...

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As a society, our decision to heap shame and contempt upon those who struggle and fail in a system d...

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Picture of Michelle Alexander
Michelle AlexanderThe New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

We could choose to be a nation that extends care, compassion, and concern to those who are locked up...

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Picture of Michelle Alexander
Michelle AlexanderThe New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Because the drug war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, when drug offen...

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Picture of Michelle Alexander
Michelle AlexanderThe New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

The genius of the current caste system, and what most distinguishes it from its predecessors, is tha...

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Picture of Michelle Alexander
Michelle AlexanderThe New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Prison is a second-by-second assault on the soul, a day-to-day degradation of the self, an oppressiv...

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The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally pr...

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Home is where you are appreciated, safe and protected, creative, and where you are loved - not where...

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Some men, under the pressure of incarceration, showed true mettle, while others revealed themselves ...

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you do your own time in prison. You don't do anyone else's time for them.

Picture of Neil Gaiman
Neil GaimanAmerican Gods

The best thing—in Shadow's opinion, perhaps the only good thing—about being in prison was a feeling ...

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It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not...

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Prison is designed to break one's spirit and destroy one's resolve. To do this, the authorities atte...

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rip the prisonsopenput theconvictsontelevision

We are all so guilty at the way we have allowed the world around us to become more ugly and tasteles...

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Picture of Norman Mailer
Norman MailerIn the Belly of the Beast: Letters From Prison

He who has never tasted jail Lives well within the legal pale, While he who's served a heavy sentenc...

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I know not whether laws be right Or whether laws be wrong All that we know who lie in gaol Is that...

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But we who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by ...

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Picture of Oscar Wilde
Oscar WildeComplete Works of Oscar Wilde

Man is complete in himself. When they go into the world, the world will disagree with them. That is ...

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Picture of Oscar Wilde
Oscar WildeDer Sozialismus und die Seele des Menschen

The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value w...

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Picture of Oscar Wilde
Oscar WildeThe Soul of Man Under Socialism

The cells smell is a great feature of French prisons. Ours in No.44 was one of those fine broad-shou...

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An intelligent, energetic, educated woman cannot be kept in four walls — even satin-lined, diamond-s...

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Morality is not man's prison but rather the divine element in him.

I was kind of excited to go to jail for the first time and I learnt some great dialogue.

Being a copper I like to see the law win. I'd like to see the flashy well-dressed mugs like Eddie Ma...

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Only prisoners were ever granted easy passage into a prison.

Picture of Scott Lynch
Scott LynchThe Republic of Thieves

A mind enclosed in language is in prison.

We have to respect freedom only when it is intended for freedom, not when it strays, flees itself, a...

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The cliche about prison life is that I am actually integrated into it, ruined by it, when my accommo...

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Do you imagine that a city can continue to exist and not be turned upside down, if the legal judgmen...

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[Prison Break is] one of the craziest, most unpredictable roller-coaster rides on TV today.

In here I'm the guy who can get things for you... outside all you need is the Yellow Pages. I don't ...

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Picture of Stephen King
Stephen KingDifferent Seasons

He said it was as if Tommy had produced a key which fit a cage in the back of his mind, a cage like ...

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They found him guilty, and brother, if Maine had the death penalty, he would have done the airdance ...

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Picture of Stephen King
Stephen KingRita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption: A Story from Different Seasons

When you spend your life taking care of mudmen, you can't help getting a little dirty yourself.

A left turn meant life - if you called what went on in the sunbaked exercise yard life, and many did...

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The inmates made jokes about the chair, the way people always make jokes about things that frighten ...

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The wide corridor up the centre of E Block was floored with linoleum the colour of tired old limes, ...

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For several years he hadn't moved outside a large, airy room, but this was OK, because he spent most...

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I heard this story once," she said, "where this bloke got locked up for years and years and he learn...

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It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that...

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The term 'deinstitutionalization' conceals some simple truths, namely, that old, unwanted persons, f...

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Picture of Thomas Szasz
Thomas SzaszCruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

They did not use the sonic stunners but the foray gun, the ancient weapon that fires a set of metal ...

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Formerly these harsh cells in which the discipline of the prison leaves the condemned to himself wer...

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