#Prison Quotes

“No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage: When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down, And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too, Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out; And take upon's the mystery of things, As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out, In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones, That ebb and flow by the moon.”

“It was tough sitting in jail listening to Jay Leno and Rush Limbaugh and everybody making jokes about me getting shot. And watching the media report all kinds of lies about me, like that I got raped in jail. That never happened. But at least while I was locked down, all the inmates gave me props encouragement, and so did lots of mothers and kids, who wrote me letters of support.”

“My cellmate's raped on the norm, and passed around the dorm, you can hear his asshole getting torn.”

“I only wrote one song in jail. But I'm writing new album - you're going to feel the entire 11 months of what I went through on this album. I'm venting my anger.”

“It was hell, hugging my Mama from a jail cell.”

“I just spent 11 and a half months in a maximum-security jail, got shot five times, and was wrongly convicted of a crime I didn't commit.”

“Well, the first two days in prison, I had to go through what life is like when you've been smoking weed for as long as I have and then you stop. Emotionally, it was like I didn't know myself.”

“The worst of it is that I am perpetually being punished for nothing; this governor loves to punish, and he punishes by taking my books away from me. It's perfectly awful to let the mind grind itself away between the upper and nether millstones of regret and remorse without respite; with books my life would be livable -- any life.”

“I tremble with pleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that I shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make the other toss the pale purple of its plumes, so that all the air shall be Arabia for me.”

“For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time. That is not such a tragic thing as possibly it sounds to you. To those who are in prison tears are a part of every day's experience. A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not a day on which one's heart is happy.”

“It is not the prisoners who need reformation, it is the prisons.”

“Men in prison are "civilly dead" and have no claim to any say in policy.”

“We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.”

“I know not whether Laws be right,Or whether Laws be wrong;All that we know who be in jailIs that the wall is strong;And that each day is like a year,A year whose days are long.”

“Prison itself is a tremendous education in the need for patience and perseverance. It is above all a test of one's commitment.”

“I told my cellmates about the oppression of the whites and apartheid. I helped organize hunger strikes and the like in my prison.”

“To go to prison because of your convictions and be prepared to suffer for what you believe in, is something worthwhile. It is an achievement for a man to do his duty on earth irrespective of the consequences.”

“When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both.”

“I found solitary confinement the most forbidding aspect of prison life. There is no end and no beginning; there is only one's mind, which can begin to play tricks. Was that a dream or did it really happen? One begins to question everything.”

“When I went to jail, I was a trained lawyer. And when the wardens received letters of demands or summonses, they didn't have the resources to go to an attorney to help them. I would help them settle their cases, so they became attached to me and the other prisoners.”

“I cherish my own freedom dearly, but I care even more for your freedom. Too many have died since I went to prison. Too many have suffered for the love of freedom. I owe it to their widows, to their orphans, to their mothers and their fathers, who have grieved and wept for them ..... Not only have I suffered during these long lonely wasted years. I am no less life-loving than you are. But I cannot sell the birthright of the people to be free ....... Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.”

“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.”

“I well remember how the thoughts I had up to the time of my discharge from the jail on every occasion were modified immediately after discharge, and after getting first-hand information myself. Somehow or other the jail atmosphere does not allow you to have all the bearings in your mind.”

“In prison, illusions can offer comfort.”

“What freedom am I being offered while the organization of the people remains banned? Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts.”

“In many respects, people on the outside suffered more than those of us in jail. In prison, we ate three times a day, we had clothing, we had free medical services, and we could sleep for 12 hours.”

“Even behind prison walls I can see the heavy clouds and the blue sky over the horizon”

“No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones.”

“My time in prison only deepened my resolve against apartheid. Even while I was in prison, I fought against it, teaching my cellmates about white supremacy and how to fight against it.”

“Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.”

“After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one's person.”

“I always knew that someday I would once again feel the grass under my feet and walk in the sunshine as a free man.”

“I knew we could improve our lives even in jail. We could come out as different men, and we could even come out with two degrees. Educating ourselves was a way to give ourselves the most powerful weapon for freedom.”

“When I closed THE GRAPES OF WRATH, I was a different man. It enriched my powers of thinking and discipline, and my relationships. I left prison more informed than when I went in. And the more informed you are, the less arrogant and aggressive you are.”

“When I walked out of the gate I knew that if I continued to hate these people I was still in prison.”

“Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts.”

“In my younger days, I was arrogant - jail helped me to get rid of it. I did nothing but make enemies because of my arrogance.”

“A garden was one of the few thing in prison that one could control. To plant a seed, watch it grow, to tend it then harvest it, offered a simple but enduring satisfaction. The sense of being the custodian of this small patch of earth offered a taste of freedom.”

“I have never regarded any man as my superior, either in my life outside or inside prison.”

“The authorities liked to say that we received a balanced diet; it was indeed balanced - between the unpalatable and the inedible.”

“When you are behind bars with no hope of release, you need to find strength wherever you can. Personally, I found strength in Michael Jackson.”

“One of the things that made me long to be back in prison was that I had so little opportunity for reading, thinking and quiet reflection after my release. I intend, amongst other things, to give myself much more opportunity for such reading and reflection.”

“The night in prison was novel and interesting enough.... I found that even here there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of verses which were composed by some young men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them.”

“I think the reality of prison is you don't get anything unless you want it in there. Whatever happens to you in prison, this is what you asked for. Nothing happens to you if you don't give that vibe.”

“If you're born in America with a black skin, you're born in prison, and the masses of black people in America today are beginning to regard our plight or predicament in this society as one of a prison inmate.”

“While I was in prison, I was indulging in all types of vice, right within the prison. And I never was ostracized as much by the penal authorities while I was participating in all of the evils of the prison, as they tried to ostracize me after I became a Muslim.”

“Ten guards and the warden couldn't have torn me out of those books. Months passed without even thinking about being imprisoned....I had never been so truly free in my life.”

“[People] earn extra money [in prison] selling contraband, dope, and things of that sort to the inmates, and so that really it's an exploiter.”

“At this point I hadn't yet gotten deep into the historic condition that negroes in this country are confronted with, but at that point in my prison studies I, I read, I studied Islam as a religion more so than as I later come to know it in its connection with the plight or problem of Negroes in this country.”

“I had one warden tell me since I've been out, and I visited an inmate in prison right here in New York, Warden Fay up at Green Haven. I visited an inmate in prison and he told me that he didn't want anybody in there trying to spread this religion.”