Prison Quotes: Reflections on Incarceration and Freedom

"Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison"

Mary Wollstonecraft, Writer

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

Victor Hugo, Author

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

Ho Chi Minh, Revolutionary

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

Patrick McGoohan, Actor

"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

"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

"You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison"

Craig L. Thomas, Politician

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

W. C. Fields, Comedian

"He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still an enemy"

Thomas Hobbes, Philosopher

"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

"Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger"

Philip Emeagwali, Scientist

"Although I wasn't able to get a visa for Vietnam, I was able to talk with swift boat veterans to get a feel for the time and place, and I visited a tropical prison in the Philippines to get a sense of what a Vietnamese prison might have been like"

Tony Hillerman, Author

"And why do we, who say we oppose tyranny and demand freedom of speech, allow people to go to prison and be vilified, and magazines to be closed down on the spot, for suggesting another version of history"

David Icke, Athlete

"And I did wonder - because it's now three years ago since I left prison - whether there would come a time when I would forget it, or it would be in the past as anything else might be - no, it's there every day of my life"

Jeffrey Archer, Politician

"Sixty per cent of people entering prison today are illiterate"

Jeffrey Archer, Politician

"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

"We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community"

Janet Reno, Public Servant

"You utter a vow or forge a signature and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman or prison"

Bronislaw Malinowski, Scientist

"I never thought about becoming a politician. But during the military dictatorship, my grandfather was put in prison six times and my father twice. If my family and my country didn't have this history, I might be a professor somewhere today"

Georgios A. Papandreou, Politician

"It's up to us, the people, to break immoral laws, and resist. As soon as the leaders of a country lie to you, they have no authority over you. These maniacs have no authority over us. And they might be able to put our bodies in prison, but they can't put our spirits in prison"

Cindy Sheehan, Activist

"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

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

H. L. Mencken, Writer

"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

"Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well"

Peter Ustinov, Actor

"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

"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

"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

"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

"The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison"

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Novelist

"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

"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

"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

"If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism"

Hunter S. Thompson, Journalist