Imprisonment Quotes
Quotes tagged as "imprisonment"
Showing 1-30 of 78

“Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
― Elective Affinities
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
― Elective Affinities

“I'm convinced that most men don't know what they believe, rather, they only know what they wish to believe. How many people blame God for man's atrocities, but wouldn't dream of imprisoning a mother for her son's crime?”
― Killosophy
― Killosophy

“I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished.
It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity.”
― You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity.”
― You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“I have always been interested in this man. My father had a set of Tom Paine's books on the shelf at home. I must have opened the covers about the time I was 13. And I can still remember the flash of enlightenment which shone from his pages. It was a revelation, indeed, to encounter his views on political and religious matters, so different from the views of many people around us. Of course I did not understand him very well, but his sincerity and ardor made an impression upon me that nothing has ever served to lessen.
I have heard it said that Paine borrowed from Montesquieu and Rousseau. Maybe he had read them both and learned something from each. I do not know. But I doubt that Paine ever borrowed a line from any man...
Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp. There is nothing false, little that is subtle, and an impressive lack of the negative in Paine. He literally cried to his reader for a comprehending hour, and then filled that hour with such sagacious reasoning as we find surpassed nowhere else in American letters - seldom in any school of writing.
Paine would have been the last to look upon himself as a man of letters. Liberty was the dear companion of his heart; truth in all things his object.
...we, perhaps, remember him best for his declaration:
'The world is my country; to do good my religion.'
Again we see the spontaneous genius at work in 'The Rights of Man', and that genius busy at his favorite task - liberty. Written hurriedly and in the heat of controversy, 'The Rights of Man' yet compares favorably with classical models, and in some places rises to vaulting heights. Its appearance outmatched events attending Burke's effort in his 'Reflections'.
Instantly the English public caught hold of this new contribution. It was more than a defense of liberty; it was a world declaration of what Paine had declared before in the Colonies. His reasoning was so cogent, his command of the subject so broad, that his legion of enemies found it hard to answer him.
'Tom Paine is quite right,' said Pitt, the Prime Minister, 'but if I were to encourage his views we should have a bloody revolution.'
Here we see the progressive quality of Paine's genius at its best. 'The Rights of Man' amplified and reasserted what already had been said in 'Common Sense', with now a greater force and the power of a maturing mind. Just when Paine was at the height of his renown, an indictment for treason confronted him. About the same time he was elected a member of the Revolutionary Assembly and escaped to France.
So little did he know of the French tongue that addresses to his constituents had to be translated by an interpreter. But he sat in the assembly. Shrinking from the guillotine, he encountered Robespierre's enmity, and presently found himself in prison, facing that dread instrument.
But his imprisonment was fertile. Already he had written the first part of 'The Age of Reason' and now turned his time to the latter part.
Presently his second escape cheated Robespierre of vengeance, and in the course of events 'The Age of Reason' appeared. Instantly it became a source of contention which still endures. Paine returned to the United States a little broken, and went to live at his home in New Rochelle - a public gift. Many of his old companions in the struggle for liberty avoided him, and he was publicly condemned by the unthinking.
{The Philosophy of Paine, June 7, 1925}”
― Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison
I have heard it said that Paine borrowed from Montesquieu and Rousseau. Maybe he had read them both and learned something from each. I do not know. But I doubt that Paine ever borrowed a line from any man...
Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp. There is nothing false, little that is subtle, and an impressive lack of the negative in Paine. He literally cried to his reader for a comprehending hour, and then filled that hour with such sagacious reasoning as we find surpassed nowhere else in American letters - seldom in any school of writing.
Paine would have been the last to look upon himself as a man of letters. Liberty was the dear companion of his heart; truth in all things his object.
...we, perhaps, remember him best for his declaration:
'The world is my country; to do good my religion.'
Again we see the spontaneous genius at work in 'The Rights of Man', and that genius busy at his favorite task - liberty. Written hurriedly and in the heat of controversy, 'The Rights of Man' yet compares favorably with classical models, and in some places rises to vaulting heights. Its appearance outmatched events attending Burke's effort in his 'Reflections'.
Instantly the English public caught hold of this new contribution. It was more than a defense of liberty; it was a world declaration of what Paine had declared before in the Colonies. His reasoning was so cogent, his command of the subject so broad, that his legion of enemies found it hard to answer him.
'Tom Paine is quite right,' said Pitt, the Prime Minister, 'but if I were to encourage his views we should have a bloody revolution.'
Here we see the progressive quality of Paine's genius at its best. 'The Rights of Man' amplified and reasserted what already had been said in 'Common Sense', with now a greater force and the power of a maturing mind. Just when Paine was at the height of his renown, an indictment for treason confronted him. About the same time he was elected a member of the Revolutionary Assembly and escaped to France.
So little did he know of the French tongue that addresses to his constituents had to be translated by an interpreter. But he sat in the assembly. Shrinking from the guillotine, he encountered Robespierre's enmity, and presently found himself in prison, facing that dread instrument.
But his imprisonment was fertile. Already he had written the first part of 'The Age of Reason' and now turned his time to the latter part.
Presently his second escape cheated Robespierre of vengeance, and in the course of events 'The Age of Reason' appeared. Instantly it became a source of contention which still endures. Paine returned to the United States a little broken, and went to live at his home in New Rochelle - a public gift. Many of his old companions in the struggle for liberty avoided him, and he was publicly condemned by the unthinking.
{The Philosophy of Paine, June 7, 1925}”
― Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison

“Most of us are imprisoned by something. We're living in darkness until something flips on the switch.”
―
―

“...So we passed, handcuffed and in silence, through the streets of Washington, through the Captial of a nation, whose theory of government, we are told, rests on the foundation of man's inalienable right to life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness! Hail! Columbia, happy land, indeed!”
― Twelve Years a Slave
― Twelve Years a Slave

“The history of man is simply the history of slavery, of injustice and brutality, together with the means by which he has, through the dead and desolate years, slowly and painfully advanced. He has been the sport and prey of priest and king, the food of superstition and cruel might. Crowned force has governed ignorance through fear. Hypocrisy and tyranny—two vultures—have fed upon the liberties of man. From all these there has been, and is, but one means of escape—intellectual development. Upon the back of industry has been the whip. Upon the brain have been the fetters of superstition. Nothing has been left undone by the enemies of freedom. Every art and artifice, every cruelty and outrage has been practiced and perpetrated to destroy the rights of man. In this great struggle every crime has been rewarded and every virtue has been punished. Reading, writing, thinking and investigating have all been crimes.
Every science has been an outcast.
All the altars and all the thrones united to arrest the forward march of the human race. The king said that mankind must not work for themselves. The priest said that mankind must not think for themselves. One forged chains for the hands, the other for the soul. Under this infamous regime the eagle of the human intellect was for ages a slimy serpent of hypocrisy.
The human race was imprisoned. Through some of the prison bars came a few struggling rays of light. Against these bars Science pressed its pale and thoughtful face, wooed by the holy dawn of human advancement. Bar after bar was broken away. A few grand men escaped and devoted their lives to the liberation of their fellows.”
― The Liberty Of Man, Woman And Child
Every science has been an outcast.
All the altars and all the thrones united to arrest the forward march of the human race. The king said that mankind must not work for themselves. The priest said that mankind must not think for themselves. One forged chains for the hands, the other for the soul. Under this infamous regime the eagle of the human intellect was for ages a slimy serpent of hypocrisy.
The human race was imprisoned. Through some of the prison bars came a few struggling rays of light. Against these bars Science pressed its pale and thoughtful face, wooed by the holy dawn of human advancement. Bar after bar was broken away. A few grand men escaped and devoted their lives to the liberation of their fellows.”
― The Liberty Of Man, Woman And Child

“The worst of it is that I am perpetually being punished for nothing; this governor loves to punish, and he punishes by taking my books away from me. It's perfectly awful to let the mind grind itself away between the upper and nether millstones of regret and remorse without respite; with books my life would be livable -- any life.”
―
―

“The worst stage was when one could tell she was still awake and almost alert, but she knew that nothing worked. Imprisoned. She was imprisoned. In a statue like the Sphinx. Looking out from the eyes. Her own mind, at that point, was as small and bewildered as a little fly. Behind great battlements.”
― Feed
― Feed

“They were men, and free. I was a woman, and a slave. And that’s a chasm no amount of sentimental chit-chat about shared imprisonment should be allowed to obscure.”
― The Silence of the Girls
― The Silence of the Girls

“Poverty is so concentrated because it is generational and, research shows, created with relentless intention.”
― Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City
― Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City

“The best examples for lifetime imprisonment is the God in the temple and the dead body in the cemetery”
―
―

“The State is not God. It has no right to take away that which it cannot give back, if it should so desire.”
― The Bet
― The Bet

“Our society's insistence on limiting help to those who "deserve it," as indicated by their status in the labor market, has a profound impact on the capacity of those living in deep poverty to escape ... we also cannot defend the inhumane debate about who are the deserving versus the undeserving poor.”
―
―

