how to stop a for loop

Use break and continue to do this. Breaking nested loops can be done in Python using the following:

for a in range(...):
   for b in range(..):
      if some condition:
         # break the inner loop
         break
   else:
      # will be called if the previous loop did not end with a `break` 
      continue
   # but here we end up right after breaking the inner loop, so we can
   # simply break the outer loop as well
   break

Another way is to wrap everything in a function and use return to escape from the loop.

Try to simply use break statement.

Also you can use the following code as an example:

a = [[0,1,0], [1,0,0], [1,1,1]]
b = [[0,0,0], [0,0,0], [0,0,0]]

def check_matr(matr, expVal):    
    for row in matr:
        if len(set(row)) > 1 or set(row).pop() != expVal:
            print 'Wrong'
            break# or return
        else:
            print 'ok'
    else:
        print 'empty'
check_matr(a, 0)
check_matr(b, 0)

Use the break statement: http://docs.python.org/reference/simple_stmts.html#break

Others ways to do the same is:

el = L[0][0]
m=len(L)

print L == [[el]*m]*m

Or:

first_el = L[0][0]
print all(el == first_el for inner_list in L for el in inner_list)