Prisoners Quotes

I saw houses burned by the Mujahadeen, as well as disfigured bodies of prisoners they'd taken. But I saw other things too: villages destroyed by our shelling and bodies of women, killed by mistake. When you shoot at every rustling in the bushes, there's no time to think about who's there. But for an Afghan, it didn't matter if his wife had been killed intentionally or accidentally. He went into the mountains to see revenge. ~ Vladislav Tamarov

If you want to test cosmetics, why do it on some poor animal who hasn't done anything? They should use prisoners who have been convicted of murder or rape instead. So, rather than seeing if perfume irritates a bunny rabbit's eyes, they should throw it in Charles Manson's eyes and ask him if it hurts. ~ Ellen DeGeneres

Any place you don't want to stay becomes your prison! That's why there are many prisoners all around the world who look like free men! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

What good are prisoners? I much prefer devoted slaves. ~ Kate Perry

Men are prisoners of their genitalia and women are the keepers of the keys to paradise. ~ Pat Conroy

Instead of falling to the ground like a heavy doll, as Kermin had seen the prisoners do at the Chetnik executions, his mother shrank into herself, a reverse blossoming, coming to rest in a sitting position, like a ruminative Buddha ~ Reif Larsen

The fate of all of us here has been to know that we are prisoners of power. No one knows why us in particular, but what a great fortune! ~ Carlos Castaneda

When you look at the startling ruins of Nuremberg, you are looking at a result of the war. When you look at the prisoners on view in the courthouse, you are looking at 22 of the causes. ~ Janet Flanner

To me I just, I'm a geek when it comes to cinematographers . And when it comes to Robert and when it comes to someone like Roger Deakins who shot Prisoners and he shot Jarhead. ~ Jake Gyllenhaal

Many of us who walk to and fro upon our usual tasks are prisoners drawing mental maps of escape. ~ Loren Eiseley

All of this seemed equally trifling to him now. And when he thought again about the world of free people, the difference between it and the miseries and joys of this place seemed minimal. If three tiny fragments of tea leaf chanced to fall into a prisoner's battered cup, he relished them. In Leningrad during the interval at the opera a woman sipped champagne with the same pleasure. Their sufferings were also comparable. Both the prisoner and the woman had painful shoes. Hers were narrow evening shoes which she took off during the performance. The prisoner suffered from what they wore in the camp, section of tyres into which you thrust your foot wrapped in rags and fastened with string. The woman at the opera knew that somewhere in the world there were millions of beings transformed into gaunt animals, their faces blackened by the polar winds. But this did not stop her drinking her glass of wine amid the glittering of the great mirrors. The prisoner knew that a warm and brilliant life was lived elsewhere in tranquility but this did not spoil his pleasure as he chewed those fragments of tea leaf.... ~ Andrei Makine

I'm an orphan!" Constance cried gleefully. "I'm an orphan!" ~ The Prisoner's Dilemma ~ Trenton Lee Stewart

She was a fascinating character, to say the least. A pioneer and instigator of many weird and wooly projects and who liked to "instigate" you right along with her. Every village has one, and Doris was ours. A lively individual who was always throwing herself into some harebrained scheme or other, taking no prisoners as she pulled you into her wild world of wackiness. Doris's "urgent" could mean anything from the need to raise money for lame goats to singing at the top of a living Christmas tree. ~ Suzanne Kelman

I don't know how prisoners of war are ever heroes unless they escape. ~ Gore Vidal

Better not to feel too much until the crisis ends - and if it never ends, at least we'll have suffered a little less, developed a useful dullness, protected ourselves as much as we could with a little indifference, a little repression, a little deliberate blindness, and a large dose of self-anesthetics. The constant - and very real - fear of being hurt, the fear of death, of intolerable loss, or even of "mere" humiliation, leads each of us, the citizens and prisoners of the conflict, to dampen our own vitality, our emotional and intellectual range, and to cloak ourselves in more and more protective layers until we suffocate. ~ Toni Morrison

We construct our lives for one person, and when at length it is ready to receive her that person does not come; presently she is dead to us, and we live on, prisoners within the walls which were intended only for her. ~ Marcel Proust

If trees can create art, if they can encircle the globe seven times in one year, if prisoners can grow plants and raise frogs, then perhaps there are other static entities that we hold inside ourselves, like grief, like addictions, like racism, that can also change. ~ Nalini Nadkarni

We are all prisoners of the sands of time, and we have no control over them. ~ Paulo Coelho

~Remember this always:
Your body and mind can be broken, but your Spirit, is unbreakable, and unchangeable~


When we talk about people or circumstances breaking our spirit, what we mean is that a person has been affected emotionally to the point of feeling broken; however, NOTHING in this world has the capacity to break or change our Spirit!
Our Spirit is what gives us the ability to overcome the misery and suffering experienced by our body and mind.

