Jail Freedom Quotes & Sayings

I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen. — Tom Stoppard

Let freedom ka-ching ... Corporations do everything people do except breathe, die and go to jail for dumping 1.3 million pounds of PCBs in the Hudson River. — Stephen Colbert

We buy our way out of jail but we can't buy freedom,
We buy a lot of clothes when we don't really need them,
Things we buy to cover up what's inside. — Kanye West

When I was in jail, I was a lot of people's favorite person. I practically ran the jail. I had more freedom than the police. — Flavor Flav

Today I live on an island, in a house that is sad, hard, severe, that I built for myself, solitary on a sheer rock over the sea: a house that is the spectre, the secret image of prison. The image of my nostalgia. Maybe I never desired, not even then, to escape from jail. Man is not meant to live freely in freedom, but to be free inside a prison. — Curzio Malaparte

It might be worthwhile to take a familiar question - why there is so much crime in modern society? - and stand it on its head: why isn't there a bit more crime?
After all, every one of us regularly passes up opportunities to main, steal, and defraud. The chance of going to jail - thereby losing your job, your house, and your freedom, all of which are essentially economic penalties - is certainly a strong incentive. But when it comes to crime people also respond to moral incentives (they don't want to do something they consider wrong) and social incentives (they don't want to be seen by others as doing something wrong). — Steven D. Levitt

Wedding Night

The day I've died, my pall is moving on -
But do not think my heart is still on earth!
Don't weep and pity me: "Oh woe, how awful!"
You fall in devil's snare - woe, that is awful!
Don't cry "Woe, parted!" at my burial -
For me this is the time of joyful meeting!
Don't say "Farewell!" when I'm put in the grave -
A curtin is it for eternal bliss.
You saw "descending" - now look at the rising!
Is setting dangerous for sun and moon?
To you it looks like setting, but it's rising;
The coffin seems a jail, yet it means freedom.
Which seed fell in the earth that did not grow there?
Why do you doubt the fate of human seed?
What bucket came not filled from out the cistern?
Why should the Yusaf "Soul" then fear this well?
Close here your mouth and open it on that side.
So that your hymns may sound in Where-no-place — Jalaluddin Rumi

Our nation sought to rehabilitate and affirm the dignity and personhood of those who for so long had been silenced, had been turned into anonymous, marginalized ones. Now they would be able to tell their stories, they would remember, and in remembering would be acknowledged to be persons with an inalienable personhood. Our country's negotiators rejected the two extremes and opted for a "third way," a compromise between the extreme of Nuremberg trials and blanket amnesty or national amnesia. And that third way was granting amnesty to individuals in exchange for a full disclosure relating to the crime for which amnesty was being sought. It was the carrot of possible freedom in exchange for truth and the stick was, for those already in jail, the prospect of lengthy prison sentences and, for those still free, the probability of arrest and prosecution and imprisonment. The option South Africa chose raises — Desmond Tutu

Our so-called leaders speak
With words they try to jail you
The subjugate the meek
But it's the rhetoric of failure — Sting

False humility is a form of psychosis which was imprinted on most of us since birth. It is a mental illness because it locks us in a victim state of keeping our light turned down, denying who we really are and silently begging for permission to simply show up as ourselves in the world. But there is good news. This is a jail whose lock is broken. We can walk free whenever we know the truth, and by so doing we show others an example of an end to madness. An example of freedom. — Jacob Nordby

The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare your own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books. I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people's interests. The library was open, unending, free. Slowly, I was discovering myself. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Being that I went to jail and came back, I went through a whole new experience in life. I went from being at the top to back down at the bottom again. In jail, you get stripped of your freedom and everything, so I experienced different things, learned more. — Meek Mill

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

Nelson Mandela sat in a South African prison for 27 years. He was nonviolent. He negotiated his way out of jail. His honor and suffering of 27 years in a South African prison is really ultimately what brought about the freedom of South Africa. That is nonviolence. — Coretta Scott King

They were complicated years. The order of the world in which we had grown up was dissolving. The old skills resulting from long study and knowledge of the correct political line suddenly seemed senseless. Anarchist, Marxist, Gramscian, Communist, Leninist, Trotskyite, Maoist, worker were quickly becoming obsolete labels or, worse, a mark of brutality. The exploitation of man by man and the logic of maximum profit, which before had been considered an abomination, had returned to become the linchpins of freedom and democracy everywhere. Meanwhile, by means legal and illegal, all the accounts that remained open in the state and in the revolutionary organizations were being closed with a heavy hand. One might easily end up murdered or in jail, and among the common people a stampede had begun. — Elena Ferrante

