Prisoners Quotes

See also Prison Quotes

Hundreds of political prisoners still suffer in Tibetan prisons. Freedom of speech is not allowed in any sense. It is illegal to possess a photo of the Dalai Lama.

- Joanna Lumley

The only way to get 520,000 men home - men who had been practically sneaked into Vietnam in the first place - was to make the decision to mine Haiphong Harbor. President (Richard Nixon) had the courage to make that decision, and when the other side started using prisoners of war as pawns, he had to make the awesome decision to bomb Hanoi. Which he did, and then he brought our prisoners of war home. Richard Nixon and I have had a long acquaintance. I respected him as a goodly man - winning or losing - over the years, and I think he should be standing in the crowning glory today for his accomplishments. Instead, they`ve chosen to blame him for the gradual growth of hypocrisy and individual ambition that have made our political system distasteful to the public.

- John Wayne

convincingly details the abuse of female prisoners and powerfully documents the erosion of their human rights.

- Michelle Phillips

Through my illness I learned rejection. I was written off. That was the moment I thought, Okay, game on. No prisoners. Everybody`s going down.

- Lance Armstrong

Torture has been privatized now, so you have obviously the whole scandal in America about the abuse of prisoners and the fact that, army people might be made to pay a price, but who are the privatized torturers accountable too?

- Arundhati Roy

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.

- Danny Glover

(regarding his ten-day jail term after his arrest for cannabis possession at Tokyo`s Narita Airport, Jan. 6, 1980) "It was pretty rough. Just a thin mattress on the floor. I had to wash using water from the toilet cistern. I had to share a bath with a bloke who was in for murder. I was afraid to take my suit off in case I got raped. But I`d seen all those prisoner-of-war movies and I knew you had to keep your spirits up. So I`d organize sing-alongs with other prisoners."

- Paul McCartney

Women are dominating the charts, and women are doing it for themselves. We`re kicking butt and taking no prisoners.

- Patti LaBelle

Both sides were supposed to release all their prisoners, those were unconditional. There was some prisoner release that took place but it`s not been satisfactory.

- Warren Christopher

On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.

- Michael Badnarik

He said to me, ``We are now going towards your friends, and if you attempt to run, or we are insulted, we will blow your brains out.`` When we had got into the road they formed a circle, and ordered the prisoners in the center, and to lead me in the front.

- Paul Revere

The worst thing that happens is someone comes out of the bullpen (an area in which prisoners are held to await court proceedings). Someone comes down here. Someone leaves the door open. Someone gets a weapon and they go back upstairs, ... I wouldn`t want to be the guy who didn`t do something and then, when something happens, people would say, `Why didn`t you do anything?`

- David Patterson

There`s not a lot of substance in what the minister is saying. The last time they addressed this issue they ended up sending rebates to federal prisoners and all kinds of ineligible people because it was so poorly designed.

- John Duncan

I thought the prisoners wouldn`t want to sort through the rubbish. But they were happy to do it because of the environmental benefits.

- Paul Cooper

If we are to rule out ... `degrading techniques` to be used against prisoners or terrorists, then I think we could thoroughly dismiss any possibility of getting information about an imminent terrorist attack, period.

- Steve Emerson

It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.

- Corazon Aquino

The Pentagon said that these prisoners were kept in accordance with the Geneva Convention, and of course I was not reassured by that, but I couldn`t prove that that was wrong; so we`re clearer about that.

- Peter Singer

She`s the perfect icon for our time, ... She takes no prisoners, she does whatever she damn well pleases and she looks fabulous doing it. She`s the only woman I know of who men and women both want to sleep with. Even gay men!

- Fern Mallis

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

- Abdul Jalil

It is also asserted that the election settled the matters of the war and the torture of prisoners. These are dead issues that no longer need be addressed.

- Akhmed Zakayev

Without history we are the prisoners of the accident of where and when we were born.

- Alan Zemaitis

The photographs of Iraqi prisoners being subjected to degrading and humiliating treatment by their captors, and the reports of acts of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and other acts of maltreatment shock the conscience.

- Albert Alschuler

The witty woman is a tragic figure in American life. Wit destroys eroticism and eroticism destroys wit, so women must choose between taking lovers and taking no prisoners.

- Aleta Jackson

When I`m forced by circumstances to be in a crowd of prisoners, it`s all I can do to refrain from attack.

- Alfred Balauro

I have to say when we talk about the treatment of these prisoners that I would guess that these prisoners wake up every morning thanking Allah that Saddam Hussein is not in charge of these prisons.

