Jail Quotes

When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'.

~ Groucho Marx

Power does not pardon, power punishes.

~ Amit Kalantri

I was kind of excited to go to jail for the first time and I learnt some great dialogue.

~ Quentin Tarantino

I also did some jail time a few years ago. Spent a whole summer in jail reading books. I pumped a ton of new knowledge and new thinking into myself.

~ Tommy Lee

I spent much of my prison time reading. I must have read over 200 large books, mostly fictional stories about the American pioneers, the Vikings, Mafia, etc. As long as I was engrossed in a book, I was not in prison. Reading was my escape.

~ Frazier Glenn Miller

Hate will cause you to catch a case. Release yourself from your own personal jail before you are put in the real one for life! It ain't worth it!!

~ Anita R. Sneed-Carter

We have glorified wealth and freedom so much that it is impossible for most of us to truly believe that a man can truly be happy in a shack or within the confines of a prison cell.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Women are the best thieves you will ever meet; they steal your heart and your last name, but never get to spend the night in jail.

~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Terrell is weeping soundlessly, and despite the guard’s objection, he raises his hand up to the glass. Geraldine mimics him, lining her fingers up with his. It’s lonely to think that one little sheet of glass could create such a thick distance between them, but all the same, regardless of what he’s done, he’s still one of the closest friends she has.

~ Rebecca Mcnutt

Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.

~ Muhammad Ali

Release is not the same as liberation. You get out of jail, all right, but you never stop being condemned.

~ Victor Hugo

Every tiny molecule of Ash is in motion with my heat I am such a Lunatic that I am free even in Jail.

~ Bhagat Singh

The real purpose of the opposition is to minimize the amount of money the ruling party will have stolen from the people at the end of its term.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Looks sure can be deceiving: not every ‘ugly’ person is a ‘bad’ person (or is guilty of whatever it is that they are accused of).

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Like most arts, the link between the mind and the pen can chain you like an enslaved workaholic. Even on an intended vacation you suddenly have this killer urge to record whatever the vacation may teach.

~ Criss Jami

Yet torture is above all an art, an artistic discipline just like literature , cinema, or contemporary dance. All detained in the City-State ghettos bitterly missed the torturers of yesteryears, those monsters who worked with the precision of a Swiss watch-maker.

~ Fiston Mwanza Mujila

Prison is designed to separate, isolate, and alienate you from everyone and everything. You're not allowed to do so much as touch your spouse, your parents, your children. The system does everything within its power to sever any physical or emotional links you have to anyone in the outside world. They want your children to grow up without ever knowing you.They want your spouse to forget your face and start a new life. They want you to sit alone, grieving, in a concrete box, unable even to say your last farewell at a parent's funeral.

~ Damien Echols

Mom hadn't met Ramon; her advocacy was more arm's length - petitions, the website, letter writing, meetings with politicians. Her friend Hanna had formed a close friendship with Ramon though, visiting him as often as she could. Hanna told me that Ramon's greatest regret was that he wouldn't get to see his daughter grow up.And Jeremy's dad, who had that opportunity, was just throwing it away.It made me furious, and I couldn't let it go.

~ Robin Stevenson

A prisoner should know that there are thousands of imprisoned freemen living in this world…jailed in their own society, handcuffed by duties..

~ Munia Khan

Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.

~ John Donne

Sitting in a corner, I live like a toad Oh! How I love my room: my tiny abode! Here I wake up; and I sleep in hereThe world far away; yet virtually near Not that I'm jailed in this place of graceJust don't want to face another face

~ Munia Khan

The greater ignorance towards a country is not ignoring what its politicians have to say, it is ignoring what the inmates in its prisons have to say.

~ Criss Jami

How many of us readers say this quote and mean it. If I knew what I know now life would be different....

~ Robert Reed

Mr Judge, Jury & Executioner of Micah Xavier Johnson‬ needs to go to jail as soon as possible – he is a danger to civilized society.

~ Steven Magee

From warm meals, to daily exercise, to healthcare; one can't help but wonder how our society would be different if tended to the elderly as we do to our imprisoned.

~ Steve Maraboli

Unprovoked hostility is often but displaced self-defense: 'I must stop him before he stops me.' In many of such environments, nobody is really hateful so much as they are just fearful.

~ Criss Jami

Unfortunately, the board of directors that the middle managers report to generally make them aggressive. Imagine being hired into a company and then being told that you have to ignore the emerging health and safety issues (This is illegal!) and not inform the workers that the system is known to be dangerous (This is illegal!). You have two options: To go to jail for illegal activities sometime in the future, or to lose your job now and have all your USA workplace rights removed for recognizing the illegal activities that your Directors want you to engage in. Welcome to the corporate America management team!

~ Steven Magee

I’ve only been to jail a few times, but in several different countries, at that. No, I've only been to jail a few times. But I still claim the ability to write a serious novel.

~ Roman Payne

Poor Ramon.

~ Robin Stevenson

If you were me you’d do the right thing, help your friends, because you’re not a coward,” Mandy sighed sadly. “I covered up a murder because I was scared to go to jail and I did the wrong thing… well, now’s my chance to do the right thing, to save someone’s life, because I don’t want you to die.”“Save someone’s life? I’m no one,” Alecto laughed morbidly. “A hundred and twelve years is definitely way too long to have survived. You’d be wasting your time and risking your own life….”“This is my life,” Mandy declared, smiling sincerely. Alecto just looked concerned and very doubtful as the rain drizzled down the roads and sidewalks, towards the harbour where it fell into the ocean, indistinguishable from all the other water in the world.

~ Rebecca Mcnutt

Don’t jail your imagination. You cannot imagine beyond your desires. You can't unleash your imagination without the SEEDs of desire.

~ Assegid Habtewold

See this abdicated beast, once kingOf them all, nibble his claws:Not anger enough left—no, nor despair—To break his teeth on the bars.

~ Cecil Day-Lewis

I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished.It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity.

~ Howard Zinn

no one wanted to look at the common evils of society. Very few were willing to put aside their own pursuit of happiness long enough to consider the effects of greed and jealousy around them. From what she'd seen, humans were essentially troubled. For every one behind bars, another ten deserved to be behind bars, but that would put one in ten Americans behind bars.

~ Ted Dekker

It is a sad state of affairs in the USA that for the sick and the poor that jail offers better benefits than the freedom of no healthcare, bills that cannot be paid and starvation.

~ Steven Magee

One day you’re going to get arrested, and when you do, don’t call me. I’ll tell the police to lock you up just to teach you a lesson.” Because there were some black parents who’d actually do that, not pay their kid’s bail, not hire their kid a lawyer—the ultimate tough love. But it doesn’t always work, because you’re giving the kid tough love when maybe he just needs love. You’re trying to teach him a lesson, and now that lesson is the rest of his life.

~ Trevor Noah

Don't be ridiculous. Brussels sprouts are awful. Jail is just jail.

~ Mora Early

I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent, and in a way the prospect of going to jail becomes a relief.

~ Paul Beatty

Every transgression and disobedience receives a just recompense of reward, except with those who truly love themselves.

~ Auliq Ice

Issues are like tissues. You pull one out and another appears!

~ Gary Goldstein