Land sakes, I can't make a speech," she said. "Tell you what: I'll recite a poem I composed while in jail." And she began. "Although in jail in Centerboro, I do not fret or stew or worro. And confidently I confront The judge, because I'm innosunt. Tho I'm a cow, I am no coward I have not flinched when thunder rowered. When lightning flashed I've merely giggled Like one whose funnybone is tiggled. And I shall never give up hoping That soon the jail front door will oping And I'll once more enjoy my freedom On Bean's green fields. When last I seed 'em They were a fair and lovely vision And so for my return I'm wishun. I hope that Bismuth will get his'n And spend a good long time in prison. — Walter R. Brooks

You know the worst thing is freedom. Freedom of any kind is the worst for creativity. You know, Dali spent two months in jail in Spain, and these two months were the most enjoyable and happy in my life. Before my jail period, I was always nervous, anxious. I didn't know if I should make a drawing, or perhaps make a poem, or go to the movies or the theatre, or catch a girl, or play with the boys. The people put me in jail, and my life became divine. Tremendous! — Salvador Dali

We shall denounce political trials, whether they are held in Washington or Warsaw. When a government puts a man in jail for his political opinions, we do not ask the nationality of that government. We are always on the side of the victim of State tyranny.
We hate war and have consistently fought against and for that reason we fight State oppression wherever it occurs. — Marie Louise Berneri

Oran is exile and Tetuan is imprisonment. And since I am happier in Tetuan than in Oran, that means I prefer jail in my native land to freedom in exile. — Mohamed Choukri

If you live life on your own terms it shouldn't feel like a jail cell. — Shannon L. Alder

On Thursday morning, May 2, 1963, nine-year-old Audrey Faye Hendricks woke up with freedom on her mind. But, before she could be free, there was something important she had to do. "I want to go to jail," Audrey had told her mother. Since Mr. and Mrs. Hendricks thought that was a good idea, they helped her get ready. — Cynthia Levinson

One advantage to being a despised species is that you have freedom, freedom to be any crazy thing you want. If you listen to a group of housewives talk, you'll hear a lot of nonsense, some of it really crazy. This comes, I think, from being alone so much, and pursuing your own odd train of thought without impediment, which some call discipline. The result is craziness, but also brilliance. Ordinary women come out with the damnedest truth. You ignore them at your own risk. And they are permitted to go on making wild statements without being put in one kind of jail or another (some of them, anyway) because everyone knows they're crazy and powerless too. If a woman is religious or earthy, passive or wildly assertive, loving or hating, she doesn't get much more flak than if she isn't: her choices lie between being castigated as a ball and chain or as a whore. — Marilyn French

I frowned. Evidently, Sangris wasn't a cat who could shape-shift. It was more difficult than that. He was a nothing who occasionally pretended to be a cat. "I wish I could know what it's like for myself, that's all," I said. I felt rather the way a jail inmate would if a bird flew up and shouted through her window bars: This freedom thing? Yeah, not so great. — Rinsai Rossetti

True freedom is always spiritual. It has something to do with your innermost being, which cannot be chained, handcuffed, or put into a jail. — Rajneesh

I think there is a heritage which I'm proud of, which is a fight for democracy, a fight for social justice, a fight for freedom. My grandfather went to jail or exile six times in his life, fighting for his principles for democracy, or for his country. And my father twice. — George Papandreou

I went to jail 44 times. I've been beaten and left for dead on the side of the road fighting for freedom ... Yet Rosa Parks is better known in history than Ralph David Abernathy. Why is that? — Ralph Abernathy

Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died. — Richard Stallman

There is something fantastic about getting divorced. Everyone should do it to experience the extraordinary sense of freedom after being in marriage jail. — Delia Ephron

There is nothing in all the world greater than freedom. It is worth paying for; it is worth going to jail for. I would rather be a free pauper than a rich slave. I would rather die in abject poverty with my convictions than live in inordinate riches with the lack of self respect. — Martin Luther King Jr.

When I was a kid I got mad enough to want to kill somebody but as you travel the world and I'm struggling with a freedom fight against nations, you can't get enough hate in you to be mad at one man just because it's a boxing match.Never. Even Floyd Paterson, who condemned my Islamic religion and didn't want to call me Muhammad Ali and said I should've gone to the army and I should be in jail. — Muhammad Ali

More than anything else, I miss the hope. In jail, we we had the hope that we might get out, go to college, have fun, go to the movies. I am twenty-seven. I don't know what it means to love. I don't want to be secret and hidden forever. I want to know, to know who this Nassrin is.You'd call it the ordeal of freedom, I guess. — Azar Nafisi

A promise is a direction taken, a self-limitation of choice. As Odo pointed out, if no direction is taken, if one goes nowhere, no change will occur. One's freedom to choose and to change will be unused, exactly as if one were in jail, a jail of one's own building, a maze in which no one way is better than any other. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Freedom or jail clips inserted, a baby's being born/ Same time a man is murdered, the beginning and end. — Nas

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. — Mahatma Gandhi

For god sake, open your eyes...the truth is crimes are real... the trouble is real... the horror is real... OPEN THE FUCKING EYES, you have freedom of speech, freedom do go to jail... My favourite characters are this in the jail!

