Political Prisoner Quotes

“It is not those who can inflict the most but those who can endure the most who will conquer.”
― Terence Macswiney, Principles of Freedom

“When I got out of prison, I was basically no longer human,' Miriam says.”
― Anna Funder, Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

“For a detained patriot, breaking through the doubled walls of gray silence, attempting even a symbolic link with the outside world, is an act of resistance And resistance--even at the level of merely asserting one's rights, of maintaining one's ideological beliefs in the face of a programmed onslaught--is in fact the only way political prisoners can maintain their sanity and humanity. Resistance is the only means of trying to prevent a breakdown. The difficulty lies in the fact that in this effort one must rely first and foremost on one's own resources (writing defiance on toilet paper for instance), and nobody can teach one how to do it.”
― Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir

“Freedom is a choice, and we have to defend our choices.”
― Vahid Asghari, CIA Boy ISS Girl

“[Deputy Superintendent Lim] knew that I was angry. But he also knew that for his career, it was best that I be persuaded to appear on television. I told him to leave me alone but he persisted. I admired his patience, his persistence, his "concern for me." He called me "My Esperanza" (the name of a play performed by the Third Stage). He started to call the woman constable who assisted him, "Soh Lung". He joked about worrying in the night, that because of my refusal to appear on television, he would call my name while hugging his wife! I pitied him. He was pathetic.”
― Teo Soh Lung, Beyond The Blue Gate: Recollections of a Political Prisoner

“Hirohito tried to show no change in his face, but he was changing on the inside, where people change when they’re sad or angry.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer