Prison Life Quotes

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. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

There is no time in prison, unless you create it for yourself. People on the outside seem to believe time passes slowly in prison, but it doesn't. The truth is that time doesn't pass at all. It's an eternal vacuum, and each moment is meaningless because it has no context. Tomorrow may as well be yesterday. That's why there's so much stagnation inherent in prison life - because there is no momentum of any sort. ~ Damien Echols

Most people end up being conformists; they adapt to prison life. A few become reformers; they fight for better lighting, better ventilation. Hardly anyone becomes a rebel, a revolutionary who breaks down the prison walls. You can only be a revolutionary when you see the prison walls in the first place. ~ Anthony De Mello

Why is it that a convict never saves his money? Well, not only is it difficult for him to keep it, but prison life is so miserable that a man, of his very nature, thirsts for freedom of action. His position in society makes him so irregular a being that the idea of swallowing up his capital in orgies, of intoxicating himself with revelry, seems to him quite natural if only he can procure himself one moment's forgetfulness. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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. ~ Jean Casella

Is a dream the ultimate freedom, or the ultimate prison? ~ Buffi Neal

Imprisonment is the form of punishment which may detrimentally affect not only the offender but also his family and his employment and because of its duration it can seldom be kept from becoming general public knowledge. It [ ... ] can have a lasting demoralising effect on the character and personality of the offender. The loss of liberty, tedium, regimentation [ ... ] which prison life entails, have a greater potentiality than a whipping for destroying the offender's self-esteem and the integrity of his character and for changing, for the worse, his way of life. ~ P.W. Thirion

I found solitary confinement the most forbidding aspect of prison life. There is no end and no beginning; there is only one's mind, which can begin to play tricks. Was that a dream or did it really happen? One begins to question everything. ~ Nelson Mandela

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. ~ Nelson Mandela

I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. ~ Stephen King

It was clearly a prisoner's craftwork; that is, the most painstaking work in the world, for prisoners have nowhere to hurry to. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I was a very shy girl who led an insulated life; it was only when I came to Oxford, and to Harvard before that, that suddenly I saw the power of people. I didn't know such a power existed, I saw people criticising their own president; you couldn't do that in Pakistan - you'd be thrown in prison. ~ Benazir Bhutto

I had a chance to read Monte Christo in prison once, too, but not to the end. I observed that while Dumas tries to create a feeling of horror, he portrays the Château d'If as a rather benevolent prison. Not to mention his missing such nice details as the carrying of the latrine bucket from the cell daily, about which Dumas with the ignorance of a free person says nothing. You can figure out why Dantès could escape. For years no one searched the cell, whereas cells are supposed to be searched every week. So the tunnel was not discovered. And then they never changed the guard detail, whereas experience tells us that guards should be changed every two hours so one can check on the other. At the Château d'If they didn't enter the cells and look around for days at a time. They didn't even have any peepholes, so d'If wasn't a prison at all, it was a seaside resort. They even left a metal bowl in the cell, with which Dantès could dig through the floor. Then, finally, they trustingly sewed a dead man up in a bag without burning his flesh with a red-hot iron in the morgue and without running him through with a bayonet at the guardhouse. Dumas ought to have tightened up his premises instead of darkening the atmosphere. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Prison life, fortunately, I spent a lot of years, about 18 years with other prisoners, and, as I say, they enriched your soul. ~ Nelson Mandela

All our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death. ~ John Donne

The prison life of the past looks in our own time like liberation itself. ~ Christopher Lasch

I would like to say prison life at its very best and worst infinitely sucks. ~ Leonard Peltier

When our life crackles and sparks like a torch, we curse the necessity of spending eight hours uselessly in sleep. When we have been deprived of everything, when we have been deprived of hope, then bless you, fourteen hours of sleep! ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Mo and the staff talk about captivity like it's the best thing a dolphin can hope for, but that kind of talk just makes me think of Carlito and all the years he spent trapped by the routines of prison life in a six-by-nine-foot prison cell, the size of a parking space, and what Dr. Joe used to say about inmates like my brother who were also sentenced to solitary confinement: 'It doesn't have to be violent for it to be torture. ~ Patricia Engel

