#prison

Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that. ↗

— Philip Kaufman

#answers #anything #complex #death #death penalty

One of the striking features of the form of globalisation that has now been established is that it is based on the premise that goods and even capital should be free to roam but labour must remain imprisoned within the nation state. ↗

— Roberto Unger

#been #capital #established #even #features

I mean, I was just one of the ones who got exposed, and because of the position I was in, where I was in my life, it went mainstream. A lot of people got out of it after my situation, not because I went to prison but because it was sad for them to see me go through something that was so pointless, that could have been avoided. ↗

— Michael Vick

#avoided #because #been #could #exposed

The first day I walked into prison, and he slammed that door, I knew the magnitude of the decision that I made, and the poor judgment, and what I allowed to happen to the animals. And, you know, it's no way of explaining the hurt and the guilt that I felt. And that was the reason I cried so many nights. ↗

— Michael Vick

#cried #day #decision #door #explaining

Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos rendered invisible in public discourse. ↗

— Cornel West

#brown #catastrophe #complex #discourse #ghettos

The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realise through that sin his true perfection. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#freedom #oscar #personality #prison #soul

Today more Americans are imprisoned for drug offenses than for property crimes. ↗

— George Will

#imprisoned #more #offenses #property #than

The Past: Our cradle, not our prison; there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition. ↗

— Israel Zangwill

#continuation #cradle #danger #glamour #imitation

That is how prison is tearing me up inside. It hurts every day. Every day takes me further from my life. ↗

— Jack Henry Abbott

#every #every day #further #how #hurts

I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there, in prison, that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My home made education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man. ↗

— Malcolm X

#education #hope #prison #prison-industrial-complex #race