My Inmates Quotes & Sayings

Well, why do you want a political career? Have you ever been in the House of Commons and taken a good square look at the inmates? As weird a gaggle of freaks and sub-humans as was ever collected in one spot. — P.G. Wodehouse

The inmates keep their distance and do what inmates always seem to do: affirm and reassure, make the future seem doable. — Adam Johnson

He thought of all the quaint Victorian houses in Wayward Pines and of all the families who lived inside them. How many residents - inmates - kept up a strong, carefree countenance during the day, but then lay awake at night, sleepless, minds racing, terrified and struggling to comprehend why they'd been locked away in this scenic prison? He imagined more than a few. But human beings were, if nothing else, adaptable. — Blake Crouch

I wouldn't be satisfied simply escaping from my prison of silence; I was planning to escape, free the other inmates, shoot the warden, and burn down the prison. Sometimes I get that way. It's a surprisingly useful frame of mind. — Scott Adams

I once read an article which made the argument that modern Western schools have a good deal in common with modern prisons, and I've always thought it was pretty accurate. With both schools and prisons, the ones running the system have a very simple set of priorities for their inmates: they want them to stay on the premises, they want them to stay healthy and watered and fed, and they want them not to be gratuitously violent in a way that'll draw public attention. — Benedict Jacka

The United States now has more prison inmates than full-time farmers. — Eric Schlosser

The other inmates stand in a long straight line, flanked by guards, and I am dragged past them. I do not respect them, because they will not run - will not try to escape. — Jack Henry Abbott

We're not exactly heavenly angels. More like prison inmates with wings. — Keri Lake

In the land of badass, you've just been trumped. If Dark-Hunters had inmates, these would be they. Known as the Dogs of War because that's what they thrive on, they're cold-blooded and intolerant. Congratulations, bud, these are your new protectors. (Acheron) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The biggest government waste: The death penalty. An individual death-penalty case could climb to $100 million, much of it spent at the litigation level. Also, DNA evidence has exonerated nearly 300 death-row inmates. — John McLaughlin

As a splendid palace deserted by its inmates looks like a ruin, so does a man without character, all his material belongings notwithstanding. — Mahatma Gandhi

Ever notice how many expressions carry over from queers to con men? Like 'raise,' letting someone know you are in the same line? — William S. Burroughs

Also in America, the Redemptorist priest and founder of the Paulist order, Fr. Isaac Hecker, was a great admirer of St. Catherine, seeing in her the perfect foil to those who claimed that Catholicism promotes a mechanical piety or fosters a sanctity unconcerned with the real needs of suffering humanity in society. To the latter charge he replied forcefully:
"Read the life of St. Catherine, and in imagination fancy her in the city hospital of Genoa, charged not only with the supervision and responsibility of its finances, but also overseeing the care of its sick inmates, taking an active, personal part in its duties as one of its nurses, and conducting the whole establishment with strict economy, perfect order, and the tenderest care and love! — Catherine Of Siena

We don't call them inmates,' Molly said, quoting one of the psychiatrists.'We call them patients. — Dean Koontz

dreaded the thought of Larry being hurt by other inmates — Betsy Reavley

Oh, the inmates and the prisoners I found they were my kind And it was there inside the bars I found my peace of mind But the jails they were too crowded Institutions overflowed So they turned me loose to walk upon Life's hurried tangled road — Bob Dylan

Did you ever hear the story of the man who walks past the mental hospital?" he said. "He can hear all the patients inside shouting, 'Thirteen! Thirteen! Thirteen!,' but the fence is too high for him to see what is going on. Then he spots a knothole in one of the planks. He looks through it, and bam - a stick pokes him in the eye, and he hears the inmates all shouting, 'Fourteen! Fourteen! Fourteen!'" He took a sip of his cocoa. "I mind my own business, Detectives. — James Patterson

