Jail quotes
580 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside jail — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"White individuals that have been going to jail. Segregation still exists; discrimination still exists. A few isolated white people whose individual acts are designed to eliminate this, that or, or the next thing but, yet, it is never eliminated is in no way impressive to me."
"If you're black, you were born in jail, in the North as well as the South. Stop talking about the South. Long as you south of the Canadian border, you're south."
"During the whole month that negroes were being beaten by police and washed down the sewer with water hoses, Kennedy and - and King was in jail begging for the federal government to intervene, Kennedy's reply was, "No federal statutes have been violated." And it was only when the negroes erupted that Kennedy come on the television with all his old pretty words."
"Those type of whites who are always going to jail with Negroes are the ones who tell Negroes to be loving and be kind and be patient and be nonviolent and turn the other cheek."
"I could hear Dean, blissful and blabbering and frantically rocking. Only a guy who's spent five years in jail can go to such maniacal helpless extremes; beseeching at the portals of the soft source, mad with a completely phsycial realization of the origins of life-bliss; blindly seeking to return the way he came"
"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."
"How about Proust's In Search of Lost Time?" Tamaru asked. "If you've never read it this would be a good opportunity to read the whole thing." "Have you read it?" "No, I haven't been in jail, or had to hide out for a long time. Someone once said unless you have those kinds of opportunities, you can't read the whole of Proust."
"Because Brenda [Carlin] had a drinking problem along with the coke, she had to hit bottom first. Most alcoholics do. And for her, bottom was an automobile accident that almost landed her in jail."
"Jail is no place for a young fellow. There's no advancement."
"I was never molested by any person but those who represented the State. I had no lock nor bolt but for the desk which held my papers, not even a nail to put over my latch or windows. I never fastened my door night or day, though I was to be absent several days; not even when the next fall I spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine. And yet my house was more respected than if it had been surrounded by a file of soldiers."
"Under the one word "house" are included the schoolhouse, the almshouse, the jail, the tavern, the dwellinghouse; and the meanest shed or cave in which men live contains elements of all these. But nowhere on the earth stands the entire and perfect house."
"I don't know anything about this man. Anyhow, I only know two things about him. One is, he has never been in jail, and the other is, I don't know why."
"It is better to support schools than jails."
"The Republicans are committed to global warming as a hoax, or irrelevant, or as not a problem. That is their belief. I'm not going to put them in jail. All I can do is talk and encourage good climate actions and demonstrate our economy has benefited here [in California]."
"There are more Negroes in jail with me than there are on the voting rolls."
"Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" and "Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?""
"I am so mean I've handcuffed lightnin' and thrown thunder in jail."
"If I went to jail, at least I wouldn't have to sign autographs."
"If I wrote something that hadn't really happened, and I tried to sell it, I could go to jail. That's fraud!"
