PRISON QUOTES II
quotations about prison
A prison is ... a microcosm, a little world of woe, it is a map of misery, it is a place that will learn a young man more villainy, if he be apt to take it, in one half year, than he can learn at twenty dicing-houses, bowling alleys, brothel houses, or ordinaries; and an old man, more policy than if he had been pupil to Machiavelli.
GEFFRAY MINSHULL
Essays and Characters of a Prison and Prisoners
Masters have wrought in prisons,
At peace in cells of stone:
From their thick walls I fashion
Windows to light my own.
KARLE WILSON BAKER
"Prisons", Burning Bush
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.
RICHARD LOVELACE
"To Althea, from Prison"
To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self.
MARGARET ATWOOD
"Marrying the Hangman", Selected Poems
Jails and state prisons are the complement of schools: so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Fast closed with double grills
And triple gates--the cell
To wicked souls is hell;
But to a mind that's innocent
'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
PAUL PELLISSON
written on the walls of his cell in the Bastille, c. 1661
During the first day, curious at having outsiders among them, a long stream of inmates came over and talked with me. Remarkably, according to what they told me, nearly every inmate in the prison didn't do it. Several thousand people had been locked up unjustly and, by an incredible coincidence, all in the same prison. On the other hand, they knew an awful lot about how to knife somebody.
ALAN ALDA
Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned
At this prison the doors are inches thick, steel; once factory smooth, they now carry multiple dents. Imprints of human faces, knees, elbows, teeth, residue of blood are harvested large on their gray surface. Prison hieroglyphics: pain, fear, death, all permanently recorded here, at least until a new slab of metal arrives.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Simple Truth
Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?
MICHEL FOUCAULT
Discipline & Punish
In prison we become the prisoners even of our dreams.
JULIAN BECK
The Life of the Theatre
With all our boasted reforms, our great social changes, and our far-reaching discoveries, human beings continue to be sent to the worst of hells, wherein they are outraged, degraded, and tortured, that society may be "protected" from the phantoms of its own making. Prison, a social protection? What monstrous mind ever conceived such an idea? Just as well say that health can be promoted by a widespread contagion.
EMMA GOLDMAN
"Prisons: A Social Crime and Failure", Anarchism and Other Essays
Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
The best thing ... perhaps the only good thing about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he'd plunged as low as he could plunge and he'd hit bottom. He didn't worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. He was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it.
NEIL GAIMAN
American Gods
I was kind of excited to go to jail for the first time and I learnt some great dialogue.
QUENTIN TARANTINO
attributed, The Muse Is In: An Owner's Manual to Your Creativity
It had long been true, and prisoners knew this better than anyone, that the poorer you were the more likely you were to end up in jail. This was not just because the poor committed more crimes. In fact, they did. The rich did not have to commit crimes to get what they wanted; the laws were on their side. But when the rich did commit crimes, they often were not prosecuted, and if they were they could get out on bail, hire clever lawyers, get better treatment from judges. Somehow, the jails ended up full of poor black people.
HOWARD ZINN
A People's History of the United States
Being locked up for the first time in your life is a shattering experience and suicides are a grim fact of life in the nation's jails and prisons.
CLIFFORD L. LINEDECKER
The Murder of Laci Peterson
The whole value of solitude depends upon oneself; it may be a sanctuary or a prison, a haven of repose or a place of punishment, a heaven or a hell, as we ourselves make it.
JOHN LUBBOCK
Peace and Happiness
At the risk of quoting Mephistopheles I repeat: Welcome to hell. A hell erected and maintained by human-governments, and blessed by black robed judges. A hell that allows you to see your loved ones, but not to touch them. A hell situated in America's boondocks, hundreds of miles away from most families. A white, rural hell, where most of the captives are black and urban. It is an American way of death.
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
All Things Censored
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit;
But life, being weary of these worldly bars,
Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Julius Caesar
The cliché about prison life is that I am actually integrated into it, ruined by it, when my accommodation to it is so overwhelming that I can no longer stand or even imagine freedom, life outside prison, so that my release brings about a total psychic breakdown, or at least gives rise to a longing for the lost safety of prison life. The actual dialectic of prison life, however, is somewhat more refined. Prison in effect destroys me, attains a total hold over me, precisely when I do not fully consent to the fact that I am in prison but maintain a kind of inner distance towards it, stick to the illusion that "real life is elsewhere" and indulge all the time in daydreaming about life outside, about nice things that are waiting for me after my release or escape. I thereby get caught in the vicious cycle of fantasy, so that when, eventually, I am released, the grotesque discord between fantasy and reality breaks me down. The only true solution is therefore fully to accept the rules of prison life and then, within the universe governed by these rules, to work out a way to beat them. In short, inner distance and daydreaming about Life Elsewhere in effect enchain me to prison, whereas full acceptance of the fact that I am really there, bound by prison rules, opens up a space for true hope.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
The Fragile Absolute: Or, why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?