Our spirit is what drives prisoners of war come out unbroken; our spirit is what drives the victims of rape and abuse to overcome the emotional burdens of their mind.
Believe this! NOTHING can break or change your Spirit, because your spirit is above all things! ~ Martin Suarez

It was the crossbows that decided Turkos, although his decision was almost too fast to be described as thought.
Even as they emerged from the shadow to gloat over their prisoners, he reared his horse - his precious horse, that he loved, Athena.
She reared obediently, and her broad stomach and long neck took all six of the crossbow bolts meant for him. And because she was all heart, she landed on four feet and continued forward after her iron-shod forefeet crushed the skulls of two warriors.
And then she fell. ~ Miles Cameron

I knew a teacher that kept a calendar on his desk. He didn't use it for lesson planning though. Instead he was marking time until summer. That's what prisoners do on walls. They mark the days until they go free. But if you're marking time as a teacher, you aren't redeeming the time with your students. A parent drops a child off at the beginning of the year and it's your job to redeem the time and educate that child. It's your responsibility to see that child progress throughout the year. The child should be a better student as a result of being in your classroom. You are responsible - for successes and failures - and you have an obligation to students and parents to redeem every precious minute you're given as an educator. ~ Tucker Elliot

My son smiled. "You taught me well, Father."
"What did I teach you?"
"That a spear-point in a prisoner's liver is a very persuasive thing. ~ Bernard Cornwell

As soon as I got out of jail, as soon as my trial was over, first of all, during the time I was in jail, there was an organization called the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis, and I insisted that it be called National United Committee to Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners. ~ Angela Davis

My past takes no hostages, no prisoners. I've let go of yesterday and am free to receive the beautiful gift of the present. ~ Jaeda DeWalt

Here's how I think of my money - as soldiers - I send them out to war everyday. I want them to take prisoners and come home, so there's more of them. ~ Kevin O'Leary

We couldn't trust them. They couldn't trust us. Mutual attempts at destruction are the only logical result. He thought of human dreams - both Old Empire and new - of contacting some extra-terrestrial intelligence such as nobody had ever truly encountered. Why? Why would we ever want to? We'd never be able to communicate, and even if we could, we'd still be those same two prisoners forced to trust - and risk - or to damn the other in trying to save slightly more of our own hides. ~ Adrian Tchaikovsky

The eyes of god are upon you, I mean the eyes of society. We are prisoners of societies in which we live ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Pakistani prisoners are safe in Indian jails. We are a responsible government. ~ Preneet Kaur

Prisoner of War guard companies, or an equivalent organization, should be as far forward as possible in action to take over prisoners of war, because troops heated with battle are not safe custodians. Any attempt to rob or loot prisoners of war by escorts must be dealt strictly with. ~ George S. Patton

It was William Penn who said, "Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it." Brent knew that there was nothing right about this place and the way the prisoners were treated, and he was determined to do whatever he could to change that. ~ Kenneth Eade

People which deserv support are people like
Vsauce (A guy who I don't know how to describe... but as overall awesome character.)
Rob Dyke (How he won't deserv one support or many?)... what he is doing is blowing mind it's about Anatomy of Murder and Serial KIllers files... that's crazy. And the best of all you can find a lot of information about many prisoners. ~ Deyth Banger

One of your most ancient writers, a historian named Herodotus, tells of a thief who was to be executed. As he was taken away he made a bargain with the king: in one year he would teach the king's favorite horse to sing hymns. The other prisoners watched the thief singing to the horse and laughed. "You will not succeed," they told him. "No one can." To which the thief replied, "I have a year, and who knows what might happen in that time. The king might die. The horse might die. I might die. And perhaps the horse will learn to sing. ~ Jerry Pournelle

(Prisoners) need an education. They need a GED to start with. Then they need some kind of training so when they get out they have a marketable skill. That way they can support themselves and they can support their families. ~ Christopher Zoukis

