91 Inspiring Quotes About Prison

Prison is often perceived as a place of confinement, but for many, it becomes a ground for introspection, growth, and transformation. Within the walls that seem to restrict freedom, the human spirit finds ways to soar, often turning adversity into wisdom. The journey through the penal system can evoke profound reflections not just from those on the inside, but from influencers, thinkers, and writers who have contemplated the justice system’s complexities. In this collection, we delve into 91 inspiring quotes that shed light on the struggles, resilience, and insights that emerge from the prison experience. Whether you're seeking motivation, empathy, or understanding, these quotes provide a glimpse into the multifaceted impact of incarceration on the human soul.

1. “The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state....The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard.” - Henry David Thoreau

2. “Prison is like high school with knives.” - Raegan Butcher

3. “The thing that irks me most is this shattered prison, after all. I’m tired of being enclosed here. I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart: but really with it, and in it.” - Emily Brontë

4. “It is said that 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.” - Nelson Mandela

5. “The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.” - Karl Kraus

6. “The whole value of solitude depends upon oneself; it may be a sanctuary or a prison, a haven of repose or a place of punishment, a heaven or a hell, as we ourselves make it.” - John Lubbock

7. “You're still in prison if you do nothing better in freedom.” - Toba Beta

8. “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

9. “oh shit it's shit” - Stephen King

10. “I'd watched too many schoolmates graduate into mental institutions, into group homes and jails, and I knew that locking people up was paranormal - against normal, not beside it. Locks didn't cure; they strangled.” - Scott Westerfeld

11. “Most doctors are prisoners of their education and shackled by their profession.” - Richard Diaz

12. “I need a kid like I need a bad heart. A pretty kid is a ticket to trouble... and I'm too old to ask for that. Shit, I haven't even booked Tommy the Face in two years. I'm turning into a jack-off idiot.” - Edward Bunker

13. “Being a copper I like to see the law win. I'd like to see the flashy well-dressed mugs like Eddie Mars spoiling their manicures in the rock quarry at Folsom, alongside of the poor little slum-bred guys that got knocked over on their first caper amd never had a break since. That's what I'd like. You and me both lived too long to think I'm likely to see it happen. Not in this town, not in any town half this size, in any part of this wide, green and beautiful U.S.A. We just don't run our country that way.” - Raymond Chandler

14. “Handcuffs weigh much more than gravestones.(from "Gratitude")” - Visar Zhiti

15. “IN OUR CELLSThey keep us in our cellsFor a long time...And, if we get out,We lug them with us on our shoulders,Like a porter with a chest of goods.” - Visar Zhiti

16. “The best thing—in Shadow's opinion, perhaps the only good thing—about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he'd plunged as low as he could plunge and he'd hit bottom. He didn't worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. He was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it.” - Neil Gaiman

17. “It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.” - Thomas Jefferson

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

19. “[Prison Break is] one of the craziest, most unpredictable roller-coaster rides on TV today.” - Stephen King

20. “The primary obligation of any prisoner is to escape. Whether that means actually leaving or simply figuring out a way to handle things so you don't go crazy is up to you.” - Emmanuel Goldstein

21. “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

22. “In here I'm the guy who can get things for you... outside all you need is the Yellow Pages. I don't think I could make it.” - Stephen King

23. “The next morning he drove the stranger’s car half way to the Registry of Motor Vehicles before he realized he could not apply for a driver’s license. He suddenly realized he had left his name at the prison.” - Deirdre-Elizabeth Parker

24. “I am flagrantly nuts. I can say this because I am a doctor and I know about these things.” - Deirdre-Elizabeth Parker

25. “He was a very private person, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was no longer interested in the world or in other people... I got the feeling that Julián was living in the past, locked in his memories. Julián lived within himself, for his books and inside them - a comfortable prison of his own design.""You say this as if you envied him.""There are worse prisons than words.” - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

26. “دنس الغاصبون حمانا .. و إلى لأسر قادوا نساناويح قومي .. كيف ينسوون العذارى.. في سجون الطغاة أذناب النصارى ..لكن الله يا عفيفات” - مقطع من قصيد بتصرف

27. “Generally speaking, our prisoners were capable of loving animals, and if they had been allowed they would have delighted to rear large numbers of domestic animals and birds in the prison. And I wonder what other activity could better have softened and refined their harsh and brutal natures than this. But it was not allowed. Neither the regulations nor the nature of the prison made it possible.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. “In short, the right given to one man to inflict corporal punishment on another is one of the ulcers of society, one of the most powerful destructive agents of every germ and every budding attempt at civilization, the fundamental cause of its certain and irretrievable destruction.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

29. “Often a man endures for several years, submits and suffers the cruellest punishments, and then suddenly breaks out over some minute trifle, almost nothing at all.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

30. “...you are strong only as long as you don't deprive people of everything. For a person you've taken everything from is no longer in your power. He's free all over again.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

31. “The securest place is a prison cell, but there is no liberty” - ben franklin

32. “Is the prison that Mr. Scoundrel lives in at the end of his career a more uncomfortable place than the workhouse that Mr. Honesty lives in at the end of his career?” - Wilkie Collins

33. “Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage; If I have freedom in my love And in my soul am free, Angels alone, that soar above, Enjoy such liberty.” - Richard Lovelace

34. “While writing is like a joyful release, editing is a prison where the bars are my former intentions and the abusive warden my own neuroticism.” - Tiffany Madison

35. “He offered her power, money, status...a giant prison, all in exchange for only...her soul.” - Jamie Weise

36. “The critical issues here concern what is right, what is just -- not the balancing of benefits.” - Carl Cohen

37. “Our lives are led, and our decisions made, within a network of needs and wants, some natural, some arising from the acts of others, some aggravated by the acts of the state. We are all bored, or threatened, or tantalized in differing degrees by a perilous world, some hostile people, and a not very sensitive government.” - Carl Cohen

38. “Christians talk as though goodness was their idea but good behavior doesn't have any religious origin. Our prisons are filled with the devout.” - Andy Rooney

39. “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

40. “Abolition is not some disstant future but something we create in every moment when we say no to the traps of empire and yes to the nourishing possibilities dreamed of and practiced by our ancestors and friends. Every time we insist on accessible and affirming health care, safe and quality education, meaningful and secure employment, loving and healing relationships, and being our full and whole selves, we are doing abolition. Abolition is about breaking down things that oppress and building up things that nourish. Abolition is the practice of transformation in the here and now and the ever after.” - Eric A. Stanley

41. “Man is complete in himself. When they go into the world, the world will disagree with them. That is inevitable. The world hates Individualism. But that is not to trouble them. They are to be calm and self-centred. If a man takes their cloak, they are to give him their coat, just to show that material things are of no importance. If people abuse them, they are not to answer back. What does it signify? The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realise through that sin his true perfection.” - Oscar Wilde

42. “Violence is already active here; it is built into the very structure od the existing society. If we seek a world in which men do the least possible violence to each other (which is to state just the negative of it), then we are committed not simply to try to avoid violence ourselves, but to try to destroy patterns of violence which already exist.” - Barbara Deming

43. “They don’t need walls and water to keep the prisoners in, not when they’re trapped inside their own heads, incapable of a single cheerful thought. Most go mad within weeks.” - J.K. Rowling

44. “Expensive illogicalities and inefficiencies do not worry the monsters of American bureaucracy, and the taxpayers are enthusiastic and eager to spend fortunes in the name of fighting crime. Prison places cost the US taxpayer more than university places. The American belief that prisons are the best way to combat crime has led to an incarceration rate that is at least five times that of almost any industrialised nation. Overcrowding is endemic. Conditions are appalling, varying from windowless, sensory-deprived isolation to barren futile brutality.” - Howard Marks

45. “Fuck you, angel. Fuck you and all God's little prison bitches. He slips you some cigarettes and a con job smile and you run off to do his dirty work for him. Go and scare some sinners. No one's listening to you here.” - Richard Kadrey

46. “Her body was a prison, her mind was a prison. Her memories were a prison. The people she loved. She couldn't get away from the hurt of them. She could leave Eric, walk out of her apartment, walk forever if she liked, but she couldn't escape what really hurt. Tonight even the sky felt like a prison.” - Ann Brashares

47. “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

48. “but this is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, about making prison merely a hygienic environment like a hospital, of healing sin by slow scientific methods. The fallacy of the whole thing is that evil is a matter of active choice whereas disease is not.” - G.K. Chesterton

49. “Kennedy's issue didn't seem to be that she had been in jail, but that she had put on weight in jail. The food had been crappy, she'd told me, and it has been high on the carbohydrate count. "But I'm an emotional eater," she'd said, as if that were a terrible thing. "And I was real emotional in jail.” - Charlaine Harris

50. “Stone walls do not a prison make,Nor iron bars a cage.” - Richard Lovelace

51. “Murderers — serving life sentences — were caring for their dying fellow inmates. Washing their bed-sore covered bodies, changing their diapers, holding their hands while they took their last breath. It was the other side of death, not the one at the end of a sudden muzzle flash, but the slow and wrenching kind, leaving plenty of time for hard reflection.” - Lisa R. Cohen

52. “In my view, it is an error to think about 'alternatives to prison' if what we mean by that is 'electronic bracelets,' through which people are subject to computer-monitored house arrest, or granting fuller surveillance and disciplinary powers and technologies to other state agencies, such as welfare and mental health, through 'transcarceration' policies...We need to decrease, not increase, the means by which the state, in its multifarious networks of authority, controls human lives and selectively incapacitates people who, no less than others, have the potential to contribute to the improvement of hte human condition.” - Karlene Faith

53. “The first few hours in the cell were quite stimulating. I'd never been in a prison cell before and was quite enjoying the experience.” - Tahir Shah

54. “The dogs brought it all back to, you know, to the human side.” - Luis Carlos Montalván

55. “That's for the best. Otherwise they might realize they're in prison. It can't be helped. You women are used to harems and prisons. A person can spend his whole life between four walls. If he doesn't think or feel that he's a prisoner, then he's not a prisoner. But then there are people for whom the whole planet is a prison, who see the infinite expanse of the universe, the millions of stars and galaxies that remain forever inaccessible to them. And that awareness makes them the greatest prisoners of time and space.” - Vladimir Bartol

56. “Half the published articles on Gaza contain a standard reference to its resemblance to a vast open-air prison (and when I last saw it under Israeli occupation it certainly did deserve this metaphor). The problem is that, given its ideology and its allies, Hamas qualifies rather too well in the capacity of guard and warder.” - Christopher Hitchens

57. “The massive prison construction represents a commitment by our nation to plan for social failure by spending billions of dollars to lock up hundreds of thousands of people while at the same time cutting billions of dollars from programs that would provide opportunity to young Americans.” - Steven Donziger

58. “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

59. “All during that prison time I really lived by prayer. Be in prayer always, we're told, and back then I was.” - Diet Eman

60. “I would stand there at times and remember how beautiful God created this world, and then I would be reassured that he would certainly take care of me and all of my loved ones.” - Diet Eman

61. “I had no real communication with anyone at the time, so I was totally dependent on God. And he never failed me.” - Diet Eman

62. “(Thinking while being interrogated by the Germans) You big shots think you can decide on my life, but I have news for you: you can't touch a hair on my head without the will of God my Father, because He is on my side.” - Diet Eman

63. “Please," Kendra said. "Think of all the lives that will be destroyed.""I have," Mark said. "Believe me, darling, I grasp all aspects of this, I really do. But how much has the public I'm protecting worried about me? My sanity, my happiness, my right to find peace?""They made no promises," Bracken said. "They are not preventing the end of the world. Those who know about your sacrifice appreciate you immeasurably. Your life may not be fair, but it is absolutely necessary.” - Brandon Mull

64. “He's stubborn," Tux warned in a singsong tone."Stay out of this," Mark spat."And touchy," Tux added.” - Brandon Mull

65. “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

66. “Jerry-5486: "The most apparent thing that I noticed was how most of the people in this study derive their sense of identity and well-being from their immediate surroundings rather than from within themselves, and that's why they broke down—just couldn't stand the pressure—they had nothing within them to hold up against all of this.” - Philip G. Zimbardo

67. “Unforgiveness denies the victim the possibility of parole and leaves them stuck in the prison of what was, incarcerating them in their trauma and relinquishing the chance to escape beyond the pain.” - T D Jakes

