I've known bars, and seen the sky through iron grates. But real imprisonment isn't always concrete walls. It's the fear, ignorance, hatred, or even despair we carry in our hearts. Your liberation begins within, from your belief that you deserve freedom, and that there's always hope, even in the darkest corners.
These quotes are a glimmer of light about freedom, hope, and how the mind can be freed even if the body is bound.
āFor us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day may be blue and gold, but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey and niggard. It is always twilight in one's cell, as it is always twilight in one's heart. And in the sphere of thought, no less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more.ā
āIt was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else's freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.ā