While most people view physical violence as a more serious offense than psychological violence, both battered women and prisoners of war report that threat of physical violence is more psychologically debilitating than actual physical violence. Emotional abuse, such as the threat to maim or kill, is often perceived as a threat to physical survival. For these reasons, psychological violence may promote the development of the syndrome as much or more than physical violence. This makes sense. A person who threatens to shoot you may be the one knocking on your door, calling you on the phone, turning into your driveway, or waiting around the next corner. Every moment is filled with fear until you are finally shot. Once shot, you can relax because you now know where and how the shooting occurred, how seriously you were hurt, what you need to do to take care of the wound, etc. ~ Dee L.R. Graham

Time spoils quickly in here, and it smells like rotten meat. Every day adds a little more weight, barely noticeable at first, but eventually it will crush you to death. In this place your life can be measured by how long you can keep fighting. The ghouls can sense it if you have any life behind your eyes, and they move in to extinguish it. The guards, the prisoners, the administration - the energy spirals downward forever, creating a hellish staircase that leads nowhere. The most frightening part is how they're all too thick to realize what they're doing. They seem to believe that if they keep digging in the same hole, they'll eventually reach heaven. ~ Damien Echols

When it can be said by any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them, my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars, the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive, the rational world is my friend because I am the friend of happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and government. Independence is my happiness, the world is my country and my religion is to do good. ~ Thomas Paine

She tore a page from the book and ripped it in half.
Then a chapter.
Soon, there was nothing but scraps of words littered between her legs and all around her. The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this. Without words, the Führer was nothing. There would be no limping prisoners, no need for consolation or wordly tricks to make us feel better.
What good were the words?
She said it audibly now, to the orange-lit room. "What good are the words? ~ Markus Zusak

By the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow," Ivan went on, seeming not to hear his brother's words, "told me about the crimes committed by Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a general rising of the Slavs. They burn villages, murder, outrage women and children, they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences, leave them so till morning, and in the morning they hang them- all sorts of things you can't imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.
These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children, -too; cutting the unborn child from the mothers womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mothers' eyes. Doing it before the mothers' eyes was what gave zest to the amusement. Here is another scene that I thought very interesting. Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They've planned a diversion: they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby's face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby's face and blows out its brains. A ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In short, from then on, we accepted our status as prisoners; we were reduced to our past alone and even if a few people were tempted to live in the future, they quickly gave it up, as far as possible, suffering the wounds that the imagination eventually inflicts on those who trust in it. ~ Albert Camus

The prisoners stand on the other side, three of whom require their own cages. He hands out the Eucharist through a sort of mail slot in the grate. They have slots in each cage, he tells me, and when they do the sign of peace, they can reach out to each other. One time an inmate held up his fingertip to a tiny hole in the grate. Fr. Williams placed his hand against the grate as well. "It really sums up the whole thing. You have this human being reaching through a cage to touch another human being within a bigger cage, within a prison. ~ Kerry Weber

When a uniform exercise of kindness to prisoners on our part has been returned by as uniform severity on the part of our enemies,you must excuse me for saying it is high time, by other lessons, to teach respect to the dictates of humanity; in such a case, retaliation becomes an act of benevolence. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The eyes of all people are upon us. And all they see is a mash-up of naked prisoners and an American girl in fatigues standing there giving a thumbs-up. As I write this, the United States of America is still a city on a hill; and it's still shining - because we never turn off the lights in our torture prisons. That's how we carry out the sleep deprivation. ~ Sarah Vowell

The U.S. is telling the Northern Alliance to kill Taliban prisoners. It's totally a breach of all the known conventions of war. Western television networks aren't showing this, but Arab networks are showing how prisoners are being killed and what's being done to them. Instead, we're shown scenes that are deliberately created for the Western media: a few women without the veil, a woman reading the news on Kabul television, and 150 people cheering. ~ Tariq Ali