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

I miss it like an ex-con misses the other inmates. — Megan Miranda

I used to get letters from guys in prison. Anymore now I don't even open them. They'd ask me to please sign a couple of cards for their children. Then I see them on eBay two weeks later. Or the people that write and say, "You is one of my favorite cartoonists. I would like a drawing, please." I guess they encourage inmates to write letters to celebrities. It's like a way to make money by selling autographs or something. Give me a break. — Mike Royer

Hollywood-a place where the inmates are in charge of the asylum. — Laurence Stallings

Everyone who I called my friends, persons who I used to hang out with, these were the individuals who formed and made up the gang known as the Rebellion Raiders. So when the gang was formed I was automatically a part of it, because it was formed by my friends. I didn't have to go out and join the gang. Troit Lynes, former death row inmate of Her Majesty Prison in the Bahamas — Drexel Deal

The world is an asylum where the inmates keep the warders in their place. — George Herman

The prison population consists of heterogeneous elements; but, taking only those who are usually described as 'the criminals' proper, and of whom we have heard so much lately from Lombroso and his followers, what struck me most as regards them was that the prisons, which are considered as preventive of anti-social deeds, are exactly the institutions for breeding them. Every one knows that absence of education, dislike of regular work, physical incapability of sustained effort, misdirected love of adventure, gambling propensities, absence of energy, an untrained will, and carelessness about the happiness of others are the causes which bring this class of people before the courts. Now I was deeply impressed during my imprisonment by the fact that it is exactly these defects of human nature
each one of them
which the prison breeds in its inmates; and it is bound to breed them because it is a prison, and will breed them so long as it exists. — Pyotr Kropotkin

accommodate, within reason, the religious practices of workers and applicants unless they impose an "undue hardship" on the business. It is the latest in a line of Supreme Court cases that have elevated religious rights over secular interests, whether exercised by powerful corporations, government agencies or prison inmates. The majority opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia stressed two points that outline the role religion can have in the workplace. Employers must do more than handle religious practices in the same way they do secular ones, he wrote, because federal law gives faith-related expression "favored treatment, affirmatively obligating employers" to accommodate things they could otherwise refuse. Moreover, he wrote, an applicant or employee alleging religious discrimination doesn't have to prove the employer was motivated by bias. — Anonymous

During the first day, curious at having outsiders among them, a long stream of inmates came over and talked with me. Remarkably, according to what they told me, nearly every inmate in the prison didn't do it. Several thousand people had been locked up unjustly and, by an incredible coincidence, all in the same prison.
On the other hand, they knew an awful lot about how to knife somebody. — Alan Alda

Scott: What's the cure?
Doctor: There is none.
Scott: But that isn't what I heard. The optimist in me translated the gloomy news as "Scott, you will be the first person in the world to be cured of spasmodic dysphonia." And I decided that after I cured myself, somehow, someway, I would spread the word to others. I wouldn't be satisfied escaping from my prison of silence. I was planning to escape, free the other inmates, shoot the warden, and burn down the prison. — Scott Adams

Mo and the staff talk about captivity like it's the best thing a dolphin can hope for, but that kind of talk just makes me think of Carlito and all the years he spent trapped by the routines of prison life in a six-by-nine-foot prison cell, the size of a parking space, and what Dr. Joe used to say about inmates like my brother who were also sentenced to solitary confinement: 'It doesn't have to be violent for it to be torture. — Patricia Engel

Thus when I come to shape here at this table between my hands the story of my life and set it before you as a complete thing, I have to recall things gone far, gone deep, sunk into this life or that and become part of it; dreams, too, things surrounding me, and the inmates, those old half-articulate ghosts who keep up their hauntings by day and night; who turn over in their sleep, who utter their confused cries, who put out their phantom fingers and clutch at me as I try to escape - shadows of people one might have been; unborn selves. — Virginia Woolf

