Quotessence
Home / Topics / Prison Quotes

Prison Quotes

Browse 2429 quotes about Prison.

Related topics

PeopleIfsMenYearsThinkingWorldCrimeKnowsPrisonerWantWayJailWallLongMindDoeStatesHas BeensHumansWellsLawSchoolShouldSoulCountryGovernmentPunishmentGivingKindCriminalsLooksMadeNeedsCellsFirstsMayHomeFeelsLittlesWarHouseMeanBarsBelieveMightChildrenDrugSaidBreakBlackDoorsPersonsWritingI CanTryingWould BeHeartPastPoliceTwoBodyEndsInmatesLibertyStillsPoliticalRunningSelfWholeRealReasonCommunityDifferentFoundHandsRoomsSentencesTodayUsedBookDonePoorPrison WallsSufferingAmericaJusticeSecurityThreeChainsIdeasJobsPresidentProblemShowsSometimesTermYoungEyeHardHelpingmore

Prison Quotes

“The place resembled a new model prison, or one that had achieved a provisional utopia after principled revolt, or maybe a homeless shelter for people with liberal arts degrees. The cages brought to mind those labs with their death-fuming vents near my college studio. These kids were part of some great experiment. It was maybe the same one in which I'd once been a subject. Unlike me, though, or the guinea pigs and hares, they were happy, or seemed happy, or were blogging about how they seemed happy.”

PeopleMindArtKidsSubjectsCollegeDegreesModelsPrisonStudiosExperimentsShelterPigsHomelessCagesUtopiaRevoltBloggingLabsHaresGuineaPrincipledLiberal ArtsGuinea PigsArts Degrees
Book:The Ask: A Novel
Create image

“My sweet rose, my delicate flower, my lily of lilies, it is perhaps in prison that I am going to test the power of love. I am going to see if I cannot make the bitter warders sweet by the intensity of the love I bear you. I have had moments when I thought it would be wise to separate. Ah! Moments of weakness and madness! Now I see that would have mutilated my life, ruined my art, broken the musical chords which make a perfect soul. Even covered with mud I shall praise you, from the deepest abysses I shall cry to you. In my solitude you will be with me.”

IfsArtSoulMomentsWould BePerfectWiseCrySweetFlowerBrokenBearsSolitudeWeaknessTestsMadnessPraisePrisonRoseMusicalBitterCoveredIntensityDelicateRuinedMudAbyssChordsBeing WiseLiliesPower Of LoveDelicate LifeMoments Of WeaknessDelicate Flower
Author:Oscar Wilde
Create image

“If you ever get twenty-five years for nothing, if you find yourself wearing four number patches on your clothes, holding your hands permanently behind your back, submitting to searches morning and evening, working until you are utterly exhausted, dragged into the cooler whenever someone denounces you, trodden deeper and deeper into the ground-from the hole you're in, the fine words of the great humanists will sound like the chatter of the well-fed and free.”

IfsYearsWellsHandsSoundNumbersBehindsMorningFiveFourFineClothesTwentiesPrisonDeeperHolesEveningFive YearsFinding YourselfFedsExhaustedPatchesTwenty FiveChatterBehind Your BackFine Words
Author:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Create image

“Submissiveness to fate, the total abdication of your own will in the shaping of your life, the recognition that it was impossible to guess the best and the worst ahead of time but that it was easy to take a step you would reproach yourself for-all this freed the prisoner from any bondage, made him calmer, and even ennobled him.”

MadeEasyStepsFateImpossibleWorstPrisonRecognitionPrisonerBondageReproachAhead Of TimeCalmerAbdication
Author:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Create image

“Because I have conducted my own operas and love sheep-dogs; because I generally dress in tweeds, and sometimes, at winter afternoon concerts, have even conducted in them; because I was a militant suffragette and seized a chance of beating time to The March of the Women from the window of my cell in Holloway Prison with a tooth-brush; because I have written books, spoken speeches, broadcast, and don't always make sure that my hat is on straight; for these and other equally pertinent reasons, in a certain sense I am well known.”

WellsBookSometimesReasonCertainChanceMy OwnKnownWrittenDogSpeechWindowAnd LoveDressesPrisonWinterTeethCellsHatsMarchConcertsAfternoonOperaSheepBrushesWell KnownMilitantPertinentSuffragettesTweed
Author:Ethel Smyth
Create image

“Estate agents. You can't live with them, you can't live with them. The first sign of these nasty purulent sores appeared round about 1894. With their jangling keys, nasty suits, revolting beards, moustaches and tinted spectacles, estate agents roam the land causing perturbation and despair. If you try and kill them, you're put in prison: if you try and talk to them, you vomit. There's only one thing worse than an estate agent but at least that can be safely lanced, drained and surgically dressed. Estate agents. Love them or loathe them, you'd be mad not to loathe them.”