Don't exist.
Live.
Get out, explore.
Thrive.
Challenge authority. Challenge yourself.
Evolve.
Change forever.
Become who you say you always will. Keep moving. Don't stop. Start the revolution. Become a freedom fighter. Become a superhero. Just because everyone doesn't know your name doesn't mean you don't matter.
Are you happy? Have you ever been happy? What have you done today to matter? Did you exist or did you live? How did you thrive?
Become a chameleon - fit in anywhere. Be a rockstar - stand out everywhere. Do nothing, do everything. Forget everything, remember everyone. Care, don't just pretend to. Listen to everyone. Love everyone and nothing at the same time. Its impossible to be everything, but you can't stop trying to do it all. . . .
Leap.
It's time to be aggressive. You've started to speak your mind, now keep going with it. . . . Get your gloves on, it's time for rebirth. There IS no room for the nice guys in the history books.
THIS IS THE START OF A REVOLUTION. THE REVOLUTION IS YOUR LIFE. THE GOAL IS IMMORTALITY. LET'S LIVE, BABY. LET'S FEEL ALIVE AT ALL TIMES. TAKE NO PRISONERS. HOLD NO SOUL UNACCOUNTABLE, ESPECIALLY NOT YOUR OWN. IF SOMETHING DOESN'T HAPPEN, IT'S YOUR FAULT.
Make this moment your reckoning. Your head has been held under water for too long and now it is time to rise up and take your first true breath.
Do everything with exact calculation, nothing without meaning. Do not mak ~ Brian Krans

How quickly we became prisoners, how quickly we gave up our freedom, how quickly we tolerated the loss of that freedom, like a child being abused, in silence. ~ Suki Kim

This is the woman who stopped the Stanford Prison Study. When I said it got out of control, I was the prison superintendent. I didn't know it was out of control. I was totally indifferent. She came down, saw that madhouse and said, "You know what, it's terrible what you're doing to those boys. They're not prisoners, they're not guards, they're boys, and you are responsible." And I ended the study the next day. The good news is I married her the next year. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Oh no you don't. We made our bed, now we have to lie in it. We're warriors, and we ain't scared of nobody!" She claimed, holding out a fist. "We're warriors Anna. Mean, hardcore, we take no prisoners, warriors. I laugh in the face of the fools that would dare confront us today. ~ Sarah Tork

You're probably thinking the same thing we were: where did Jane get the rope to tie the prisoners? We researched this very conundrum thoroughly, and after two weeks we can say, without a doubt : nobody knows. It's a question that has baffled historians and archaeologists alike. Professor Herbert Halprin explains: "Ropes have been a mystery to scholars throughout the ages. The first ropes were thought to appear as far back as 17,000 BC and made of vines. Unfortunately, being made of vines, none of those early examples survived. Later, da Vinci drew sketches for a rope-making machine, but it was never built. In medieval times, there were secret societies, called Rope Guilds, whose rope-twisting practices were protected via a complicated series of handshakes and passwords -" Okay. Your narrators are interrupting the dear professor, for reasons of boredom. Plus, his English accent sounded sketchy and forced. We asked him where Jane could've gotten the rope, but maybe he thought we asked him where anyone could've gotten any rope at any given point in history. Trust us, we are as frustrated as you must be about the lack of a definitive answer. ~ Cynthia Hand

Since most law-abiding citizens had no contact with the parole system, it was not a priority with the state legislatures. And since most of the state's prisoners were either poor or black, and unable to use the system to their advantage, it was easy to hit them with harsh sentences and keep them locked up. But for an inmate with a few connections and some cash, the parole system was a marvelous labyrinth of contradictory laws that allowed the Parole Board to pass out favors. ~ John Grisham

Things have changed: now all one must do to keep society's members from caring its prisoners are abused is to question the content of their character. ~ Dwight Edgar Abbott

I have learned some things. Modern life is warfare without end: take no prisoners, leave no wounded, eat the dead
that's environmentally sound. ~ James Crumley

The world had always loved the saint as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of God. Christ, through some divine instinct in him, seems to have always loved the sinner as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of man. His primary desire was not to reform people, any more than his primary desire was to a relieve suffering. To turn an interesting thief into a tedious honest man was not his aim. He would have thought little of the Prisoners' Aid Society and other modern movements of the kind. The conversion of a publican into a Pharisee would not have seemed to him a great achievement. But in a manner not yet understood of the world he regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful holy things and modes of perfection.

It seems a very dangerous idea. It is - all great ideas are dangerous. That it was Christ's creed admits of no doubt. That it is the true creed I don't doubt myself.

