#imprison

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. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#imprisonment #life

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. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#criminal-justice-system #cycle-of-violence #desperation #greed #homelessness

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#because #civilization #democracy #him #imprison

If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to blind, imprison, and destroy. ↗

— Ralph Ellison

#blind #destroy #free #imprison #make

Prostitution, although hounded, imprisoned, and chained, is nevertheless the greatest triumph of Puritanism. ↗

— Emma Goldman

#chained #greatest #hounded #imprisoned #nevertheless

The fundamental sense of freedom is freedom from chains, from imprisonment, from enslavement by others. The rest is extension of this sense, or else metaphor. ↗

— Isaiah Berlin

#else #enslavement #extension #freedom #freedom from

What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself - life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose. ↗

— Willa Cather

#art #away #element #elusive #hurrying

I refuse to imprison our acts in the rigid mould of sentences. ↗

— Ella Maillart

#i #imprison #mould #our #refuse

Saddam's fate should be in the hands of his country men. They were the major victims of his brutal reign and should decide his life, death, or permanent imprisonment. Personally, I would lock him away forever. ↗

— Ronnie James Dio

#brutal #country #death #decide #fate

No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. ↗

— J. Michael Straczynski

#dictator #force #forever #hold #imprisoned