It’s what you do in your free time that will set you free — or enslave you.

as soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape.

We are not imprisoned by our circumstances. We are not imprisoned by the luck we get or the inherent unfairness of life. We are not imprisoned by crushing setbacks, self-inflicted mistakes or our past success. We are not imprisoned by the time in which we live, by the number of hours in a day or even the number of hours we're granted in our very short lives. In the end, we can control only a tiny sliver of what happens to us. But even so, we are free to choose, free to become great by choice.

People are often unable to do anything, imprisoned as they are in I don't know what kind of terrible, terrible, oh such terrible cage. I do know that there is a release, the belated release. A justly or unjustly ruined reputation, poverty, disastrous circumstances, misfortune, they all turn you into a prisoner. You cannot always tell what keeps you confined, what immures you, what seems to bury you, and yet you can feel those elusive bars, railings, walls. Is all this illusion, imagination? I don't think so. And then one asks: My God! will it be for long, will it be for ever, will it be for eternity?

Maybe all critique itself can do is allow you to sketch the bars of your own prison.

Do you know what frees one from this captivity? It is every deep serious affection. Being friends, being brothers, love, these open the prison by supreme power, by some magic force. Where sympathy is renewed, life is restored.

Free yourself from the imprisonment of your own limiting beliefs and prejudices.

You should rejoice that you're in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul.

At first, the drudgery of mastering your craft is a prison — boring, slow, and with an awareness of how much time you’ll have to put in. But somewhere along your prison sentence, you come to see the time you put into your work not as dull and meager, but as meaningful — and you realize that your prison has become your palace, your place of escape.

There’s nothing like a little slavery to make a man appreciate even a modest portion of freedom.

Study the prison you have inadvertently built around yourself.

Imprisonment failed to break me. In fact it made me stronger. I came out of prison with a stronger conviction than when I went in. I always say jokingly that I thank the government for sending me to prison, because while there I got to know myself better and what I was capable of. That is why I continued with political activism after my release.

A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.

Within the confines of the great, universal prison, I had made for myself a smaller prison, a prison made to order. I had carved out for myself a little niche in which I could live. It was tiny, I had no doubt about that point. But at least it was made to measure, to my measure. A little niche in a prison that kept me from seeing the prison. A prison without work? Was I bored? Was I resigned? Tired, no doubt.