Of course the sinner must repent. But why? Simply because otherwise he would be unable to realise what he had done. The moment of repentance is the moment of initiation. More than that: it is the means by which one alters one's past. The Greeks thought that impossible. They often say in their Gnomic aphorisms, 'Even the Gods cannot alter the past.' Christ showed that the commonest sinner could do it, that it was the one thing he could do. Christ, had he been asked, would have said - I feel quite certain about it - that the moment ~ Oscar Wilde

The two women did more than resolve a major problem, they went on to form a political alliance and launch a coup. Cixi was twenty-five years old and Empress Zhen a year younger. Facing them were eight powerful men in control of the state machine. The women were well aware of the risk they were taking. A coup was treason, and if it failed the punishment would be the most painful ling-chi, death by a thousand cuts. But they were willing to take the risk. Not only were they determined to save their son and the dynasty, but they also rejected the prescribed life of imperial widows – essentially living out their future years as virtual prisoners in the harem. Choosing to change their own destiny as well as that of the empire, the two women plotted, often with their heads together leaning over a large glazed earthenware water tank, pretending to be appraising their reflections or just talking girls' talk. ~ Jung Chang

Standing in the kitchen when you're hungry is torture. That's why I moved my fridge to my dungeon, where I keep the prisoners. ~ Jarod Kintz

So I had to be the doctor to these wounded men until we could remove them to the hospital. There were fifty-four women and forty little boys with the Red Army prisoners, and I went daily to take care of them also. ~ Agnes Smedley

The slaves destroyed tirelessly. Like the peasants in the Jacquerie or the Luddite wreckers, they were seeking their salvation in the most obvious way, the destruction of what they knew was the cause of their sufferings; and if they destroyed much it was because they had suffered much. [...] Now that they held power they did as they had been taught. In the frenzy of the first encounters they killed all. Yet they spared the priests whom they feared and the surgeons who had been kind to them. They, whose women had undergone countless violations, violated all the women who fell into their hands, often on the bodies of their still bleeding husbands, fathers and brothers. "Vengeance ! Vengeance" was their war-cry, and one of them carried a white child on a pike as a standard.
And yet they were surprisingly moderate, then and afterwards, far more humane than their masters had been or would ever be to them. [...] Compared with what their masters had done to them in cold blood, what they did was negligible, and they were spurred on by the ferocity with which the whites in Le Cap treated all slave prisoners who fell into their hands. ~ C.L.R. James

Fairchild Parent rewarded Fairchild Child's success the way all East Coast companies of the era did: it kept a sizable chunk of the profits to fund other company operations, and it promoted the people at the top of the division to a fancier position and a better salary for a job well done. Back in New Jersey, it didn't cross anyone's mind that this was exactly the wrong response to an egalitarian company that shared both risk and reward among all of its employees, whose executives had moved to California precisely to get away from the Old World of business, and which needed to plow most of its profits back into product development to stay ahead of the competition in a fast-moving take-no-prisoners industry. ~ Michael S. Malone

I can't do that," he said, exhaling sharply and staring out the glass into the street.
"Why not?"
His face softened. "I need his money."
Spencer looked at me and I couldn't help but stare back. We were all in the same boat, prisoners to GREED. ~ Fisher Amelie

It would be hard. After all, I'm working. I'm a mother. Number one, I'm a mother & housewife, so there's the house kind of chores. In the evenings, I might attend some meeting, & then late at night, I would be either writing to the brothers & sisters in prison or working on the leaflets of their cases. Then on the weekend, at least every other weekend, we'd visit the political prisoners...I mean everybody has their whole life & things they have to do at home. But I'll tell you, we were busy during this time. Every week, more brothers & sisters would be arrested. We were working on scores of cases at the same time--trying to keep up with visiting, writing, attending court hearings. If I could show you all the leaflets we made, you'd get an idea of how expansive the work was. ~ Diane C. Fujino

If they're in cell block 1A or 1B, these prisoners - they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands. And here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals. ~ James Inhofe

As our country bled ... its leader's wife came to this podium piously to call for a new human order, this when thousands of Filipinos were political prisoners. ~ Corazon Aquino

Once I read a study about prisoners with a life sentence. The ones without the possibility of parole were happier than those who might get out. Defies logic, but then, not really. Sometimes it's the hope that kills you. ~ Julie Buxbaum

He meant that when people laugh together, they cease to be young and old, master and pupils, jailer and prisoners. They become a single group of human beings enjoying its existence. ~ Gilbert Highet