No zek had the right to stay one second in his workroom without the supervision of a free employee because prudence dictated that the prisoner would be bound to use that unsupervised second to break into the steel safe with a lead pencil, photograph its secret documents with a trouser button, explode an atom bomb, and fly to the moon. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

You wake up one day and you realize that all these years have gone by and I have this mortgage and I have this couch and I have this life and ... is this going to be my prison? ~ Lynn Shelton

I've definitely become more aware of the penal system and more aware of what life could be like inside a prison. ~ Dean Winters

The Stanford prison experiment came out of class exercises in which I encouraged students to understand the dynamics of prison life. ~ Philip Zimbardo

I'm content with life, and I'm finally at that place where I feel relaxed and can really enjoy what's going on around me. ~ Christina Aguilera

A few conclusions become clear when we understand this: that our most cruel failure in how we treat the sick and the aged is the failure to recognize that they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one's story is essential to sustaining meaning in life; that we have the opportunity to refashion our institutions, our culture, and our conversations in ways that transform the possibilities for the last chapters of everyone's lives. ~ Atul Gawande

Every pilot needs a co-pilot, and let me tell you, it is awful nice to have someone sitting there beside you, especially when you hit some bumpy air. ~ Eric Wald

If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep,
My dreams presage some joyful news at hand:
My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne;
And all this day an unaccustom'd spirit
Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.
I dreamt my lady came and found me dead
Strange dream, that gives a dead man leave
to think!
And breathed such life with kisses in my lips,
That I revived, and was an emperor.
Ah me! how sweet is love itself possess'd,
When but love's shadows are so rich in joy! ~ William Shakespeare

Your reactions will always dictate your mood. Choose wisely. ~ Nicola Mar

Somewhere beyond the pain, you turn around and realize that life is beautiful. ~ T.L. Rese

Another dream. Another long-distance call on my phantom party line. No wonder i had steadfastly refused to have dreams for most of my life. So stupid; such pointless, obvious symbols. Totally uncontrollable anxiety soup, hateful, blatant nonsense. ~ Jeff Lindsay

Didn't care if I wasn't paid for working after school for seven months teaching a 9th grader to read, but when he finally could, priceless! The best times in my life were when I went way beyond my paygrade to service students in need. ~ Ace Antonio Hall

Take every chance you get in life ... because some things only happen once! ~ Karen Gibbs

Do not become self-sufficient . Self-sufficienc y is Satan's net where he catches men, like poor silly fish, and destroys them. Be not self-sufficient . The way to grow strong in Christ is to become weak in yourself. God pours no power into man's heart till man's power is all poured out. Live, then, daily, a life of dependence on the grace of God. ~ Charles Spurgeon

Well, life is like that sometimes", Isabel said. "We learn things too late, and then we don't get to use them. ~ John Scalzi

Pain exists only in the mind. Whether an event is real or not doesn't matter, only that the mind believes it is. Suffering can be suspended by achieving new beliefs and perspectives. We see what we want to see, and feel what we want to feel. Never doubt that the life you lead is the life you want. ~ Shaman Elizabeth Herrera

Jesus had a tough life. I read about that guy. Jesus is the only guy that ever came back from the dead that didn't scare the F- out of everybody! ~ Sam Kinison

But to return to your question, Vidanric's tendency to keep his own counsel ought to be reassuring as far as people hopping out with embarrassing words are concerned. If I were you
and I know it's so much easier to give advice than to follow it
I'd sit down with him, when no one else is at hand, and talk it out."
Just the thought of seeking him out for a private talk made me shudder. "I'd rather walk down the mountain in shoes full of snails."
It was Nee's turn to shudder. "Life! I'd rather do almost anything than that
~ Sherwood Smith

