Most people are prisoners, thinking only about the future or living in the past. They are not in the present, and the present is where everything begins.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I began to feel that, in a sense, we were all prisoners of our own history.
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.
Most go to prison not on account of their irreducible uniqueness as people but because they are part of a marginalized sector of the population who never had a chance, who were slated for it early on.
When it comes to inmates, we have boiled them down to just the few things we know about them - their crime, their current life situation, their identification number. But the reality is they were something before they were their crime.
People come from a certain generation and a certain whole way of looking at things, and you really do become a prisoner of your own world.
People sacrifice the present for the future. But life is available only in the present. That is why we should walk in such a way that every step can bring us to the here and the now.
Prison is, indeed, a translation of your metaphysics, ethics, sense of history and whatnot into the compact terms of your daily deportment.
We think we're living in the present, but we're really living in the past.
One does not expect to be comfortable in prison. As a matter of fact, one's mental suffering is so much greater than any common physical distress that the latter is almost forgotten.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.