I always think fondly of my years inside Detention Center LC/766B.
The women and the children I met had all lost people they loved, but they never wallowed in despair.
Dying is one of the few experiences we'll eventually all enjoy firsthand, and like most shit that's commonplace, it's boring to dwell on.
My fellow inmates/classmates (and really, what's the difference?) showed me it was more interesting to concentrate on the living.
Because death is fucking predictable ...
... but life has science experiments and free time and surprise naps and who knows what comes next? — Brian K. Vaughan

I became chairman of the inmates committee. Got into a lot of trouble. Was accused of fomenting a riot. Was accused of plotting to kill the warden. — Clifford Irving

The photographs of the inmates at Bergen-Belsen or Andersonville Prison or the bodies in the ditch at My Lai disturb us in a singular fashion because those instances of egregious human cruelty were committed for the most part by baptized Christians. — James Lee Burke

It is very seldom that any one is in prison for an ordinary crime unless early in life he entered a path that almost invariably led to the prison gate. Most of the inmates are the children of the poor. In many instances they are either orphans or half-orphans; their homes were the streets and byways of big cities, and their paths naturally and inevitably took them to their final fate. — Lyndon B. Johnson

The inmates and prisoners, I found they were my kind, and it was there inside the bars I found my peace of mind. — Bob Dylan

I would laugh at all my provincial inmates, but I'm too busy lusting. I'm not usually interested in a guy with "take a number" on his forehead, but this guy doesn't have a forehead - it's buried in messy blond hair. And he's not one of the twenty guys I've known my entire pubescent life. he smiles like the Fourth of July. What's a dumb girl to do but get in line with everyone else not in his league? I guess journalism just became my most beloved class. — Kristen Chandler

Bedtime makes you realize how completely incapable you are of being in charge of another human being. My children act like they've never been to sleep before. "Bed? What's that? No, I'm not doing that." They never want to go to bed. This is another thing that I will never have in common with my children. Every morning when I wake up, my first thought is, "When can I come back here?" It's the carrot that keeps me motivated. Sometimes going to bed feels like the highlight of my day. Ironically, to my children, bedtime is a punishment that violates their basic rights as human beings. Once the lights are out, you can expect at least an hour of inmates clanging their tin cups on the cell bars. — Jim Gaffigan

No one has entered since. We know about the Wombs too, though not where they are. Incarceron is efficient; it was designed to be. It doesn't waste dead matter, but recycles everything. In those cells it grows new inmates. Perhaps animals too. — Catherine Fisher

In unlikely places, God frees our hearts to love our neighbors, His children. Inmates, addicts, outcasts. All of them. - Kelli Regan - — Gary Chapman

We are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison-inmates. And whenever we feel this, such a sense of the vanity of our voluntary career comes over us, that all our morality appears as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substitute for that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but alas! are not so. — William James

Children, we should visit homes of the poor, orphanages and hospitals from time to time. We should take our family members along and offer assistance and look after the welfare of inmates. A word spoken with love and concern will give them more comfort than any amount of money. That will lead to the expansion of our hearts as well. — Mata Amritanandamayi

New York Stat agreed to pay $12 million to settle a lawsuit filed three decades ago by inmates swept up in the bloody 1971 revolt at Attica prison. The settlement will be paid in the form of chocolate bars and packs of Newports that can be picked up in the commissary. — Colin Quinn

Another difference between psychopaths and other inmates is that psychopaths don't get distressed by being in prison. Most inmates get depressed when they get inside, and they find prison to be a stressful experience. A hallmark feature of psychopaths' disorder is that they don't get bothered by much of anything. They don't ruminate and they don't get depressed. — Kent A. Kiehl

There is a difference between the inmates of your criminal prisons and the inmates of your cultural prison: The former understand that the distribution of wealth and power inside the prison had nothing to do with justice. — Daniel Quinn

When it comes to inmates, we have boiled them down to just the few things we know about them - their crime, their current life situation, their identification number. But the reality is they were something before they were their crime. — Uzo Aduba

On television I feel like a man playing piano in a brothel; every now and again he solaces himself by playing 'Abide with Me' in the hope of edifying both the clients and the inmates — Malcolm Muggeridge

