Jack Kerouac Quotes

I was seen in earlier years by family members and people of authority as somebody wasting his time. I had trouble with the restrictions of conformity. It made me edgy.

I wasn't good with authority, went to lots of schools, didn't like the fact that there was no autonomy.

I resent limitations. I'm going to be this way for a while.

If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.

I'm not part of any movement; I don't like being fettered.

I always wanted to go against hat grain because it was too restricting.

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

Basically, I hate conformity. I hate people telling me what to do. It makes me want to smash things. So-called normal behaviour patterns make me so bored, I could throw up!

A man who is free is like a mangy sheep in a herd. He will contaminate my entire kingdom and ruin my work.

The only time you can be completely free from risk is when you're in prison.

Conformity is painful. You know, it's too tight. Conformity leads to rebellion. So a desire for happiness is in direct conflict with a desire for freedom.

I don't like rules.

I'm done with rules that are there just to be rules.

I never liked being told what to do, so even in school plays, I never liked being an actor.

I knew I wasn't born to be caged and chained up.

I refused then like I do now to let anybody tie me down

She'd never have allowed herself to be held by anything as mundane as a few bars and a reinforced door

Society wants to put us in a box and say, OK, you do this and you do that and you do this, and I'm like, no, I like this, I like that.

When you lose your freedom, you lose, first and foremost, the opportunity to choose the company you keep.

A caged canary is safe but not free.

We tend to seek captivity because we are used to seeing freedom as something that has neither frontiers nor responsibilities.

Forbid a man to think for himself or to act for himself and you may add the joy of piracy and the zest of smuggling to his life.

Break the glass, please, and free us from all these damned rules, from needing to find an explanation for everything, from doing only what others approve of.

I get out, I get out of all your boxes. I get out, you can't hold me in these chains. I'll get out. Father free me from this bondage. Knowin' my condition is the reason I must change

I do not wish to remove from my present prison to a prison a little larger. I wish to break all prisons.