Andrew Gross Quotes

I was arrested three times and tortured once.

I still remember, 40 years ago, when I was shackled and put in prison... Being an American citizen didn't mean a thing.

After I got arrested the Filipino government unshackled me. I knew first-hand how they violated my rights and I could speak about that from experience.

I had to grow up in prison for something I did not do.

We've all had some level of injustice, whether 20 years in prison, or 20 minutes sitting in your car waiting for a police officer to determine your future. Or even a few moments in an elevator with some woman clutching her purse thinking you're going to rob her ¾ regardless of celebrity, that has happened to me.

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

As wild as I was, when the cops show up, and suddenly you're being handcuffed, it's so deeply shocking and terrifying, the loss of freedom.

Maybe... there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for unlawfully detaining 120 people. Maybe they just got carried away with last year's idea of pre-emptive strikes and thought, 'Let's not wait for an actual crime to occur. Let's get the innocent.

Everyone realized I was the innocent victim of a shakedown.

In the third grade, a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because she said that's where I belonged. I also had the distinction of being the only altar boy knocked down by a priest during mass.

I've been blackmailed a billion times. I've been sued for ridiculous things. At one point in my life, I was an ATM machine. But I'm used to that. You don't get used to it, but I'm used to the fact that people will do this, even your own family members, and I don't hate none of them.

Nobody's ever asked me to pay for a meal before I've eaten it, I've never been pulled over just because I was driving the wrong kind of car in the wrong kind of area at the wrong time of night.

Denial of childhood and denial of freedom are the biggest sins which humankind has been committing and perpetuating for ages.

Life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves.

The prison officials practiced such excessive cruelty that they were jeopardizing the entire system

I'm being treated like a criminal by the Polish government. It's just insane. I haven't done anything. What are they accusing me of?

It troubled me that we had these reports of torture of detainees, we had people jailed at Guantanamo Bay who couldn't even talk to their lawyers and couldn't see the evidence against them - sort of fundamental bedrock civil liberties things.

I think any woman who has felt violated or felt mistreated in any way, they have every right to speak up.

People of great power wield great power, but people of lesser power or people who have fallen out of power go to jail without adequate evidence, or their bodies are found in the trunks of cars.

I haven't faced a casting couch in the South or Bollywood. But yes, I have faced my share of harassment in both industries. I don't have the guts to name them because they are powerful people - men and women who made sure I felt helpless.

I might be one of the very few people in this industry who doesn't have a 'me too' story.

I didn't confess. I was interrogated. They acted like my answers were wrong. They told me I was wrong, that I didn't remember correctly, that I had to remember correctly. And if I didn't, I would never see my family.

I used to get stop-and-frisked every time I walked out of my house.

I was jailed for using words that I still dispute. Anyone who's ever met me will tell you that I'm not a violent person.

Witnessing injustice, in person, leaves an indelible mark.