If you ask me with what I will open my eyes, my answer is with the critical edition

The Leuchter Reports: Critical Edition
by Fred A. Leuchter, The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, The Common Sense by Thomas Paine — Deyth Banger

Here is the difference between Oscar Wilde and me. For all the tortures he suffered, for all the ugliness of being punished for loving men, nobody read his lines and asked him: What does your husband think of that? Jail, exile
these were his lot. But never, What does your husband think?
Women may have the vote, but they are not free as long as that reaction erupts. Even those without husbands are judged as if they had offended them merely by writing the truth.
So immovable is the wall around a woman's freedom that she can't do a things without being asked to think of its effect upon some man who is presumed to be more important than she. — Erica Jong

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. — Nelson Mandela

THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE WHILE LIES SHALL PUT YOU IN JAIL — Nelson M. Lubao

I could tell he wanted the best for me. Of course, he assumed that would be getting out. Everyone always thought that, not of what we had to go back to, at home. Maybe our parents had thrown away our mattresses. Maybe they'd told our siblings we'd been run over by trains, to make our absence fonder.
Not everyone had a parent. It could be that nothing was waiting for us. Our keys would no longer fit the locks. We'd resort to ringing the bell, saying we've come home, can't we come in?
The eye in the peephole would show itself, and that eye could belong to a stranger, as our family had moved halfway across the country and never informed us. Or that eye could belong to the woman who carried us for nine months, who labored for fourteen hours, who was sliced open with a C-section to give us life, and now wished she never did.
The juvenile correctional system could let us out into the world, but it could not control who would be out there, willing to claim us. — Nova Ren Suma

LOOK! EVEN I HAVE DONE WRONG, I HAVE BEEN SENT INTO JAIL. WHAT IS THE USE OF STRIKE? GO STRIKE. BUT THE COUNTRY NEEDS ITS FUTURE! IT'S EDUCATION! KILL THE CRIMINAL LIKE ME — Fahmid Hassan Prohor

When a child is born in a jail and during their life all they know is the jail they were born into, the idea of freedom becomes so terrifying that they ridicule the very thought of being free, as a clinical illness. It is nothing like the song that a caged bird sings. — Alejandro C. Estrada

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education. — Alfred Whitney Griswold

And although I'm all for freedom of expression and against censorship, there are certain things I'm not willing to go to jail for. — Tom Lehrer

Why are the super-rich for socialism? Don't they have the most to lose? I take a look at my bank account and compare it with Nelson Rockefeller's and it seems funny that I'm against socialism and he's out promoting it. Or is it funny? In reality, there is a vast difference between what the promoters define as socialism and what it is in actual practice. The idea that socialism is a share-the-wealth program is strictly a confidence game to get the people to surrender their freedom to an all-powerful collectivist government. While the Insiders tell us we are building a paradise on earth, we are actually constructing a jail for ourselves. — Gary Allen

After he was sensibly convicted of the wicked state of his life, and converted, he was baptized into the congregation, and admitted a member thereof, viz., in the year 1655, and became speedily a very zealous professor; but upon the return of King Charles to the crown in 1660, he was the 12th of November taken, as he was edifying some good people that were got together to hear the word, and confined in Bedford jail for the space of six years, till the act of Indulgence to dissenters being allowed, he obtained his freedom, by the intercession of some in trust and power, that took pity on his sufferings; but within six years afterwards he was again taken up, viz., in the year 1666, and was then confined for six years more, when even the jailor took such pity of his rigorous sufferings, that he did as the Egyptian jailor did to Joseph, put all the care and trust in his hand: — John Bunyan

I have voted to legalize recreational incarnations. We should no longer jail people in a body just because they have chosen to incarnate in this dimension for fun. Are you guys with me on this one? — Martijn Benders

He remembered learning in one of his social studies classes
that in the Old West, when Native Americans were thrown into jail, they sometimes dropped dead.
The theory was that someone so used to the freedom of space couldn't handle the confinement, but
Peter had another interpretation. When the only company you had was yourself, and when you
didn't want to socialize, there was only one way to leave the room. — Jodi Picoult