Captivity Quotes

“[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live. … You are captives—and you have made a captive of the world itself. That's what's at stake, isn't it?—your captivity and the captivity of the world.”
― Daniel Quinn, Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

“Your god, sir, is the World. In my eyes, you, too, if not an infidel, are an idolater. I conceive that you ignorantly worship: in all things you appear to me too superstitious. Sir, your god, your great Bel, your fish-tailed Dagon, rises before me as a demon. You, and such as you, have raised him to a throne, put on him a crown, given him a sceptre. Behold how hideously he governs! See him busied at the work he likes best -- making marriages. He binds the young to the old, the strong to the imbecile. He stretches out the arm of Mezentius and fetters the dead to the living. In his realm there is hatred -- secret hatred: there is disgust -- unspoken disgust: there is treachery -- family treachery: there is vice -- deep, deadly, domestic vice. In his dominions, children grow unloving between parents who have never loved: infants are nursed on deception from their very birth: they are reared in an atmosphere corrupt with lies ... All that surrounds him hastens to decay: all declines and degenerates under his sceptre. Your god is a masked Death.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“He didn’t like to see animals in captivity. When he looked into their eyes, something in their eyes looked back at him.”
― Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea

“In situations of captivity the perpetrator becomes the most powerful person in the life of the victim, and the psychology of the victim is shaped by the actions and beliefs of the perpetrator.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“Cage an eagle and it will bite at the wires, be they of
iron or of gold.”
― Henrik Ibsen, The Vikings of Helgeland

“But on Kwajalein, the guards sought to deprive them of something that had sustained them even as all else had been lost: dignity. This self-respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“The caged eagle become a metaphor for all forms of isolation, the ultimate in imprisonment. A zoo is prison.”
― Nadine Gordimer, Get a Life

“You are my son Dantés! You are the child of my captivity. My priestly office condemned me to celibacy: God sent you to me both to console the man who could not be a father and the prisoner who could not be free”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“If we seek solace in the prisons of the distant past
Security in human systems we're told will always always last
Emotions are the sail and blind faith is the mast
Without the breath of real freedom we're getting nowhere fast."

(History Will Teach Us Nothing)”
― Sting, Nothing Like the Sun

“There can be no question that parrots have more intellect than any other kind of bird, and it is this that makes them such favourite pets and brings upon them so many sorrows. ...Men will buy them ... and carry them off to all quarters of the native town, intending, I doubt not, to treat them kindly; but "the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel", and confinement in a solitary cell, the discipline with which we reform hardened criminals, is misery enough to a bird with an active mind, without the superadded horrors of ... life in a tin case, hung from a nail in the wall of a dark shop... Why does the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals never look into the woes of parrots?
...
However happy you make her captivity, imagination will carry her at times to the green field and blue sky, and she fancies herself somewhere near the sun, heading a long file of exultant companions in swift career through the whistling air. Then she opens her mouth and rings out a wild salute to all parrots in the far world below her.”
― E.H. Aitken

“My blood was boiling, which is not a good thing for a coldblood.
Dracula was dead. Rex was dying or dead.
Breakfast was dying.
And I was caring about it all. Meanwhile, that blasted Gunnar did nothing but sit and stare at his teevee all day.
He was the reason we were all here, the reason we were suffering and dying,
and he barely noticed us.
I hissed so hard it hurt.”
― Patrick Jennings, We Can't All Be Rattlesnakes

“They've trapped her in some laboratory jar.”
― Sylvia Plath

“Tchaikovsky would grate into music, leak out like an ointment from the long day’s captivity. At night neighbors heard the grating nonstop ballet inveigle into dance these three tenants; either they moved to Russian music or they sat before each other, numbed and apologetic.”
― Wilfrido D. Nolledo, But for the Lovers

“Imagine a world where humans are completely captive… Over time, people lose their creativity, vitality, and sense of freedom.”
― Ken Breniman, Subversive Acts of Humanity : A Survival Guide for Choosing Evolution over Self-Destruction

“You climb these stairs because I allow it, piccolino. You breathe because I want to hear it. Fight me again and I’ll have you on your knees here, in front of every shadow listening.”
― Quinn Storm, Until You Break: A Dark Mafia MM Romance

“We could have been friends, but you don’t care about friendship. I’m not angry. It’s not your fault. You’re an orca.
— Angels of the Ocean”
― Eva Žilková, Angels of the Ocean: Why endure captivity when the sea is so close...

