Imprisonment Quotes

“Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities

“I'm convinced that most men don't know what they believe, rather, they only know what they wish to believe. How many people blame God for man's atrocities, but wouldn't dream of imprisoning a mother for her son's crime?”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished.

It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity.”
― Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“When we are able to break free from the imprisonment of our little, small self-thinking and dare to face the essence of life, we recognize we are never at home with ourselves. We are always on the road. By challenging the unknown and the unidentified we are capable of opening our skyline. ("Transcendental journey")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“I have always been interested in this man. My father had a set of Tom Paine's books on the shelf at home. I must have opened the covers about the time I was 13. And I can still remember the flash of enlightenment which shone from his pages. It was a revelation, indeed, to encounter his views on political and religious matters, so different from the views of many people around us. Of course I did not understand him very well, but his sincerity and ardor made an impression upon me that nothing has ever served to lessen.

I have heard it said that Paine borrowed from Montesquieu and Rousseau. Maybe he had read them both and learned something from each. I do not know. But I doubt that Paine ever borrowed a line from any man...

Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp. There is nothing false, little that is subtle, and an impressive lack of the negative in Paine. He literally cried to his reader for a comprehending hour, and then filled that hour with such sagacious reasoning as we find surpassed nowhere else in American letters - seldom in any school of writing.

Paine would have been the last to look upon himself as a man of letters. Liberty was the dear companion of his heart; truth in all things his object.

...we, perhaps, remember him best for his declaration:

'The world is my country; to do good my religion.'

Again we see the spontaneous genius at work in 'The Rights of Man', and that genius busy at his favorite task - liberty. Written hurriedly and in the heat of controversy, 'The Rights of Man' yet compares favorably with classical models, and in some places rises to vaulting heights. Its appearance outmatched events attending Burke's effort in his 'Reflections'.

Instantly the English public caught hold of this new contribution. It was more than a defense of liberty; it was a world declaration of what Paine had declared before in the Colonies. His reasoning was so cogent, his command of the subject so broad, that his legion of enemies found it hard to answer him.

'Tom Paine is quite right,' said Pitt, the Prime Minister, 'but if I were to encourage his views we should have a bloody revolution.'

Here we see the progressive quality of Paine's genius at its best. 'The Rights of Man' amplified and reasserted what already had been said in 'Common Sense', with now a greater force and the power of a maturing mind. Just when Paine was at the height of his renown, an indictment for treason confronted him. About the same time he was elected a member of the Revolutionary Assembly and escaped to France.

So little did he know of the French tongue that addresses to his constituents had to be translated by an interpreter. But he sat in the assembly. Shrinking from the guillotine, he encountered Robespierre's enmity, and presently found himself in prison, facing that dread instrument.

But his imprisonment was fertile. Already he had written the first part of 'The Age of Reason' and now turned his time to the latter part.

Presently his second escape cheated Robespierre of vengeance, and in the course of events 'The Age of Reason' appeared. Instantly it became a source of contention which still endures. Paine returned to the United States a little broken, and went to live at his home in New Rochelle - a public gift. Many of his old companions in the struggle for liberty avoided him, and he was publicly condemned by the unthinking.

{The Philosophy of Paine, June 7, 1925}”
― Thomas A. Edison, Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison

“Most of us are imprisoned by something. We're living in darkness until something flips on the switch.”
― Wynonna Judd

“Let us not be trapped by faint discrimination or intolerance preventing us from creating open perspectives. If we rise above the imprisonment of fixed ideas, we make an essential step toward personal growth and self-esteem. (“The infinite Wisdom of Meditation“)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“...So we passed, handcuffed and in silence, through the streets of Washington, through the Captial of a nation, whose theory of government, we are told, rests on the foundation of man's inalienable right to life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness! Hail! Columbia, happy land, indeed!”
― Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave

“A utopian system, when established by men, is likely to be synonymous with a dystopian depression. The only way for perfect peace by man is absolute control of all wrongs. Bully-cultures find this: with each and every mistake, another village idiot is shamed into nothingness and mindlessly shut down by the herd. This is a superficial peace made by force and by fear, one in which there is no freedom to breathe; and the reason it is impossible for man to maintain freedom and peace for everyone at the same time. Christ, on the other hand, transforms, instead of controls, by instilling his certain inner peace. This is the place where one realizes that only his holiness is and feels like true freedom, rather than like imprisonment, and, too, why Hell, I imagine, a magnified version of man's never-ending conflict between freedom and peace, would be the flesh's ultimate utopia - yet its ultimate regret.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“They were men, and free. I was a woman, and a slave. And that’s a chasm no amount of sentimental chit-chat about shared imprisonment should be allowed to obscure.”
― Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls

“If the only point of jail is isolation, then I have served a full sentence.”
― Abhaidev, The Gods Are Not Dead

“The worst of it is that I am perpetually being punished for nothing; this governor loves to punish, and he punishes by taking my books away from me. It's perfectly awful to let the mind grind itself away between the upper and nether millstones of regret and remorse without respite; with books my life would be livable -- any life.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The State is not God. It has no right to take away that which it cannot give back, if it should so desire.”
― Anton Chekhov, The Bet

“No nation has the right to revenge itself or rush to eliminate people just because they cause society anxiety. They should be healed instead of given such inhuman punishment.”
― Henri Charrière, Papillon

“The worst stage was when one could tell she was still awake and almost alert, but she knew that nothing worked. Imprisoned. She was imprisoned. In a statue like the Sphinx. Looking out from the eyes. Her own mind, at that point, was as small and bewildered as a little fly. Behind great battlements.”
― M.T. Anderson, Feed

“Lose your freedom, and become a slave by borrowing.”
― Oscar Auliq-Ice

“The best examples for lifetime imprisonment is the God in the temple and the dead body in the cemetery”
― P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“There are many things I don't know, but I know a great deal about imprisonment.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“Humans are the only animals that build zoos for themselves.”
― Exurb1a, The Fifth Science

“Is it possible that the greatest part of this existence is made up of those things for which logic is completely inadequate simply because a world small enough to be imprisoned by our logic would itself be a prison?”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“To free yourself from one cell to immediately rush to the next cell isn’t getting you out of any prison.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“People never expose themselves totally to others. We always hold back parts of our true selves. Perhaps because we do not totally understand those parts ourselves. Or perhaps it is a survival instinct to hold something back. In that way we cannot be totally controlled, or imprisoned. But if we have computers connected to our brain, then those freedoms will disappear. Everything will be seen, and there will be no place for our stream of consciousness to hide.”
― Jack Freestone

“There's madness in the eyes and looks of people, tragedy is at stake whatever you do people will get mad at you”
― Ben Jr Grey

“Do you want a clean life, like everyone else?’ Of course, you answer yes. How could you not? ‘Fine. We'll clean you up. Here's a job, here's a family, here's some organised leisure.’ And the little teeth bite into the flesh, right down to the bone.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“September 11, 1949 Another six weeks have passed. One month after another. Somewhere I have read that boredom is the one torment of hell that Dante forgot.”
― Albert Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries

“Prison is a gated community as well.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Since the day she threw me into her dungeon, I've noticed something unfriendly about her.”
― Lloyd Alexander, The High King

“The worst chains are those which are neither felt nor seen by the prisoner.”
― J.C. Ryle, Are You Fighting?

“There's a debate going on in my country:
Is fourteen years behind bars okay for a gay man
or should death be a better option?”
― Oluwasegun Romeo Oriogun, Sacrament of Bodies

“Since that time ten years have passed; then fifteen. The grass has grown thick over the grave of my youth. I served out my term and even 'eternal exile' as well.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago