A Quote by Svetlana Alexievich

We are all prisoners of the ideas of the times we live in. — © Svetlana Alexievich
We are all prisoners of the ideas of the times we live in.
These 2.3 million prisoners, somehow we've convinced ourselves that's normal and rational, more prisoners than soldiers, more prisoners than China, more than one per cent of the adult population, seven times the incarceration rate of Canada or any Western European country.
God help us from those who believe that they are the sole possessors of truth. How we manage at times to agree willingly to become prisoners within our own minds and souls of beliefs and ideas on which we can never be flexible.
We are the prisoners of ideas.
Of course, no state accepts [that it should call] the people it is imprisoning or detaining for political reasons, political prisoners. They don't call them political prisoners in China, they don't call them political prisoners in Azerbaijan and they don't call them political prisoners in the United States, U.K. or Sweden; it is absolutely intolerable to have that kind of self-perception.
Subjecting prisoners to abuse leads to bad intelligence, because under torture a detainee will tell his interrogator anything to make the pain stop. Second, mistreatment of our prisoners endangers U.S. troops who might be captured by the enemy – if not in this war, then in the next. And third, prisoner abuses exact on us a terrible toll in the war of ideas, because inevitably these abuses become public.
To make the script, you need ideas, and for me a lot of times, a final script is made up of many fragments of ideas that came at different times.
Thank goodness we don't live in medieval times, when people fought wars over ideas.
Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.
In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
I think of the prisoners on 'Orange Is the New Black,' a lot of times, as uplifting.
To me, however, the question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live? We are incompetent to solve the times. Our geometry cannot span the huge orbits of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their opposition. We can only obey our own polarity.
Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row
Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.
People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature.
I'm sure that those - well, I know for a fact that the prisoners, the political prisoners in the federal system, is asking [Barack Obama] for clemency or for some kind of release.
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