September 12, 2008

"Faith in myself was important, and remains important to my self-esteem. But I discovered in prison that faith in myself alone, separate from other, more important allegiances, was ultimately no match for the cruelty that human beings could devise when they were entirely unencumbered by respect for the God-given dignity of man. This is the lesson I learned in prison. It is, perhaps, the most important lesson I have ever learned."
- John McCain, "Faith of My Fathers" (p 253)


"In prison, I fell in love with my country. I had loved her before then, but like most young people, my affection was little more than a simple appreciation for the comforts and privileges most Americans enjoyed and took for granted. It wasn't until I had lost America for a time that I realized how much I loved her."
- ibid (p 254)

September 11, 2008

"It's an awful thing, solitary. It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment. Having no one else to rely on, to share confidences with, to seek counsel from, you begin to doubt your judgement and your courage. But you eventually adjust to solitary as you can to almost any hardship, by devising various methods to keep your mind off your troubles and greedily grasping any opportunity for human contact."
- John McCain, "Faith of My Fathers" (p 206)


"The sound of the human voice, unappreciated in an open society's noisy clutter of spoken words was an emblem of humanity to a man held at length in solitary confinement, an elegant and poignant affirmation that we possessed a divine spark that our enemies could not extinguish."
- ibid (p 212)

August 22, 2008

"The prisoners were at their coldest and hungriest when they checked in through these gates in the evening, and their bowl of hot and watery soup without any fat was like rain in a drought. They gulped it down. They cared more for this bowlful than freedom, or for their life in years gone by and years to come. They came back through the gates like soldiers from the wars with a lot of noise and cocky as hell. It was best to keep out of their way."
- Alexsander Solzhenitsyn, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (p 151)