The concentration camps, by making death itself anonymous (making it impossible to find out whether a prisoner is dead or alive), robbed death of its meaning as the end of a fulfilled life. In a sense they took away the individuals own death, proving that henceforth nothing belonged to him and he belonged to no one. His death merely set a seal on the fact that he had never existed.
Hannah Arendt
Everywhere all over Africa and South America ... you see these suburbs springing up. They represent the optimum of what people want. There's a certain sort of logic leading towards these immaculate suburbs. And they're terrifying, because they are the death of the soul ... This is the prison this planet is being turned into.
James Graham Ballard
Ordinary men died, men of iron were taken prisoner: I only brought back with me men of bronze.
Napoleon Bonaparte
If I were asked to chose between execution and life in prison I would, of course, chose the latter. Its better to live somehow than not at all.
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
My keepers, why keepers, I'm in no danger of stirring an inch, ah I see, it's to make me think I'm a prisoner, frantic with corporeality, rearing to get out and away.
Samuel Beckett
I'm quite hardcore on this. I think every psychic and medium in this country belongs in prison. Even the ones demented enough to believe in what they're doing. In fact, especially them. Give them windowless cells and make them crap in buckets.
Charlton
There is a subtle difference between being a prisoner and being a slave. I don't mistake either for being free.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Nearly a quarter of American men were in the Armed forces [in 1968]. The rest were in school, in prison, or were George W. Bush.
William Cullen Bryant
OH! hear a pensive captive's prayer, For liberty that sighs ; And never let thine heart be shut Against the prisoner's cries.
Anna Letitia Barbauld
The big lock-up is about drugs. Here's the real scam. The drug war is one of the games to get more convictions and prisoners.
Jerry Brown