Top 100 Imprisoned Quotes

Words matter. These are the best Imprisoned Quotes from famous people such as Samuel Butler, Bob Menendez, Richard Holbrooke, Wynonna Judd, George Jackson, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them

Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.
Samuel Butler
Don’t blame America for the thousands of Cubans who have been arrested, detained, and imprisoned by Castro for peacefully protesting the regime.
Bob Menendez
I think history is continuous. It doesn’t begin or end on Pearl Harbor Day or the day Lyndon Johnson withdraws from the presidency or on 9/11. You have to learn from the past but not be imprisoned by it. You need to take counsel of history but never be imprisoned by it.
Richard Holbrooke
Most of us are imprisoned by something. We’re living in darkness until something flips on the switch.
Wynonna Judd
Very few men imprisoned for economic crimes or even crimes of passion against the oppressor feel that they are really guilty.
George Jackson
I do not come bearing a party label on my sleeve – or a quick fix in my back pocket. I do not come with a rigid ideology in my heart – or a soul that tells me to go it alone. I do not come to uproot tradition – or to be imprisoned by it.
Ted Kulongoski
I haven’t read enough of the Bible. You know, I’m saving the Bible for if I ever get imprisoned, and the only reading material was the Bible.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Bradley Manning has been imprisoned without charge, under torture, which is what solitary confinement is.
Noam Chomsky
People should not be imprisoned without having the ability to challenge the legality of that imprisonment.
Jeff Bingaman
My childhood was not always a happy one because we had to visit our father in jail, as my father was often imprisoned by the Pakistani rulers.
Sheikh Hasina
I do not come bearing a party label on my sleeve – or a quick fix in my back pocket. I do not come with a rigid ideology in my heart – or a soul that tells me to go it alone. I do not come to uproot tradition – or to be imprisoned by it.
Ted Kulongoski
Christians who believe in the Bible believe that it is their job to bring others the joy of salvation. Even if they’re murdered, beaten to death, imprisoned – that’s what you do for God.
Daniel Everett
Novels are the means by which we can escape the moment we are imprisoned in, but at the same time, the roots of a novel are in the world in which it is written. We write, and we read, to understand the world we live in.
Romesh Gunesekera
From my family alone, Qaddafi had imprisoned five men.
Hisham Matar
By the fulfillment of my legal and moral duty I think I have earned punishment just as little as the tens of thousands of dutiful German officials who have now been imprisoned only because they carried out their duties.
Wilhelm Frick
Through my work with PETA, I have learned a great deal about chimpanzee behavior and the plight of chimpanzees imprisoned in laboratories.
Woody Harrelson
It’s always crude to link Dickens back to the blacking factory where he was sent to work aged 12 when his father was imprisoned in Marshalsea Prison for bad debt, but it was obviously a huge part of him.
Harry Lloyd
Any child who dreams to do good in the world has Mandela as his hero. I own a dog-eared copy of ‘Long Walk to Freedom’ and visited Robben Island, where he was imprisoned, to stand in a cell only as wide as an arm’s span.
Craig Kielburger
Everybody seems to be imprisoned in their own sectarian or political affiliations. They don’t seem to be able to rise above these things.
Adnan Pachachi
Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signaling to be let out.
Cyril Connolly
With my somewhat vague aspiring mind, to be imprisoned in the rude details of a most material life was often irksome.
Edward Carpenter
And also I didn’t want my future to be just sitting in a room and be imprisoned in my four walls and just cooking and giving birth to children. I didn’t want to see my life in that way.
Malala Yousafzai
When President Hassan Rouhani was elected in Iran in 2013, he welcomed back the far-flung children of Iran. But one by one, they have been arrested and imprisoned upon their return, a fate that has made me increasingly reluctant to risk going back to a homeland I’ve not seen since 1992.
Nazanin Boniadi
Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis – once that crisis can be recognized and understood.
Norman Cousins
Through my work with PETA, I have learned a great deal about chimpanzee behavior and the plight of chimpanzees imprisoned in laboratories.
Woody Harrelson
It’s always crude to link Dickens back to the blacking factory where he was sent to work aged 12 when his father was imprisoned in Marshalsea Prison for bad debt, but it was obviously a huge part of him.
Harry Lloyd
Here in Britain, black people are disproportionately targeted, arrested and imprisoned for drug offences, while organised and violent crime are granted a massive source of revenue.
Owen Jones
I think of myself, an Iranian/American artist, and wonder what would I want if I’m ever imprisoned by the Iranian government for the work that I make? I answer: I would hope that the United States government comes to my rescue.
Shirin Neshat
A political prisoner is someone who is out fighting for his or her people’s rights and freedom and is imprisoned for that alone.
Leonard Peltier
It was an egregious violation of the American Constitution. We were innocent American citizens, and we were imprisoned simply because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. It shows us just how fragile our Constitution is.
George Takei
Prostitution, although hounded, imprisoned, and chained, is nevertheless the greatest triumph of Puritanism.
Emma Goldman
Even today, when the Obama administration has liberaliz

