Prison Quotes: Reflections on Incarceration and Freedom

"When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out"

"I think for Beecher specifically, Keller was with him when his wife died. Beecher had decided after he first got into prison that he had to shut off everybody. You can't let anybody in and you have to become like them and you have to be threatening and all that"

Lee Tergesen, Actor

"I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison"

W. C. Fields, Comedian

"A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents"

H. L. Mencken, Writer

"One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be"

Oscar Wilde, Dramatist

"If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom"

Dwight D. Eisenhower, President

"Some artists imagine they've got a hold on this apparatus, which in fact has got a hold of them. As a result, they end up supporting a cultural prison that is out of their control"

Robert Smithson, Artist

"Destiny is the prison and chain of the ignorant. Understand that destiny like the water of the Nile: Water before the faithful, blood before the unbeliever"

Muhammad Iqbal, Poet

"One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny"

Bertrand Russell, Philosopher

"In my country we go to prison first and then become President"

Nelson Mandela, Statesman

"Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization"

Winston Churchill, Statesman

"America is the land of the second chance - and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life"

George W. Bush, President

"They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping"

Steve Buscemi, Actor

"The Stanford prison experiment came out of class exercises in which I encouraged students to understand the dynamics of prison life"

Philip Zimbardo, Psychologist

"I know what it's like to be ignored, and I think that is the big problem about the prison system: These people are being thrown away. There is no sense of rehabilitation. In some places, they are trying to do things. But, in most cases, it's a holding cell"

Lee Tergesen, Actor

"Being here feels like I'm out of prison. This is the right place, the right time, the right team"

Shaquille O'Neal, Athlete

"With Animal Factory you'd think that because it's mostly interiors, you could shoot it anywhere. So we shot this in Philadelphia, and we had the cooperation of the prison system"

Steve Buscemi, Actor

"Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like"

Laurence Housman, Playwright

"Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release"

Germaine Greer, Activist

"Men who are in prison for rape think it's the dumbest thing that ever happened... they were put in jail for something very little different from what most men do most of the time and call it sex. The only difference is they got caught. It may also be true"

Catharine MacKinnon, Activist

"By 1980, when I came out of prison, The Sun did a campaign to stop putting vice girls in prison. We've talked about it ever since and nothing has been done about it"

Cynthia Payne, Celebrity

"Blake said that the body was the soul's prison unless the five senses are fully developed and open. He considered the senses the 'windows of the soul.' When sex involves all the senses intensely, it can be like a mystical experence"

Jim Morrison, Musician

"When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff"

Mike Tyson, Athlete

"He who opens a school door, closes a prison"

Victor Hugo, Author

"It is all one to me if a man comes from Sing Sing Prison or Harvard. We hire a man, not his history"

Malcolm Forbes, Publisher

"I prayed to dispel my fear, until suddenly, and I do not know how the idea came to me, I began to pray for others. I prayed for everyone who came into my thoughts - - people with whom I had traveled, those who had been in prison with me, my school friends of years ago. I do not know how long I continued my prayer, but this I do know - - my fear was gone! Interceding for others had released me!"

Corrie Ten Boom, Celebrity

"We have one of our priests in prison right now, Steve Kelly, for his antiwar actions, and three of us in the community are forbidden to visit him because we're all convicted felons"

Daniel Berrigan, Clergyman

"The candle burns not for us, but for all those whom we failed to rescue from prison, who were shot on the way to prison, who were tortured, who were kidnapped, who "disappeared". That's what the candle is for"

Peter Benenson, Lawyer

"I visited my father for the full ten years that he was in prison, so we already had a deep and loving relationship, and remembered our mother at those times"

Sam Sheppard, Scientist

"Questions are a burden to others; answers are a prison for oneself"

Patrick McGoohan, Actor

"It doesn't help to fight crime to put people in prison who are innocent"

Stephen Breyer, Judge

"But in this Second Work if thou extract our Air and our Fire with the phlegm water, they will the more naturally and easily be drawn out of their infernal prison, and with less losse of their Spirits, than by the former way before described"

George Ripley, Activist

"There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake"

Daniel Berrigan, Clergyman

"Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger"

Philip Emeagwali, Scientist

"On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War"

Michael Badnarik, Politician

"In 1960, when I came out of prison as an ex-convict, I had more freedom under parolee supervision than there's available... in America right now"

Merle Haggard, Musician

"When I finished the role of Christ, I felt as though I'd been let out on parole. A man who has served 18 months isn't eager to go back to prison"

Max von Sydow, Actor

"I did a book signing when we were in New York the day before yesterday. A lady came through and she was just weeping, and said, 'I wish this would have been brought out sooner, my sister is in prison for suffocating her child.'"

Marie Osmond, Musician

"They transfer the prison, and all of a sudden all this money cuts loose, all these people cut loose"

Janis Karpinski, Soldier

"I knew how many MPs I had assigned to the brigade, how many military prison operations I would be running, but we needed to evaluate how many criminal prison operations we could support"

Janis Karpinski, Soldier

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