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1 " Ester asked why people are sad." That’s simple," says the old man. " They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people's ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams. "
2 " How many rapes occurred inside the walls of the main camp of Ravensbrück is hard to put a figure to: so many of the victims—already, as Ilse Heinrich said, half dead—did not survive long enough after the war to talk about it. While many older Soviet women were reluctant to talk of the rape, younger survivors feel less restraint today. Nadia Vasilyeva was one of the Red Army nurses who were cornered by the Germans on the cliffs of the Crimea. Three years later in Neustrelitz, northwest of Ravensbrück, she and scores of other Red Army women were cornered again, this time by their own Soviet liberators intent on mass rape. Other women make no excuses for the Soviet rapists. ‘They were demanding payment for liberation,’ said Ilena Barsukova. ‘The Germans never raped the prisoners because we were Russian swine, but our own soldiers raped us. We were disgusted that they behaved like this. Stalin had said that no soldiers should be taken prisoner, so they felt they could treat us like dirt.’Like the Russians, Polish survivors were also reluctant for many years to talk of Red Army rape. ‘We were terrified by our Russian liberators,’ said Krystyna Zając. ‘But we could not talk about it later because of the communists who had by then taken over in Poland.’ Nevertheless, Poles, Yugoslavs, Czechs and French survivors all left accounts of being raped as soon as they reached the Soviet lines. They talked of being ‘hunted down’, ‘captured’ or ‘cornered’ and then raped.In her memoirs Wanda Wojtasik, one of the rabbits, says it was impossible to encounter a single Russian without being raped. As she, Krysia and their Lublin friends tried to head east towards their home, they were attacked at every turn. Sometimes the approach would begin with romantic overtures from ‘handsome men’, but these approaches soon degenerated into harassment and then rape. Wanda did not say she was raped herself, but describes episodes where soldiers pounced on friends, or attacked them in houses where they sheltered, or dragged women off behind trees, who then reappeared sobbing and screaming. ‘After a while we never accepted lifts and didn’t dare go near any villages, and when we slept someone always stood watch. "
― Sarah Helm , Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women
3 " Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is? "
― George Bernard Shaw , Man and Superman
4 " In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy. "
― Ivan Illich
5 " A war on cops? Then the question becomes who are they warring with? Because if you look at the prison system you can tell who the Prisoners of War are. The Black Man. Words are powerful and we must stop these divisive words that tare our country further apart instead of bringing us together. "
― Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.
6 " They were handsome, proper and normal family fathers who built the concentration camps and whipped the prisoners to death. And who was Nietzsche? A narcotized syphilitic. "
7 " We were to write a short essay on one of the works we read in the course and relate it to our lives. I chose the " Allegory of the Cave" in Plato's Republic. I compared my childhood of growing up in a family of migrant workers with the prisoners who were in a dark cave chained to the floor and facing a blank wall. I wrote that, like the captives, my family and other migrant workers were shackled to the fields day after day, seven days a week, week after week, being paid very little and living in tents or old garages that had dirt floors, no indoor plumbing, no electricity. I described how the daily struggle to simply put food on our tables kept us from breaking the shackles, from turning our lives around. I explained that faith and hope for a better life kept us going. I identified with the prisoner who managed to escape and with his sense of obligation to return to the cave and help others break free. "
8 " We are the prisoners of conformity. To get out of this prison, education is the only door and only opportunity. "
― Debasish Mridha
9 " A kind of wonder takes Chaucer over as he pants up Fleet Street and past the walled orchards and gardens of this lovely riverside suburb for princes of kingdom and Church.This isn't mob action, not really, even if there were men back there shouting that they were off to break into Newgate Jail and set the prisoners free.It's something else. Something he's never seen, or imagined.These men don't loot. They aren't trying to get rich, or even just get fed. They're not remotely interested in picking up a few unconsidered trifles from the palaces they're passing, however lovely the houses are, however manicured the gardens.They're here to destroy. And they know their targets. "
― Vanora Bennett , The People's Queen
10 " Instead of falling to the ground like a heavy doll, as Kermin had seen the prisoners do at the Chetnik executions, his mother shrank into herself, a reverse blossoming, coming to rest in a sitting position, like a ruminative Buddha "
― Reif Larsen
11 " They were the prisoners hidden in different cages, and yet they saw each other every day. He named her fire and she named him the wind, the day they both touched and embraced each other they burnt down everything that stood in their way. "
― Akshay Vasu
12 " The Death House back then was a self-contained unit, with its own hospital, kitchen, exercise yard and visiting room. The cells were inadequate, dark, and did not have proper sanitary facilities or ventilation. One window and skylight furnished the ventilation and light of the entire unit. Twelve cells were on the lower tier, six on each side, facing each other, with a narrow corridor between them. Five cells were located in an upper tier. There was an area the prisoners called the Dance Hall that housed a prisoner to be executed on his last day. The narrow corridor connected the Dance Hall to the execution room, where the Electric Chair resided. The prisoners named this corridor the Last Mile or the Green Mile, because this was the last walk a prisoner would take all the way to the small green riveted door at the end of the corridor, on his way to the execution room. "
― Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini , Antonio's Will
13 " For what is socialism? With the frills removed, it is people collectively running society. Instead of being the prisoners of anarchic capitalist competition and the mad rush for profit at any cost, it is working together for the common good. Our tremendous co-operative power would be controlled, not by a ruling class in the search for ever greater profits, but democratically and for the fulfillment of human need. "
― Alex Callinicos ,
14 " We all are the Prisoners of our Mind. Forget & Forgive to Claim your Freedom. "
15 " Thinking Reports enable the prisoners to wash their brains, and become new!" he announced cheerfully. " Washing the brain is very important to your reform, and improving your real situation. "
16 " It’s not our place to judge the guilt or innocence of the prisoners, Nurse Webster. The sooner you learn that the better. Any other approach just leads to conflicts of duty and undermines the smooth running of the institution. We are here to ensure that the prisoners are dealt with firmly and professionally. It’s up to their lawyers to handle matters pertaining to their sentences. "
― Rachel Dax , After the Night
17 " It is not the prisoners who need reformation it is the prisons. "
18 " The message of Jesus is summed up partly in the Sermon on the Mount, and partly when he begins his ministry and quotes the passage from Isaiah: 'I have come to set free the prisoners and restore sight to the blind.' And certainly, his mission is also to bring hope. It was to heal people, to befriend the outcast. "