“Sina jinsi. Nguzo ya maisha yangu ni historia ya maisha yangu. Historia ya maisha yangu ni urithi wa watu waliojifunza kusema hapana kwa ndiyo nyingi – waliojitolea vitu vingi katika maisha yao kunifikisha hapa nilipo leo – walionifundisha falsafa ya kushindwa si hiari. Siri ya mafanikio yangu ni kujitahidi kwa kadiri ya uwezo wangu wote. Hiyo wote katika herufi kubwa.
Wote katika herufi kubwa (WOTE) si neno la kawaida falau katika nukuu hii ya mafanikio. Linamaanisha kujitahidi kwa kadiri ya uwezo wako wote uliopewa na Mwenyezi Mungu. Watu wengi hujitahidi kwa kadiri ya uwezo wao. Usijitahidi kwa kadiri ya uwezo wako. Jitahidi kwa kadiri ya uwezo wako WOTE.”
“Prison is designed to break one's spirit and destroy one's resolve. To do this, the authorities attempt to exploit every weakness, demolish every initiative, negate all signs of individuality--all with the idea of stamping out that spark that makes each of us human and each of us who we are.”
Source: Long Walk To Freedom
“All the values turn upside down with the years, and what was considered a privilege in the Special Purpose Camp of the twenties—to wear government-issue clothing—would become an annoyance in the Special Camp of the forties: there the privilege would be not to wear government-issue clothing, but to wear at least something of one's own, even just a cap. The reason here was not economic only but was a cry of the whole epoch: one decade saw as its ideal how to join in the common lot, and the other how to get away from it.”
Source: The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV
“It’s not the physical things that you’re without that make it so hard to be incarcerated for life. It’s the fact that you’re helpless to take care of your family when they’re sick, to raise your children, to help in their times of struggle, and to give back to your community. Instead you’re a burden, a charity case, someone to pity. It strips you of your self-esteem and your self-respect.”
Source: Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement
“We wanted to recreate inside ourselves our former front-line self-assurance. We were pups and we did not understand to what extent the Archipelago was unlike the front, to what degree its war of siege was more difficult than our war of explosives.”
Source: The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV
“When a guy goes out there and kills somebody, he might look at himself as the winner. But in truth he’s also a loser, because now he would be lost in the system. If you were listening to the news recently, some people you know well are doing 45, and 64 years for murder. They might have won their fight, but they lost their lives to the system. Franco ‘Co’ Bethel, former gang leader and right hand man to Scrooge.”
Source: The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father
“The fact is, we need prisons that are more like schools, and schools that are less like prisons. But for this to happen, the teachers also need freedom.”
Source: La tempesta di Sasà
“The supernatural is not as it claims, for it is inherently unnatural; it seeks to separate us from our natural world.”
Source: In The Shadow Of The Sun
“There were times that I may have broken the rules for justice.
I may have done things that were wrong but it was for the right reasons.”
Source: One Under: Face to face with the violent offenders he put away, can a New York City police officer survive the rigors of a corrupt prison?
“It's a free country. Inmates once bought this. Thus, they're inmates.”
Source: We have our difference in common 2.