imprisonment

When you fear nothing, you have nothing to fear

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.

When failure imprisons you for not doing what you should have done, you have no option than to bail yourself on the promise of trying again! Try again!

But life, they said, means life. Dying inside.The Devil was evil, mad, but I was the Devil's wifewhich made me worse. I howled in my cell.If the Devil is gone then how could this be hell?

Never let your mind imprison your achievements by imposing disbelief on you.

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?

A utopian system, when established by men, is likely to be synonymous with a dystopian depression. The only way for perfect peace by man is absolute control of all wrongs. Bully-cultures find this: with each and every mistake, another village idiot is shamed into nothingness and mindlessly shut down by the herd. This is a superficial peace made by force and by fear, one in which there is no freedom to breathe; and the reason it is impossible for man to maintain freedom and peace for everyone at the same time. Christ, on the other hand, transforms, instead of controls, by instilling his certain inner peace. This is the place where one realizes that only his holiness is and feels like true freedom, rather than like imprisonment, and, too, why Hell, I imagine, a magnified version of man's never-ending conflict between freedom and peace, would be the flesh's ultimate utopia - yet its ultimate regret.

Mental ghettos are not mirages; they actually exist in palpable reality: being "open" inside one's mental or intellectual ghetto does not open its door but simply allows one to harbour the illusion that there is no ghetto and no door. The most dangerous prisons are those with invisible bars.

A prisoner should know that there are thousands of imprisoned freemen living in this world_jailed in their own society, handcuffed by duties..

Thou, my slave,As thou report'st thyself, was then her servant,And for thou wast a spirit too delicateTo act her earthy and abhorred commands,Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,By help of her more potent ministersAnd in her most unmitigable rage,Into a cloven pine, within which riftImprisoned thou didst painfully remainA dozen years; within which space she diedAnd left thee there, where thou didst vent thy groansAs fast as mill wheels strike.

Imprisoned peace sets the war free

I would suggest that the prisons I incessantly create are not designed to lock me in, rather they are designed to lock the world out. And the oddity is that either way, I am a prisoner who has sentenced himself to a prison within which I do not belong.

The more we construct lives that prioritize safety, the bigger the prison we construct around ourselves.

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

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.

A bus drives past and I__ nauseated by a whiff of exhaust. Then rotting fish. The rancid stench of sewage. Is it garbage day? I__ trapped in the pungent fog, in the dreary suburban-style shops, the rat race of city life. The city, even on the west coast, has the power to beat us down, to suck us of passion, to crush our dreams.

Lose your freedom, and become a slave by borrowing.

It is likely to make us think we are not caged. We cannot feel the bars unless we push against them.