IfsTryingFirstsHomeOne ThingLandKeysDespairMadPrisonRoundsSuitsAgentsNastyEstatesBeardLoatheDrainedSpectaclesMoustacheEstate Agents
Author:Stephen Fry
Create image

“Crimes were committed to punish crimes, and crimes were committed to prevent crimes. The world has been filled with prisons and dungeons, with chains and whips, with crosses and gibbets, with thumbscrews and racks, with hangmen and heads-men — and yet these frightful means and instrumentalities have committed far more crimes than they have prevented.... Ignorance, filth, and poverty are the missionaries of crime. As long as dishonorable success outranks honest effort — as long as society bows and cringes before the great thieves, there will be little ones enough to fill the jails.”

MenWorldMeanLittlesLongHas BeensEnoughEffortPovertyHonestCrimeIgnoranceCrossesFilledPrisonCommittedChainsJailBowsThievesWhipsFilthRacksDungeonsCringeHangmanDishonorable
Author:Robert Green Ingersoll
Create image

“Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience.”

PeopleWorldBelieveGovernmentNextI BelieveLeaderGenerationsInstrumentsPrisonClubsLustSatisfiedObedienceEfficientInfantNext GenerationConditioningKickingServitudeSuggestingHypnosisLust For PowerFlogging
Author:Aldous Huxley
Create image

“As for the spirit of poverty, I do not remember any moment when it was not in me, although only to that unhappily small extent compatible with my imperfection. I fell in love with Saint Francis of Assisi as soon as I came to know about him. I always believed and hoped that one day Fate would force upon me the condition of a vagabond and a beggar which he embraced freely. Actually I felt the same way about prison.”

KnowsWayMomentsRememberSpiritForceFeltPovertyFateConditionsOne DayPrisonSaintImperfectionAlways BelieveBeggarCompatibleVagabondsSaint FrancisSaint Francis Of Assisi
Author:Simone Weil
Create image

“The missionary is no longer a man, a conscience. He is a corpse, in the hands of a confraternity, without family, without love, without any of the sentiments that are dear to us. Emasculated, in a sense, by his vow of chastity, he offers us the distressing spectacle of a man deformed and impotent or engaged in a stupid and useless struggle with the sacred needs of the flesh, a struggle which, seven times out of ten, leads him to sodomy, the gallows, or prison.”

MenNeedsHandsStruggleStupidOffersTenConscienceSacredPrisonSevenDearFleshUselessEngagedSentimentsMissionaryCorpsesVowEvangelismWithout LoveChastityDistressingGallows
Book:The Intimate Journals of Paul Gauguin
Create image

“I would like you to understand completely, also emotionally, that I'm a political detainee and will be a political prisoner, that I have nothing now or in the future to be ashamed of in this situation. That, at bottom, I myself have in a certain sense asked for this detention and this sentence, because I've always refused to change my opinion, for which I would be willing to give my life and not just remain in prison. That therefore I can only be tranquil and content with myself.”

GivingI CanWould BePoliticalCertainSituationOpinionWillingLike YouPrisonBottomSentencesAshamedPrisonerDissentTranquilDetentionPolitical PrisonersDetainees
Author:Antonio Gramsci
Create image

“Prison life taught him how little one can get along with, and what extraordinary spiritual freedom and peace such simplification can bring. I remember again, ironically, that today more of us in the world have the luxury of choice between simplicity and complication of life. And for the most part, we, who could choose simplicity, choose complication. War, prison, survival periods, enforce a form of simplicity on us. The monk and the nun choose it of their own free will. But if one accidentally finds it, as I have for a few days, one finds also the serenity it brings.”

IfsWorldLittlesWarTodayRememberSpiritualFormChoicesTaughtPeriodsSurvivalPrisonExtraordinarySimplicityLuxuryFree WillSerenityMonkNunComplicationSimplificationSpiritual FreedomFreedom And PeacePrison Life
Author:Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Create image

“Sometimes people have sympathized with me because long years of my life were spent in jail and in exile. Well, those years ... were a mixed experience. I hated them because they separated me from the dearest thing in the world-the struggle of my people for rebirth. At the same time, they were a blessing because I had what is so rare in this world-the opportunity of thinking about basic issues, the opportunity of examining afresh the beliefs I held.”

PeopleThinkingWorldYearsWellsLongSometimesOpportunityBeliefStruggleIssuesThis WorldBlessingPrisonHatedJailRebirthExileExamining
Author:Sukarno
Create image