68. “The cliche about prison life is that I am actually integrated into it, ruined by it, when my accommodation to it is so overwhelming that I can no longer stand or even imagine freedom, life outside prison, so that my release brings about a total psychic breakdown, or at least gives rise to a longing for the lost safety of prison life. The actual dialectic of prison life, however, is somewhat more refined. Prison in effect destroys me, attains a total hold over me, precisely when I do not fully consent to the fact that I am in prison but maintain a kind of inner distance towards it, stick to the illusion that ‘real life is elsewhere’ and indulge all the time in daydreaming about life outside, about nice things that are waiting for me after my release or escape. I thereby get caught in the vicious cycle of fantasy, so that when, eventually, I am released, the grotesque discord between fantasy and reality breaks me down. The only true solution is therefore fully to accept the rules of prison life and then, within the universe governed by these rules, to work out a way to beat them. In short, inner distance and daydreaming about Life Elsewhere in effect enchain me to prison, whereas full acceptance of the fact that I am really there, bound by prison rules, opens up a space for true hope.” - Slavoj Žižek

69. “Prison is a second-by-second assault on the soul, a day-to-day degradation of the self, an oppressive steel and brick umbrella that transforms seconds into hours and hours into days.” - Mumia Abu-Jamal

70. “The cells smell is a great feature of French prisons. Ours in No.44 was one of those fine broad-shouldered up and coming young smells, which stand on both feet and look the world in the eye. We became very fond and proud of it.” - P. G. Wodehouse

71. “If he's a poet, why's he in jail?" demanded a suspicious voice. Madam Chairwoman shrugged velvet shoulders. "Perhaps he writes free verse," she suggested cunningly. A stir of approval answered her. Mice are all for people being free, so that they too can be freed form their eternal task of cheering prisoners--so that they can stay snug at home, nibbling the family cheese, instead of sleeping out in damp straw on a diet of stale bread.” - Margery Sharp

72. “Language as a PrisonThe Philippines did have a written language before the Spanish colonists arrived, contrary to what many of those colonists subsequently claimed. However, it was a language that some theorists believe was mainly used as a mnemonic device for epic poems. There was simply no need for a European-style written language in a decentralized land of small seaside fishing villages that were largely self-sufficient.One theory regarding language is that it is primarily a useful tool born out of a need for control. In this theory written language was needed once top-down administration of small towns and villages came into being. Once there were bosses there arose a need for written language. The rise of the great metropolises of Ur and Babylon made a common written language an absolute necessity—but it was only a tool for the administrators. Administrators and rulers needed to keep records and know names— who had rented which plot of land, how many crops did they sell, how many fish did they catch, how many children do they have, how many water buffalo? More important, how much then do they owe me? In this account of the rise of written language, naming and accounting seem to be language's primary "civilizing" function. Language and number are also handy for keeping track of the movement of heavenly bodies, crop yields, and flood cycles. Naturally, a version of local oral languages was eventually translated into symbols as well, and nonadministrative words, the words of epic oral poets, sort of went along for the ride, according to this version.What's amazing to me is that if we accept this idea, then what may have begun as an instrument of social and economic control has now been internalized by us as a mark of being civilized. As if being controlled were, by inference, seen as a good thing, and to proudly wear the badge of this agent of control—to be able to read and write—makes us better, superior, more advanced. We have turned an object of our own oppression into something we now think of as virtuous. Perfect! We accept written language as something so essential to how we live and get along in the world that we feel and recognize its presence as an exclusively positive thing, a sign of enlightenment. We've come to love the chains that bind us, that control us, for we believe that they are us (161-2).” - David Byrne

73. “Is it always in the interest of the public safety to seek the prosecutor's traditional solution -- the harshest penalty possible? Or is the public best served by finding ways to change a kid's lot in life for the better, even if that means opening the prison door?” - Edward Humes

74. “the fundamental question Juvenile Court was designed to ask - What's the best way to deal with this individual kid? - is often lost in the process, replaced by a point system that opens the door, or locks it, depending on the qualities of the crime, not the child.” - Edward Humes

75. “Take a trip in my mindsee all that I've seen,and you'd be called abeast, not a human being...Fuck it, cause there'snot much I can do,there's no way out, myscreams have no voice nomatter how loud I shout...I could be called alow life, but life ain'tas low as me. I'm in juvenile hall headedfor the penitentiary. George Trevino, sixteen, "Who Am I?” - Edward Humes