“Orkin, understand this—free orcas don’t eat ice from a bucket. They don’t let anyone scratch their tongue!”
― Eva Žilková, Angels of the Ocean: Why endure captivity when the sea is so close...

“I threw all the unwanted feelings
Into the jail you built over the years,
Out of my mind.

And when the time came to forget everything,
My heart laid to rest every sentence,
While my head revolted —
For there was no key to freedom.”
― Laura Chouette, Where the Quiet Blooms

“However tantalizing the trap might be, I knew that a trap was a trap. I knew I would have to resist the pressure to sign publishing contracts for books I hadn't yet written. And the pressure to endlessly replicate versions of myself and The God of Small Things. I knew that fame could end up being a form of captivity, too. Also, I still hadn't lost that very real, very tangible feeling I had carried around since I was a child - the feeling that each time I was applauded, someone else, someone quiet, was being beaten in another room.”
― Arundhati Roy, Mother Mary Comes to Me

“Yet not content with merely depicting itself as educational, the circus menagerie has also jumped on the conservation bandwagon, claiming that its efforts in captive breeding will ultimately help save endangered species from extinction. But like all circus illusions, this one too is both tenuous and contradictory and does not bear up to further scrutiny. Indeed, wary of potential public interest in the release of their animals into the wild, circus owners and their animal trainers are the first to admit to the impracticalities of re-introduction, partly on the grounds that their animals have lost their natural instincts — though they hasten to add that the creatures retain enough of their innate wildness to be “educational” in the ring.”
― William Johnson, The Rose-Tinted Menagerie

“At the Reuris of Babilone,
Quhair we dwelt in Captiuitie,
Quhen we rememberit Syone,
We weipit all full sorrowfullie,
On the sauch tries our harpis we hang,
Quhen thay requiyrit us ane sang,
That held us in sic thirldome.
Thay bad us sing sum Psalme or hymne,
That we sumtyme sang Syone in;
To quholme we answerit full sune.”
― James Wedderburn, A Compendious Book of Psalms and Spiritual Songs, commonly known as The Gude and Godlie Ballates

“Though Conny Gasser repeated his claim to have lost only two dolphins since 1971, even newspaper reports mention three dolphins dying at Lipperswil in 1973 alone. Also, his statement in 1985 that “I have a dolphin here who’s been with me for 14 years,” seems highly implausible since his first dolphins, imported in 1971, are both dead. Flipper’s longevity for instance actually spans at least three separate individuals — a juggling of identities intended to deceive the public. Indeed, since 1971, Gasser has owned at least 36 dolphins, of which 24 have died or cannot be accounted for. It is known that two dolphins were sold to an amusement park in Holland and another two to a dolphinarium in the Far East, that four dolphins are currently held on long-term loan at Fasano, Italy, and another four at Connyland, but this still leaves unaccounted for, Lady No. 1, 2 and 3, Flipper No. 1 and 2, Didi, an unnamed dolphin which died in Manila, Skipper which apparently managed to survive the 1973 winter in Lipperswil when three others died, Bonnie and Clyde imported from Britain in 1980, and Sonny, Blacky, Poco and Chico who were reported to be ill in the summer of 1974. There is also the uncertain fate of Gasser’s orca whale which was sold to an amusement park in Argentina.

Furthermore, according to the Klinowska Report, Gasser also obtained the following dolphins from the UK: Pebbles and Sonny Boy bought from Franklin and Holloway in 1972 — both of which are reported to have died in Switzerland in 1977 — Cleo purchased from Morecambe in 1977 (perhaps the unnamed dolphin that died in Manila?) and Baby, Speedy (No. 1) and Windy purchased from Don Robinson’s Flamingo Park in 1978. Strangely enough — though anything is possible in the dolphin industry — Klinowska speculates that the already ailing animal that Gasser purchased from Windsor in 1972 with a David Taylor health certificate, and which died a year later in Surabaya, Indonesia as Lady (No. 2), was actually a male dolphin called Flipper! Last, but not least, Klinowska cites two anonymous dolphins purchased from the UK by Gasser early in 1973 which died within two months. These are just some of the dolphins once under Gasser’s care that have simply disappeared, thus earning him the title, even in far away England and America, of “Conveyor Belt Gasser” — the dolphins would be alive at one end and dead at the other.”
― William Johnson, The Rose-Tinted Menagerie