- Alfred Platt

If they`re in cell block 1A or 1B, these prisoners - they`re murderers, they`re terrorists, they`re insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands. And here we`re so concerned about the treatment of those individuals.

- Alfred Platt

If you hold thousands of prisoners, you have to feed them, clothe them, care for them, provide medical attention - and there were no provisions.

- Ali Allawi

Military police know what to do, they know the Geneva Conventions, and their objective is to provide a safe, secure, fair environment for prisoners under their control.

- Ali Allawi

The vast majority of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, even after interrogation, had no further intel value whatsoever.

- Ali Allawi

It is important that people support prisoners of the Italian state like Joe in whatever way they can. I was not allowed contact with a lawyer for the first 24 hours, and no phone calls were permitted, but apparently telegrams have been getting through to Joe.

- Alicia Molik

American soldiers had to guard prisoners on the inside while receiving mortar and weapons fire from the outside. Guantanamo is distant from any battlefield, making it far more secure.

- Allan Kline

Without territory, it does not even have the resources to provide detention facilities for prisoners, even if it were interested in holding captured POWs.

- Allan Kline

Human-rights advocates, for example, claim that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is of a piece with President Bush`s 2002 decision to deny al Qaeda and Taliban fighters the legal status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

- Allan Kline

It has never demonstrated any desire to provide humane treatment to captured Americans. If anything, the murders of Nicholas Berg and Daniel Pearl declare al Qaeda`s intentions to kill even innocent civilian prisoners.

- Allan Kline

In light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, critics are arguing that abuses of Iraqi prisoners are being produced by a climate of disregard for the laws of war.

- Allan Kline

We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime against humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls of the houses as prisoners. There is no sanction anywhere for the deplorable condition in which our women have to live.

- Ambrosia Anderson

In Vietnam we have no political prisoners. No one is arrested or jailed for his or her speech or point of view. They are put in jail because they violated the law.

- Amir Peretz

If people around the world knew how well people at Guantanamo Bay are treating prisoners, they would not fall prey to the accusations that some in our Chamber are making. They are all receiving judicial review.

- Andre Caminada

If anyone has it rough at Guantanamo, it is the guards. They are constantly harassed and threatened by some of these terrorists. Prisoners tell guards, we know where your families are. We know where your wife is, your children, and we are going to kill them.

- Andre Caminada

In my worst nightmares I never imagined that my people wouldn`t care about the mitzvah of rescuing prisoners to such an extent that they would bring to power my former commander -- the man who betrayed and abandoned me for 21 years.

- Andy Landers

The judicial authorities are imposing a grim ordeal on three journalists under pressure from the governor of an unstable state. The Nigerian press is still in the grip of harsh legislation, a brutal police force and authoritarian governors. On this New Year`s Eve, we call for their release and we reiterate our commitment to the independent press and, in particular, to the three Port Harcourt prisoners who are exposed to dangerous challenges.

- Ann Darrin

`The Marketing of Evil` takes no prisoners. David Kupelian brilliantly explains how a clever, radical elite is persuading Americans to accept evil as good, and good as evil. With precise clarity, the book blows the lid off the most successful ? and dangerous ? cultural scams. In addition, Kupelian`s personal vignettes and vigorous writing hold the reader`s interest throughout.

- Ann Fields

(To survive has required tenacity. Koreans are reported even to have murdered children and mixed their flesh with pork to eat. When I have encountered North Korean refugees in Asia, they look barely human - stunted figures with sallow, terrified faces. Some North Koreans have tried to grow their own food, potentially a sign of independent thinking. But for years Kim had them stopped, though he has begun to open the economy slightly in the past three years. Those who protested were sent to an extensive gulag system, which may have resulted in the deaths of one million people. In this internal slave state, Becker suggests, tests of chemical weapons are carried out on prisoners, and pregnant women whose children were tainted with foreign blood have been forced to have abortions. Kim Jong Il has) resisted adopting every policy that could have brought the misery to a quick end, ... the suffering he inflicted on an entire people an unparalleled and monstrous crime.

- Armon Bassett

It is expensive, but it`s a commitment the county has made to keep prisoners in jail to serve sentences and to avoid overcrowding,

- Atish Kala

(The government insists it is not repressing religious or political rights.) Some people may argue that Vietnam does not have freedom and democracy and only has a one-party system. But you know, our ultimate goal is to maintain political stability and serve the interests of the people, ... We do not agree with arguments from the outside that there are prisoners of conscience in Vietnam. We do not have any prisoners of conscience in Vietnam.

- Avel Solomon

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.

- Henry Beston

Many of us who walk to and fro upon our usual tasks are prisoners drawing mental maps of escape

- Loren Eiseley