The African prisoners are orderly and peaceable among themselves. ~ Lewis Tappan

The streak of sunshine journeying through the prisoner's cell; it may be considered as something sent from Heaven to keep the soul alive and glad within him. And there is something equivalent to this sunbeam in the darkest circumstances; as flowers, which figuratively grew in Paradise, in the dusky room of a poor maiden in a great city; the child, with its sunny smile, is a cherub. God does not let us live any where or any how on earth, without placing something of Heaven close at hand, by rightly using and considering which, the earthly darkness or trouble will vanish, and all be Heaven. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

The deep secret of the brain is that not only the spinal cord but the entire central nervous system works this way: internally generated activity is modulated by sensory input. In this view, the difference between being awake and being asleep is merely that the data coming in from the eyes anchors the perception. Asleep vision (dreaming) is perception that is not tied down to anything in the real world; waking perception is something like dreaming with a little more commitment to what´s in front of you. Other examples of unanchored perception are found in prisoners in pitch-park solitary confinement, or in people in sensory deprivation chambers. Both of these situations quickly lead to hallucinations. ~ David Eagleman

After Col. Henry Bouquet defeated the Ohio Indians at Bushy Run in 1763, he demanded the release of all white captives. Most of them, especially the children, had to be "bound hand and foot" and forcibly returned to white society. Meanwhile, the Native prisoners "went back to their defeated relations with great signs of joy," in the words of the anthropologist Frederick Turner (in Beyond Geography, 245). Turner rightly calls these scenes "infamous and embarrassing. ~ James W. Loewen

The lives of prisoners of war after they are returned is almost never discussed, never explored. ~ Gideon Raff

We didn't want the war, the others say the same thing - and yet half the world is in it all the same." "But there are more lies told by the other side than by us," say I; "just think of those pamphlets the prisoners have on them, where it says that we eat Belgian children. The fellows who write those lies ought to go out and hang themselves. They are real culprits. ~ Erich Maria Remarque

Our motto should be: let us make peace so that we can concentrate on the really important work that needs to be done. That is, alleviating the plight of the poor and the defenceless, for as long as most of humanity feels the pain of poverty we all remain prisoners. ~ Nelson Mandela

How can such impoverished children laugh? How can prisoners sing with joy? They rise above by accepting that certain events are beyond their control and beyond their understanding too, and then focusing instead on what they can understand and control. ~ Nick Vujicic

I remember when humor was gentle pokes. I used to call it 'arm around the shoulder' humor. Now they go for the jugular and they take no prisoners. It's mean, mean stuff. ~ Robert Orben

Whether we consider Nazi Germany or Abu Ghraib prison, there were many people who observed what was happening and said nothing. At Abu Ghraib, one photo shows two soldiers smiling before a pyramid of naked prisoners while a dozen other soldiers stand around watching passively. If you observe such abuses and don't say, "This is wrong! Stop it!" you give tacit approval to continue. You are part of the silent majority that makes evil deeds more acceptable. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Only two of the prisoners were found sane enough to be hanged, and the rest were committed to various institutions. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

All of us are prisoners, to one degree or another, of our experience. ~ Gary Hamel

Inside of living people, too, captives languished. Yes, inside of people who walked and worked in the broad sun, there were captives dwelling in darkness, never seen from birth to death. Into those prisons the moon shone, and the prisoners crept to the windows and looked out with mournful eyes at the white globe which betrayed no secrets and comprehended all. ~ Willa Cather

My only one!
In your last letter
"My head aches
my heart is stunned!"
you say.
"If they hang you,
if I lose you;"
you say;
"I can't live!"
You'll live my dearest wife,
like a black smoke in the wind my memory will vanish;
you'll live, the red-haired sister of my heart
at most one year it lasts
in the twentieth century
the grief of death..
Death
a dead body swinging on a rope.
My heart doesn't accept
such a death..
But
be sure that, my love,
if some pitiable gypsy's
hairy black spider like hand
slips the rope
around my neck,
to see the fear in my blue eyes
they'll look in vain
at Nâzım!