Even today, when the Obama administration has liberalized travel to Cuba – and failed to reverse that liberalization when Alan Gross was imprisoned – there are limits.
Elliott Abrams
In many countries, same-sex relationships are illegal. Young people are forced to hide and deny their love and their identity. LGBTQI people are persecuted, harassed and even imprisoned. For me, this is totally inconceivable.
Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden
I am a Muslim. I am born to Muslim parents. I have a Muslim son. I have been imprisoned and witnessed torture for my previous understanding of my religion.
Maajid Nawaz
Similarly, the Marquis is presented in this film as someone who would disturb the status quo and therefore must be kept imprisoned.
Philip Kaufman
Whistleblowers are typically rendered incommunicado, either because they’re in hiding, or advised by their lawyers to stay silent, or imprisoned. As a result, the public hears only about them, but never from them, which makes their demonization virtually inevitable.
Glenn Greenwald
With my somewhat vague aspiring mind, to be imprisoned in the rude details of a most material life was often irksome.
Edward Carpenter
The practice of shaving makes its first appearance in the Bible in connection with the story of Joseph, who as a young man was sold by his brothers into slavery in Egypt, where he was subsequently imprisoned on false charges.
Meir Soloveichik
Imprisoned by its war on terror framework, the Bush administration supported Israel in a disastrous war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in the summer of 2006.
Peter Bergen
And also I didn’t want my future to be just sitting in a room and be imprisoned in my four walls and just cooking and giving birth to children. I didn’t want to see my life in that way.
Malala Yousafzai
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that’s unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
In our natural state, we are glorious beings. In the world of illusion, we are lost and imprisoned, slaves to our appetites and our will to false power.
Marianne Williamson
If we bought everything on the Internet, our eyes and mouths and nostrils would probably begin to film over with a tegument – one initially tissue-thin and capable of being removed each morning, but which gradually thickened and hardened until we were imprisoned in our own tiny minds.
Will Self
I was at a benefit for some imprisoned students in the ’60s at San Francisco State, and there were lots of poets reading for the benefit: one was Elizabeth Bishop.
Thom Gunn
It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
Graham Greene
When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you see the real you, or what you have been conditioned to believe is you? The two are so, so different. One is an infinite consciousness capable of being and creating whatever it chooses, the other is an illusion imprisoned by its own perceived and programmed limitations.
David Icke
The spirit of Burzum never changed, but my ability to make music changed dramatically when I was imprisoned. It is more or less impossible to record music in prison, and the only music I could record was electronic music, when I was allowed to have a synthesizer for a few months in 1994 or 1995 and in 1998.
Varg Vikernes
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
The spirit of Burzum never changed, but my ability to make music changed dramatically when I was imprisoned. It is more or less impossible to record music in prison, and the only music I could record was electronic music, when I was allowed to have a synthesizer for a few months in 1994 or 1995 and in 1998.
Varg Vikernes
Open your newspaper – any day of the week – and you will find a report from somewhere in the world of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government.
Peter Benenson
For those of us imprisoned in Poland, the Prague Spring was a harbinger of hope.
Adam Michnik