“the given language is power because it compels me to use already formulated stereotypes, including words themselves, and that it is structured so fatally that, slaves inside it, we cannot free ourselves outside it, because outside the given language there is nothing.
How can we escape what Barthes calls, Sartre-like, this huis clos? By cheating. You can cheat the given language. This dishonest and healthy and liberating trick is called literature.”
― Travels in Hyperreality
How can we escape what Barthes calls, Sartre-like, this huis clos? By cheating. You can cheat the given language. This dishonest and healthy and liberating trick is called literature.”
― Travels in Hyperreality

“Some critics will counter that poverty is a choice made by those that are lazy or who lack the desire to change their loves for the better. I agree that poverty is a choice. But that choice is not made by the people who live under its oppressive effects. Rather, the choice is ours. It's the choice of government that represents our priorities and allocates our investments. Its a choice reinforced by the companies we patronize and the organizations we support.”
― Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City
― Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City

“… our fates are profoundly intertwined. We have to take care of one another.”
― Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City
― Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City

“… the criminal justice system affects more than the men whose lives are irrevcocably changed when they encounter the system.”
― Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City
― Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City

“The truth is that our individual efforts are important but insufficient. Our collective action -- the leaders we elect, the institutions administered in the name of the People, the other stanchions at the table --- offers an opportunity for bigger, longer-lasting action.”
― Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City
― Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City

“Throw the bums out" and "Drain the swamp" are popular political slogans. But it's not enough to move people around in a bureaucracy if you don't change the underlying values and let those values reshape tactics and procedures.”
― Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City
― Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City

“Our country has a long history, and for much of it the intentional policy of the United States was to create hierarchies of people based on their class, race, and gender.”
― Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City
― Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City

“The stigma and lifelong negative bias that results from even a fleeting encounter with the criminal justice system is absolutely life changing.”
― Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City
― Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City

“(his) actions also underscore the limits of symbolic gestures toward social justice that we also often see in the world of philanthropy. We often pay homage to what needs to change and attempt half measures, but we rarely challenge our own complicity in the structural inequities.”
― Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City
― Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City

“To be imprisoned is to spend all one’s time longing for the life one can no longer experience. - Adam Lesage”
― City of Crows
― City of Crows

“These days of internment are long. I do miss the falling blossoms, the manifold seasons of life, the thousand glances from the grand seductress – the world. But now all is uncertain.”
― Game of Big Numbers
― Game of Big Numbers

“Be careful that the decisions that you ‘make’ are not forging the chains that you cannot ‘unmake’ because those are the chains that will eventually ‘unmake’ you.”
―
―
“Let us evade the grueling imprisonment of our mental cage and invade the explosive power of love. Only by redirecting lost momentum to positive thinking we can restrengthen the mold of our trust. (“Le ciel c’est l’autre”)”
―
―

“People who thought it fun to keep tegu lizards in cases too small for them displayed a mentality exactly like that of his parents. “It’s so cute!” they cooed as they fed the thing or gave it water or moved its case into the sunlight or warmed it with lamps. Even under the best conditions, lizards and tortoises never lived as long in captivity as in the wild; these people were slowly but surely killing the pets they found so adorable.”
― From the Fatherland, with Love
― From the Fatherland, with Love

“I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but not know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.”
― Walden & Civil Disobedience
― Walden & Civil Disobedience
All Quotes
|
My Quotes
|
Add A Quote
Browse By Tag
- Love Quotes 81k
- Life Quotes 63k
- Inspirational Quotes 60.5k
- Humor Quotes 38k
- Philosophy Quotes 23.5k
- God Quotes 22k
- Inspirational Quotes Quotes 21k
- Truth Quotes 19.5k
- Wisdom Quotes 18.5k
- Poetry Quotes 17.5k
- Romance Quotes 17k
- Death Quotes 16.5k
- Happiness Quotes 15.5k
- Faith Quotes 15k
- Hope Quotes 15k
- Inspiration Quotes 13.5k
- Quotes Quotes 13k
- Writing Quotes 13k
- Religion Quotes 12k
- Life Lessons Quotes 12k
- Motivational Quotes 12k
- Success Quotes 11.5k
- Relationships Quotes 11.5k
- Spirituality Quotes 10.5k
- Time Quotes 10k
- Love Quotes Quotes 10k
- Knowledge Quotes 10k
- Life Quotes Quotes 9.5k
- Science Quotes 9.5k
- Books Quotes 9k