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.
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 civilisation.
Changi became my university instead of my prison. … Among the inmates there were experts in all walks of life — the high and the low roads. I studied and absorbed everything I could from physics to counterfeiting, but most of all I learned the art of surviving.
While there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
And a bird-cage, sir," said Sam. "Veels vithin veels, a prison in a prison.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
Mr. Emerson visited Thoreau at the jail, and the meeting between the two philosophers must have been interesting and somewhat dramatic. The account of the meeting was told me by Miss Maria Thoreau [Henry Thoreau's aunt]—"Henry, why are you here?" Waldo, why are you not here?
Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?
I will go to prison. I will be in the Gazette. I will move to a meaner situation, or anything else that is necessary.
The least I can do is speak out for the hundreds of chimpanzees who, right now, sit hunched, miserable and without hope, staring out with dead eyes from their metal prisons. They cannot speak for themselves.
Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.
Stone walls do not a prison make,That for an hermitage.
Happiness is a prison, Evey. Happiness is the most insidious prison of all.
Show me a prison, show me a jail There but for fortune, go you or I.
Over the past three decades, the number of prison inmates in the United States has increased by more than 600%, leaving it the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world. During this time, incarceration has changed from a punishment reserved primarily for the most heinous offenders to a much greater range of crimes and a much larger segment of the population.
The newspapers are gonna be tough on you. And prison is very, very hard on people who hurt kids. If you get the opportunity, you should kill yourself.
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
I have been studying how I may compareI cannot do it; yet I'll hammer it out.
Might I but through my prison once a dayHave I in such a prison.
And, for thou wast a spirit too delicateAs fast as mill-wheels strike.
I never saw sad men who lookedIn happy freedom by.
The Americans have always been more open to my ideas. In fact, I could earn a living in America just by lecturing. One of my brightest audiences, incidentally, were the prisoners in a Philadelphia gaol — brighter than my students at university.
In durance vile here must I wake and weep,And all my frowsy couch in sorrow steep.
Whene'er with haggard eyes I view Niversity of Göttingen.
Prison'd in a parlour snug and small,Like bottled wasps upon a southern wall.
As if a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel.
That which the world miscalls a jail,Make me no prisoner, but an anchoret.