76. “He wants to tell her that he is not hopeless, that he is not filled with hatred or violence, that he is not a number, a 300 or 600 or any hundred, but just a kid with no one and nothing, and who would do anything to make it otherwise. Just tell me how, he wants to scream. He wants to tell her what it's like to have the same dream night after night, that he's playing tag with his little sister, laughing, happy - then waking up and not knowing if the image in his head is a dim memory, or just something his mind cooked up to fill the black hole. Do you know what it's like to have no past? he wants to ask. And behind it all, like a ringing in his ears, is the question that really nags at him all the time, the one that has haunted him since he was six years old and his family evaporated. He wants to ask it, then and there and for good: What did I do wrong back then? What did I do to deserve this life?” - Edward Humes

77. “Cage an eagle and it will bite at the wires, be they ofiron or of gold.” - Henrik Ibsen

78. “You’re scaring the dog,” Trish pointed out. She rarely called me by name. They do that inprisoner of war camps, I’ve heard. Depersonalization.” - Garth Stein

79. “[Solitary confinement] is terrible. That is terrible. You're in a grave. You can't do anything. Everything's brought to you and you're in a room all day, except to come out of the showers. So when I would come out, I would entertain myself by singing, doing little mock concerts. And then when I was in the room, I would develop a routine. Like I have a lot of hair under here, so I would take my hair down and take all day to braid it on purpose. Stretch the hours out. Then I might write. And I would clean the floor. And I would look out the window. And then I'd devote a whole day to just reading. I was Christian then, trying to be. So I would read the whole Bible. I would break it down into sections. You're in a grave and you're trying to live. That's how to best describe it: trying to live in a grave. You're trying to live 'cause you're not dead yet, but nobody hears you when you call out, 'Hey, I'm alive!” - Megan Sweeney

80. “Prisons are built to break men, and when men are broken society has consummated its revenge” - Jan Valtin

81. “The tears in my pus-filled eyes became a thousand little crystals of ever color. Like stained-glass windows, I thought. God is with you today, Papi! In the midst of nature's monstrous elements, in the wind, the immenseness of the sea, the depth of the waves, the imposing green roof of the bush, you feel your own infinitesimal smallness, and perhaps it's here, without looking for Him, that you find God, that you touch Him with your finger. I had sensed Him at night during the thousands of hours I had spent buried alive in dank dungeons without a ray of sun; I touched Him today in a sun that would devour everything too weak to resist it. I touched God, I felt Him around me, inside me. He even whispered in my ear: "You will suffer; you will suffer more. But this time I am on your side. You will be free. You will, I promise you.” - Henri Charrière

82. “After a week he was moved to a different wing and into a shared six-by-eight with a grizzled old con called Alf. He had faded tattoos that stained most of the visible skin on his hands, arms and neck a dull blue, sharp eyes and a thick beard that made his mouth look like an axe wound on a bear.” - R.D. Ronald

83. “you do your own time in prison. You don't do anyone else's time for them.” - Neil Gaiman

84. “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

85. “Kindness is in a prison till it findsRelease in words or deeds.- Kindness” - William Kean Seymour

86. “When you see a man led to prison say in your heart, "Mayhap he is escaping from a narrower prison." And when you see a man drunken say in your heart, "Mayhap he sought escape from something still more unbeautiful.” - Kahlil Gibran

87. “We should never forget that everything Adolph Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighers did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

88. “The genius of the current caste system, and what most distinguishes it from its predecessors, is that it appears voluntary. People choose to commit crimes, and that's why they are locked up or locked out, we are told. This feature makes the politics of responsibility particularly tempting, as it appears the system can be avoided with good behavior. But herein lies the trap. All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners. All of us are criminals. All of us violate the law at some point in our lives. In fact, if the worst thing you have ever done is speed ten miles over the speed limit on the freeway, you have put yourself and others at more risk of harm than someone smoking marijuana in the privacy of his or her living room. Yet there are people in the United States serving life sentences for first-time drug offenses, something virtually unheard of anywhere else in the world.” - Michelle Alexander

89. “The slang for the rectum is "prison wallet".” - Mary Roach

90. “Someone once told me a joke," he said. "I'd like to be a pacifist, but people keep getting in the way.' I made a decision to fight for my friend in prison. It was a deliberate decision. It isn't the only way-it's just something I decided.” - Edeet Ravel

91. “As I stood in the room looking at it for the last time, I felt again the cold metal of the handcuffs on my wrists and remembered the physical suffering and mental anguish I had endured while fighting with all the willpower and intellect God had given me for that rare and elusive thing in a Communist country called justice.” - Nien Cheng