Suddenly he realised why so many of the inmates went to the young man to talk. It was the silence. The beckoning vacuum of someone who simply listens without reaction or judgement. Who extracts your words and your secrets from you without doing anything at all. — Jo Nesbo

Prisons are fascinating places, especially when the inmates are educated white-collar types. — John Grisham

In prison, inmates sometimes use Cheetos and grape juice as makeup. I wouldn't use that beauty regimen around Britney Spears - she might lick your face off! — Joel McHale

The American and British soldiers who liberated the dying inmates from camps in Germany believed that they had discovered the horrors of Nazism. The images their photographers and cameramen captured of the corpses and the living skeletons at Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald seemed to convey the worst crimes of Hitler...this was far from the truth. The worst was in the ruins of Warsaw, or the fields of Treblinka, or the marshes of Belarus, or the pits of Babi Yar. — Timothy Snyder

The term 'deinstitutionalization' conceals some simple truths, namely, that old, unwanted persons, formerly housed in state hospitals, are now housed in nursing homes; that young, unwanted persons, formerly also housed in state hospitals, are now housed in prisons or parapsychiatric facilities; and that both groups of inmates are systematically drugged with psychiatric medications. — Thomas Szasz

I started out in 1985, and I was Inmate #1 in every prison movie made from '85 to '93. — Kim Coates

Ritzonia" was the epithet coined by Bernard Bernson, who sold Italian pictures to American millionaires, to describe the unreal, mortifying sameness of their luxury. "Ritzonia," he wrote in 1909, "carries its inmates like a wishing carpet from place to place, the same people, the same meals, the same music. Within its walls you might be at Peking or Prague or Paris or London and you would never know where. — Richard Davenport-Hines

The savage repression of blacks, which can be estimated by reading the obituary columns of the nation's dailies, Fred Hampton, etc., has not failed to register on the black inmates. — George Jackson

Changi became my university instead of my prison ... Among the inmates there were experts in all walks of life - the high and the low roads. I studied and absorbed everything I could from physics to counterfeiting, but most of all I learned the art of surviving. — James Clavell

Chopper Read attended a writing school I gave for inmates at Risdon Prison in Hobart many years ago. Even if I hadn't known about his hacked-off ears and his criminal history, I'd have found him powerful and compelling. — Garry Disher

The promise of a smooth career, which my first calm introduction to Thornfield Hall seemed to pledge, was not belied on a longer acquaintance with the place and its inmates. — Charlotte Bronte

(he thought it particularly foolish to endow inmates with a detailed sense of the positions of vital organs, but there you go), — V.E Schwab

Furniture is like that. Used and enjoyed as intended, it absorbs the experience and exudes it back into the atmosphere, but if simply bought for effect and left to languish in a corner, it vibrates with melancholy. Furnishings in museums ... are as unspeakably tragic as the unvisited inmates of old folk's homes. The untuned violins and hardback books used to bring 'character' to postwar suburban pubs crouch uncomfortably in their imposed roles like caged pumas in a zoo. The stately kitchen that is never or rarely used to bring forth lavish feasts for appreciative audiences turns inward and cold. — Will Wiles

America is an insane asylum run by the inmates. — Lester Roloff

There is no night porter wandering about in King's. The authorities pay you the compliment, ugly gate-crasher, of treating you as a grown-up. And since we are not grown-up you and I, we will perform our midnight frolics as the inmates burn the midnight oil. — Whipplesnaith

East Germany may have been a giant penitentiary administrated by the Russians, the Stasi may have embodied the worst excesses of German authority and bureaucratic thoroughness, and anyone with brains and spirit may have fled the country before the Wall went up, but the inmates who'd remained behind to expiate the country's collective guilt had paradoxically been liberated from their Germanness (...) Humble, unpunctual, spontaneous, and generous with what little they had. (...) their real loyalties were to one other, not to the state. — Jonathan Franzen

If the inmates of Guantanamo want to make their nests in Uruguay, they can do it. — Jose Mujica