From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere! ~ Dr. Seuss

If we suddenly plant our foot, and say, - I will neither eat nor drink nor wear nor touch any food or fabric which I do not know to be innocent, or deal with any person whose whole manner of life is not clear and rational, we shall stand still. Whose is so? Not mine; not thine; not his. But I think we must clear ourselves each one by the interrogation, whether we have earned our bread to-day by the hearty contribution of our energies to the common benefit? and we must not cease to tend to the correction of these flagrant wrongs, by laying one stone aright every day. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Throughout his life Hayek wanted to affirm his identity with the classic liberal tradition, believing that the true cause of the crises leading to two world wars was the steady increase increase in the power of the state, and its misuse in the pursuit of unattainable goals. 'Social justice' was the name of one of these goals, and Hayek expressly dismissed the expression as a piece of deceptive Newspeak, used to advance large-scale injustice in the name of its opposite. ~ Roger Scruton

When you're going through a tough spell, it's easy to think that's all your life is about. You forget the good things, forget the quiet places. But they're always inside of us and we can pull them up when we need to set ourselves right. ~ Joan Bauer

The final goal of raising children both at home and school is to help them grow into good men and women.
Childhood and teen years are a gift from God. They are the two life phases to learn the difference between good and evil, right and wrong.
It is the chance to plant every noble value and meaning in life into these little souls. ~ Noora Ahmed Alsuwaidi

Sometimes all you need to do is just hold on to yourself! Look at the stars in the sky, listen to the sweet murmurings of the breeze, inhale the fragrance of the night, and you will feel fine! ~ Avijeet Das

Good books makes good life. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

My whole life, growing up, I always wanted to be in comedy. I never felt comfortable doing the 'teen hunk' thing. ~ Dustin Milligan

If your life had lyrics, would they be any good? ~ Douglas Coupland

Cruel World"

Share my body and my mind with you,
That's all over now.
Did what I had to do,
'Cause it's so far past me now.

Share my body and my life with you,
That's way over now.
There's not more I can do,
You're so famous now.

Got your bible, got your gun,
And you like to party and have fun.
And I like my candy and your women,
I'm finally happy now that you're gone.

Put my little red party dress on,
Everybody knows that I'm the best, I'm crazy.
Get a little bit of bourbon in ya,
Get a little bit suburban and go crazy.

Because you're young, you're wild, you're free,
You're dancin' circles around me,
You're fuckin' crazy.
Oh, oh, you're crazy for me.

I shared my body and my mind with you,
That's all over now.
I did what I had to do,
I found another anyhow.

Share my body and my mind with you,
That's all over now.
I did what I had to do,
I could see you leaving now.

I got your bible and your gun,
And you love to party and have fun.
And I love your women and all of your heroin,
And I'm so happy now that you're gone.

Put my little red party dress on,
Everybody knows that I'm a mess, I'm crazy, yeah-yeah.
Get a little bit of bourbon in ya,
Go a little bit suburban and go crazy, yeah-yeah.

Because you're young, you're wild, you're free,
Lana Del Rey

A bunch of money-grubbin', greenhouse-gasing, seal-clubbing, oil-drilling, Bible-thumping, missile-firing, right-to-life-ing, lethal-injecting hypocrites. People whose idea of a good time is strapping a dead panda to a Lincoln Navigator and running over everybody in the gay parade. ~ Richard Jeni

Everyone takes a turn, and when it gets to me, I shout out what Jewish people say at times like this: "L'chaim!"

"It means 'to life,'" I explain. And as I say it, I think that maybe this is what I was saying a prayer for back in the cathedral. To life. ~ Gayle Forman

I've never had knickers or marriage proposals. Most of my fans are blokes serving life in jail, troubled kids, and a lot of gay guys. I never get the mid-20s, beautiful women fanbase. ~ Kelvin Fletcher

Survival here means simply an incomplete death, not a partial life
to be trapped in a gap between the living and the dead. If I had a thousand tongues, I would not try to describe the agony! ~ Matthew Pearl

Life, like war, is a series of mistakes,he is the best who wins the most splendid victories by the retrieval of mistakes. Forget mistakes: organize victory out of mistakes. ~ Frederick William Robertson

I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out. ~ William Shakespeare