And I,
in the twilight of my last morning,
shall see my friends and you,
and carry only the grief
of an unfinished song
to the soil...
My wife!
Good hearted,
golden coloured,
with eyes sweeter than honey, my bee;
why did I write you
that they want to hang me,
the trial is in the first step
and they don't pluck like a turnip
the head of a man.
Come, forget them all.
These are so far away probabilities.
If you have some money
buy me a flannel underwear,
my sciatica is acting up.
And don't forget that always
there should be good thoughts in the mind
of a prisoner's wife. ~ Nâzım Hikmet Ran

The knife; tool of the Thief, Skeben. I believe this is a mark of the prisoner's guilt."
There was a howl of "no!" from the prisoner. For the first time, Minister Terell smiled.
"The last rune," Alexa said, louder. The disc had a simple circle with a dot at its heart. "It's a mark of the world and the path. What ends will begin anew. ~ Mara Amberly

You want everyone to be a full character. No one is just evil, or very few people are, hopefully. They're characters, so you want to flush them out. You've got to show all sides of them. There is definitely an antagonistic relationship between guards and prisoners, and I do think it flares up. ~ Jenji Kohan

The only subject fewer authentic Americans cared about than the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo was World Cup Soccer. America is an epic global battle with ruthless savages who seek our destruction, and liberals are feeling sorry for the terrorists. ~ Ann Coulter

I sha'n't let my prisoners go as easily as all that!' she said. 'Make my hair grow as thick and as black as yours, or else your husbands shall never see daylight again.' 'That is quite simple,' replied the elder sister; 'only you must do as we did - and perhaps you won't like the treatment.' 'If you can bear it, of course I can,' answered the witch. And so the girls told her they had first smeared their heads with pitch and then laid hot stones upon them. 'It is very painful,' said they, 'but there is no other way that we know of. And in order to make sure that all will go right, one of us will hold you down while the other pours on the pitch.' And so they did; and the elder sister let down her hair till it hung over the witch's eyes, so that she might believe it was her own hair growing. Then the other brought a huge stone, and, in short, there was an end of the witch. The sisters were savages who had never seen a missionary. ~ Andrew Lang

Winnie had her own strong sense of rightness. She knew that she could always say, afterward, "Well, you never told me not to!" But how silly that would be! Of course it would never occur to them to include such a thing on their list of don'ts. She could hear them saying it, and almost smiled: "Now, remember, Winifred--don't bite your fingernails, don't interrupt when someone else is speaking, and don't go down to the jailhouse at midnight to change places with prisoners. ~ Natalie Babbitt

The vast majority of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, even after interrogation, had no further intel value whatsoever. ~ Janis Karpinski

To grapple effectually with even purely material problems requires more serenity of mind and more lofty courage than people generally imagine. No two beings could have been more unfitted for such a struggle. Society, not from any tenderness, but because of its strange needs, had taken care of those two men, forbidding them all independent thought, all initiative, all departure from routine; and forbidding it under pain of death. They could only live on condition of being machines. And now, released from the fostering care of men with pens behind the ears, or of men with gold lace on the sleeves, they were like those lifelong prisoners who, liberated after many years, do not know what use to make of their freedom. They did not know what use to make of their faculties, being both, through want of practice, incapable of independent thought. ~ Joseph Conrad

In World War II, some Japanese soldiers preferred to take their own lives rather become prisoners of war. In Saipan hundreds of civilians jumped to their deaths over cliffs in order to avoid falling into American hands. Even in life-or-death situations cultural ties and duties often outweigh the instinct for survival. This is why people die in the attempt to rescue a dog from drowning, or decide to become suicide bombers. ~ Harald Welzer

The actor Richard Burton once wrote an article for the New York Times about his experience playing the role of Winston Churchill in a television drama:
"In the course of preparing myself ... I realized afresh that I hate Churchill and all of his kind. I hate them virulently. They have stalked down the corridors of endless power all through history ... What man of sanity would say on hearing of the atrocities committed by the Japanese against British and Anzac prisoners of war, 'We shall wipe them out, everyone of them, men, women, and children. There shall not be a Japanese left on the face of the earth? Such simple
minded cravings for revenge leave me with a horrified but reluctant awe for such single
minded and merciless ferocity."
~ Richard Francis Burton

I want Alister's killer. I'm letting you work with me because you want to and because if I didn't, you'd just get in my way."
"You're 'letting' me work with you because you're too bad tempered to get information out of anybody on your own," she retorted. "I don't know why the lictors thought you might be useful to them. What do you do, stab prisoners with the sharp edge of your tongue until they beg for mercy? ~ Dru Pagliassotti

