Confinement Quotes - page 3
Enforced solitude, as in solitary confinement, is a terrible and disorienting punishment, but freely chosen solitude is an immense blessing. To be out of the rattle and clang of quotidian life, to be away from the garbage of other people's amusements and the overflow of their unwanted subjectivities, is the essential escape. Solitude is, beyond question, one of the worlds great gifts and an indispensable aid to creativity, no matter what level that creation may be hatched at.
Robert Hughes
We do not desire that the unanimity of a jury should be the result of anything but the unanimity of conviction. It is true that a single juryman, or two or three constituting a small minority, may, if their own convictions are not strong and deeply rooted, think themselves justified in giving way to the majority. If is very true, if jurymen have only doubts or weak convictions, they may yield to the stronger and more determined view of their fellows; but I hold it to be of the essence of a juryman's duty, if he has a firm and deeply rooted conviction, either in the affirmative or the negative of the issue he has to try, not to give up that conviction, although the majority may be against him, from any desire to purchase his freedom from confinement or constraint, or the various other inconveniences to which jurors are subject.
Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet
As we have seen, WikiLeaks is a robust organization. During my time in solitary confinement in the basement of a Victorian prison, we continue to release, our media partners continued to write stories. The important revelations from this material continue to come out. We have approximately 2,000 cables into 250,000.
Julian Assange
Several inhabitants have been killed and wounded, and nearly sixty within a short time carried into confinement and robbed of their property, and unless some protection is afforded, those who are of ability and inclination will retire into the country, and others will make their peace. The ardor of the people, (which is to be lamented,) has abated in consequence of their distresses, so that very little opposition is to be expected from them.
Abraham Davenport
Much has been said of the universal desire for peace, which is the desire of all peoples and, therefore, the desire of our people too, but the peace which the world wishes to preserve is the peace that we Cuban have been missing for quite some time.... Are we, the Cuban delegates, the representatives of the worst type of Government in the world? Do we, the representatives of the Cuban delegation, deserve the maltreatment we have received? And why our delegation? Cuba has sent many delegations to the United Nations, and yet it was we who were singled out for such exceptional measures: confinement to the Island of Manhattan; notice to all hotels not to rent rooms to us, hostility and, under the pretense of security, isolation.
Fidel Castro
What I write is full of infirmities. I have been in solitary confinement for twelve months and in a death cell for three months, deprived of all facilities. I have written much of this by resting the paper on my thigh in unbearable heat. I have no reference material or library, I have rarely seen the blue sky. The quotations are from the few books I was permitted to read and from the journals and newspapers you and your mother bring once a week during your visits to my suffocating cell. I am not making excuses for my deficiencies but it is very difficult to rely on a fading memory in such physical and mental conditions.
I am fifty years old and you are exactly half my age. By the time you reach my age, you must accomplish twice as much as I have achieved for the people.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental vision to weigh with patience and intelligence those isolated phenomena, seen and felt only by a psychologically sensitive few, which lie outside its common experience. Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal; that all things appear as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we are made conscious of them; but the prosaic materialism of the majority condemns as madness the flashes of super-sight which penetrate the common veil of obvious empiricism.
H. P. Lovecraft
There is no doubt about Martin Luther's marriage, but the rumour about his wife's early confinement is false; she is said however to be pregnant now. If there is truth in the popular legend, that Antichrist will be born from a monk and a nun (which is the story these people keep putting about), how many thousands of Antichrists the world must have already!
Desiderius Erasmus
As for the "solitary confinement of the mind," my theory is that solipsism, like other absurdities of the professional philosopher, is a product of too much time wasted in library stacks between the covers of a book, in smoke-filled coffeehouses (bad for brains) and conversation-clogged seminars. To refute the solipsist or the metaphysical idealist all that you have to do is take him out and throw a rock at his head: if he ducks he's a liar. His logic may be airtight but his argument, far from revealing the delusions of living experience, only exposes the limitations of logic.
Edward Abbey