“If you see an animal in a zoo, you are in control. You can come, and you can go. The animal cannot. She is at your mercy, and at the mercy of those like you. The animal is on display for you.
In the wild, the creature is there for her own purposes. She is not under your control. She can come, and she can go. So can you. Neither of you is on display, and both of you can display as much of yourselves to the other as you wish. It is a meeting of equals.”
― Derrick Jensen, Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos

“As Mullan and Marvin say, in a line of theirs I finally agree with, 'Zoos represent the power of human beings to command the presence of living creatures which [sic] would normally absent themselves from human gaze.'

I go to a zoo. I see animals on display. I push a button and hear: 'All the animals in the zoo are eagerly awaiting you.' I come home. I open a newspaper and see an article titled, 'Animal Planet: From India’s famed camel fair to Indonesia’s fierce Komodo dragons—all the world’s a zoo.' And the subhead, large font, boldface: 'Animal World Awaits.' For whom? For you, of course.”
― Derrick Jensen, Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos

“Even if we accept their claims for the educational potential of zoos at face value, study after study has shown that zoos fail miserably at this task. As one author notes, 'A study of observation periods at Regent’s Park in 1985 revealed that spectators stood in front of the monkey enclosure for an average of 46 seconds, and spent 32 minutes in a pavilion containing a hundred cages. Rather than indicating thorough examination, this is reminiscent of the speed at which television programmes, and even works of art in museums, are consumed.' This 46 seconds includes time spent reading—or rather skimming—the information posted about the animals. Further, while 80 percent of zoo visitors claim to have learned something at the zoo, studies have shown that even after their visit patrons remain ‘less sensitive to the need to respect nature' than hikers. Further still, inquiry after inquiry has revealed that even while patrons are in the zoo, standing directly in front of the animals in question, they consistently fail even rudimentary nomenclature questions: they still call gibbons and orangutans monkeys; vultures buzzards; cassowaries peacocks; toucans fruitloop birds; tigers lions; otters beavers; and so on.”
― Derrick Jensen, Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos

“Peter Batten comments on the educational value of zoos: 'Whether anyone derives lasting benefit by seeing wild animals from other countries in enclosures which inhibit their natural behavior must be evaluated without bias. Should one learn that the chimpanzee, for example, is a neurotic humanoid that cadges food from humans, and throws tantrums and excreta should this not materialize? Or that the orangutan, which [who] by nature seldom descends to the soft forest floor, is a pathetic bundle of matted red fur in the corner of a tiled cell? Must the alert, gregarious California sea lion be represented by an animal, half blinded from filthy unsalted water, that [who] spends its life begging for rotten fish?'
All this said, I actually think zoos overwhelmingly succeed at teaching visitors about nonhumans. But the question remains: what are they teaching?”
― Derrick Jensen, Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos

“The modernization of zoo cages and their renaming as “habitat” fits perfectly into the story of our own confinement. Modern cages—the kind in zoos—use fewer bars, not because moats or electrified fences provide more freedom for those encaged, but because they provide the illusion of freedom to those who watch. The fantasy of the consumers of the spectacle, the fantasy of the consumers of the animals—the fantasy that the animals are eagerly awaiting us, awaiting our use—will be slightly less brittle. As the real world is increasingly consumed and turned into artificial habitat, or rather Habitat™, for humans and nonhumans alike, we increasingly attempt to blur the distinction between habitat and Habitat™ until multiple authors can state with a presumably straight face that the whole world is a zoo.”
― Derrick Jensen, Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos

“A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze."
Margaret Atwood

"Oh, I'm just a girl, living in captivity
Your rule of thumb makes me worry some
Oh, I'm just a girl, what's my destiny?
What I've succumbed to is making me numb"
Gwen Stefani”
― Liza Losada