Our souls are prisoners of the terror of death, and the day is beautiful. ~ Paulo Coelho

And if you look at society, the way it works, they are creating, from cradle to grave, left-brain prisoners. To advance in this society, you have to be good at passing exams in school, which are taking in left-brain information overwhelmingly. Then you go to the next level, and so on so that by the time you reach any level of significant influence in society or the institutions of society, you are fundamentally locked into your left brain. Or at least the majority of people are. ~ David Icke

And now he learned how men can consider other men as beasts and that the easiest way to get along with such men was to be a beast. A clean face, an open face, an eye raised to meet an eye - these drew attention and attention drawn brought punishment. Adam thought how a man doing an ugly or a brutal thing has hurt himself and must punish someone for the hurt. To be guarded at work by men with shotguns, to be shackled by the ankle at night to a chain, were simple matters of precaution, but the savage whippings for the least stir of will, for the smallest shred of dignity or resistance, these seemed to indicate that guards were afraid of prisoners, and Adam knew from his years in the army that a man afraid is a dangerous animal. And Adam, like anyone in the world, feared what whipping would do to his body and his spirit. He drew a curtain around himself. He removed expression from his face, light from his eyes, and silenced his speech. Later he was not so much astonished that it had happened to him but that he had been able to take it and with a minimum of pain. It was much more horrible afterward than when it was happening. It is a triumph of self-control to see a man whipped until the muscles of his back show white and glistening through the cuts and to give no sign of pity or anger or interest. And Adam learned this. ~ John Steinbeck

People like myself say, 'Fix the problem. Put him in the general [prison] population. The moral prisoners will deal with him in a way we don't have the nerve to do.' ~ Stockwell Day

Annual state spending alone for prison facilities is now estimated at about $52 to $62 billion, the bulk of which is spent building new facilities; operating and maintaining more prisons; providing food and health care for prisoners; and administration and staff salaries and benefits. ~ Christopher Zoukis

We are all prisoners at one time or another in our lives, prisoners to ourselves or to the expectations of those around us. It is a burden that all people endure, that all people despise, and that few people ever learn to escape. ~ R.A. Salvatore

We Americans have a sense of ourselves as a moral people. We have led the way in the fight for human rights in the world. Mistreating prisoners makes the world see our moral claims as hypocrisy. ~ Anthony Lewis

It is not only the prisoners who grow coarse and hardened from corporeal punishment, but those as well who perpetrate the act or are present to witness it. ~ Anton Chekhov

Morrell, ever a true comrade, too had a splendid brain. In fact, and I who am about to die have the right to say it without incurring the charge of immodesty, the three best minds in San Quentin from the Warden down were the three that rotted there together in solitary. And here at the end of my days, reviewing all that I have known of life, I am compelled to the conclusion that strong minds are never docile. The stupid men, the fearful men, the men ungifted with passionate rightness and fearless championship - these are the men who make model prisoners. I thank all gods that Jake Oppenheimer, Ed Morrell, and I were not model prisoners. ~ Jack London

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said Tennessee is the first state to reintroduce the electric chair without giving prisoners an option. ~ Anonymous

Gujarat's e-governance projects have been recognized in the country and abroad. To give a few examples- Gujarat has the largest Wide Area Network in the Asia Pacific. It is the first State to provide broadband connectivity in all schools and villages. It makes maximum use of video-conferencing including trial of the prisoners. Gujarat's ICT based Grievance Redressal System called SWAGAT has got the United Nation's Public Service Award. In addition, it has received eleven national awards for our various e-services. ~ Narendra Modi

It even reached a point of such confusion that men and women were imprisoned in the same cells and used the latrine bucket in each other's presence - who cared about those niceties? Give up your gold, vipers! The interrogators did not write up charge sheets because no one needed their papers. And whether or not a sentence would be pasted on was of very little interest. Only one thing was important: Give up your gold, viper! The state needs gold and you don't. The interrogators had neither voice nor strength left to threaten and torture; they had one universal method: feed the prisoners nothing but salty food and give them no water. Whoever coughed up gold got water! One gold piece for a cup of fresh water!
People perish for cold metal. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Because of its exceptional capacity for self-criticism, the West took the initiative in abolishing slavery; the calls for abolition did not resonate even in black Africa, where rival African tribes took black prisoners to be sold as slaves in the West. ~ Ibn Warraq