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

“Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.”
― John Donne, The Poems of John Donne (Volume 1); Miscellaneous Poems (Songs and Sonnets) Elegies. Epithalamions, or Marriage Songs. Satires. Epigrams. the Progress of the Soul. Notes

“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

“Then the best thing I can do is—"

He froze. The brown eyes that had been narrowed with aggravation suddenly went wide with...what? Amazement? Awe? Or perhaps that stunned feeling I kept having when I saw him?

Because suddenly, I was pretty sure he was experiencing the same thing I had earlier. He'd seen me plenty of times in Siberia. He'd seen me just the other night at the warehouse. But now...now he was truly viewing me with his own eyes. Now that he was no longer Strigoi, his whole world was different. His outlook and feelings were different. Even his soul was different.
It was like one of those moments when people talked about their lives flashing before their eyes. Because as we stared at one another, every part of our relationship replayed in my mind's eye. I remembered how strong and invincible he'd been when we first met, when he'd come to bring Lissa and me back to the folds of Moroi society. I remembered the gentleness of his touch when he's bandaged my bloodies and bettered hands. I remembered him carrying me in his arms after Victor's daughter Natalie had attacked me. Most of all, I remembered the night we'd been together in the cabin, just before the Strigoi had taken him. A year. We'd known each other only a year but we'd lived a lifetime in it.

And he was realizing that too, I knew as he studied me. His gaze was all-powerful, taking in every single one of my features and filing them away.

Dimly, I tried to recall what I looked like today. I still wore the dress from the secret meeting and knew it looked good on me. My eyes were probably bloodshot from crying earlier, and I'd only had time for a quick brushing of my hair before heading off with Adrian.

Somehow, I doubted any of it mattered. The way Dimitri was looking at me...it confirmed everything I'd suspected. The feelings he'd had for me before he'd been turned-the feelings that had become twisted while a Strigoi—were all still there. They had to be. Maybe Lissa was his savior. Maybe the rest of the Court thought she was a goddess. I knew, right then, that no matter how bedraggled I looked or how blank he tried to keep his face, I was a goddess to him.”
― Richelle Mead, Spirit Bound

“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, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“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, Killosophy

“I was kind of excited to go to jail for the first time and I learnt some great dialogue.”
― Quentin Tarantino

“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, BoneMan's Daughters

“Given the way his night had been going so far, he didn't have time to go to jail.”
― Christine Warren, She's No Faerie Princess

“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, The Sellout

“What is it about the government and its agents and employees that they can lie to us with impunity, but we risk being sent to jail if we lie to them?”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History

“I can get whatever I want, whenever I need, yet I am not free. I am confined. I am held captive. I am serving a life sentence in a Norwegian jail.”
― Abhaidev, The Meaninglessness of Meaning

“Why was bail denied?”
“This is a very small town. The professor was a very popular man, despite some of the reasons why. Besides that, Stella is, at this moment, the most hated women around these parts. It’s far safer for her to be in jail.”
― Behcet Kaya, Uncanny Alliance

“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

“During the days I felt myself slipping into a kind of madness. Solitary confinement has an astonishing effect on the mind. The trip was to stay calm and keep myself occupied. I spent hours working out how to break free. But trying to escape would have been instant suicide.”
― Tahir Shah, Travels With Myself

“He who has never tasted jail Lives well within the legal pale, While he who's served a heavy sentence Renews the racket, not repentance.”
― Ogden Nash, I'm a Stranger Here Myself

“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, Life After Death

“...the court, as now constituted, would be meaningless without the jail which gives it its power. But if there is anything I have learned by being in jail, it is that prisons are wrong, simply and unqualifiedly wrong.”
― Barbara Deming, Prisons That Could Not Hold

“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

“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

“The Brinktown jail is one of the most ingenious ever propounded by civic authorities. It must be remembered that Brinktown occupies the surface of a volcanic butte, overlooking a trackless jungle of quagmire, thorn, eel-vine skiver tussock. A single road leads from city down to jungle; the prisoner is merely locked out of the city. Escape is at his option; he may flee as far through the jungle as he sees fit: the entire continent is at his disposal. But no prisoner ever ventures far from the gate; and, when his presence is required, it is only necessary to unlock the gate and call his name.”
― Jack Vance, The Star King

“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

“He probably wouldn’t do any jail time at all, not with the perennial War on Drugs in full force. Too many dope smokers and pill poppers to lock up instead.”
― Cliff Jones Jr., Dreck

“A good friend calls you in jail. A great friend bails you out of jail. Your best friend sits next to you and says 'wasn't that fun?”
― Groucho Marx

“My experience in the jail cell had changed some things, but not everything. Drugs and hooking up both felt less satisfying now; wrong somehow. For the first time, I could see that both were façades and that neither truly satisfied, but throughout years of acting on my addictions, I had whittled these habits into my brain and life. Over time and repetition, these habits had become, like a river in a canyon, carved so deep into the confines of my mind that they were seemingly unchangeable. If I were to change, my mind would need to be transformed and reconfigured from the ground up.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“I needed to find the God I’d met in that jail cell, the one who didn’t give me what I deserved. The one who gave me freedom when I deserved judgement. The one who gave me mercy when I deserved wrath. The one who gave me a clean slate after I had muddied it up. I needed Him, whoever He was; that was the God I needed for my condition. That God answered my prayers.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“That God was cognizant, independent from me, and powerful. Maybe it didn’t matter so much that we prayed, as it mattered to whom we prayed. The God I’d met in that jail cell was a being who could listen and respond, not just through my subjective feelings or emotions, but objectively. He really changed things, which meant He existed outside of myself. He wasn’t just the product of wishful thinking. He was real.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“I needed someone to look me in the face and tell me
that the people who win, succeed, and excel at this lifestyle end up in jail, in rehab, homeless, or dead, and these are the only four options for those who follow this path to its end. I needed more than that, though. I needed someone to offer me a way out, a better path forward, a more meaningful life.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“I was not in the system any longer. I didn’t need to perform an endless list of deeds to keep myself out of jail and in the judge’s good favor. I’d been completely forgiven of my past, present, and future sins. In His book, next to the name Michael Heil was a signature that read: “Paid in full,” signed Jesus.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“I was no longer missing a piece. Jesus had taken all my insufficiencies, washed them away, and filled the very core of my being with His approval. Just like the day that He had given me a clean slate and released me from jail, now He was doing that same thing internally. He was washing away the belief that I was an inadequate failure who was unworthy and incapable of ever changing. He was making me into a new creation and it was going to be a thoroughly delightful process.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose