Crime Quotes - Page 35

• Behind every fortune there is a crime.

  Honore de Balzac

  Fortune, Behinds

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• How could passion run so deep
  Had I never thought
  That the crime of being born
  Blackens all our lot?

  William Butler Yeats

  Running, Passion, Sin

  William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.524, Hayes Barton Press

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• It recognizes no morality but a sham morality meant for deceit, no honor even among thieves and of a thievish sort, no force but physical force, no intellectual power but cunning, no disgrace but failure, no crime but stupidity.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Stupidity, Intellectual, Honor

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1968). “The papers of Woodrow Wilson”

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• In persons grafted in a serious trust,
  Negligence is a crime.

  William Shakespeare

  Serious, Negligence, Persons

  William Shakespeare, Capel Lofft (1812). “Aphorisms from Shakespeare”, p.306

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• It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.

  Mark Twain

  Criticism, Bears, Burden

  Mark Twain, Harriet Elinor Smith (2012). “Autobiography of Mark Twain: Reader's Edition”, p.201, Univ of California Press

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• Of all crimes the worst
  Is to steal the glory
  From the great and brave,
  Even more accursed
  Than to rob the grave.

  Robert Frost

  Brave, Stealing, Glory

  Robert Frost (1971). “The poetry of Robert Frost”

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• The fantastical idea of virtue and the public good being a sufficient security to the state against the commission of crimes, which you say you have heard insisted on by some, I assure you was never mine.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Ideas, Virtue, States

  Thomas Jefferson, Jean M. Yarbrough (1963). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.142, Hackett Publishing

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• I went straight from shenanigans to crimes against humanity.

  George Carlin

  Humanity, Shenanigans, Crimes Against Humanity

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• You may charge me with murder--or want of sense--
  (We are all of us weak at times):
  But the slightest approach to a false pretence
  Was never among my crimes!

  Lewis Carroll

  Honesty, May, Want

  Lewis Carroll “Alice in Wonderland”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• But grant, the virtues of a temp'rate prime
  Bless with an age exempt from scorn or crime;
  An age that melts with unperceived decay,
  And glides in modest Innocence away

  Samuel Johnson

  Age, Decay, Innocence

  Samuel Johnson, Niall Rudd (1981). “Johnson's Juvenal: London and The Vanity of Human Wishes”, Bloomsbury Academic

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• ... many of the things which we deplore, the prevalence of tuberculosis, the mounting record of crime in certain sections of the country, are not due just to lack of education and to physical differences, but are due in great part to the basic fact of segregation which we have set up in this country and which warps and twists the lives not only of our Negro population, but sometimes of foreign born or even of religious groups.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Country, Religious, Differences

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• For man's greatest crime is to have been born.

  Pedro Calderon de la Barca

  Men, Birth, Born

  "Life Is a Dream". Play by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, 1635.

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• Much is made of the accelerating brutality of young people's crimes, but rarely does our concern for dangerous children translateinto concern for children in danger. We fail to make the connection between the use of force on children themselves, and violent antisocial behavior, or the connection between watching father batter mother and the child deducing a link between violence and masculinity.

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin

  Mother, Children, Father

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin (1983). “Family politics: love and power on an intimate frontier”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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• ... while one-half of the people of the United States are robbed of their inherent right of personal representation in this freestcountry on the face of the globe, it is idle for us to expect that the men who thus rob women will not rob each other as individuals, corporations and Government.

  Susan B. Anthony

  Men, People, Half

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• You cannot undermine police authority and then complain about rising crime.

  Thomas Paine

  Fear, Police, Complaining

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• Knowing what [Christ] knew , knowing all about mankind--ah! who would have thought that the crime is not so much to make others die, but to die oneself--confronted day and night with his innocent crime, it became too difficult to go on. It was better to get it over with, to not defend himself, to die, in order not to be the only one to have survived, and to go elsewhere, where, perhaps, he would be supported.

  Albert Camus

  God, Night, Order

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• ... habit starts at the second crime. At the first one, something is ending.

  Albert Camus

  Firsts, Murder, Habit

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• ... how have I used rivers, how have I used wars
  to escape writing of the worst thing of all--
  not the crimes of other, not even our own death,
  but the failure to want our freedom passionately enough
  so that blighted elms, sick rivers, massacres would seem
  mere emblems of that desecration of ourselves?

  Adrienne Rich

  Freedom, War, Writing

  Adrienne Rich (2013). “The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977”, p.27, W. W. Norton & Company

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• It is not a merit to tolerate, but rather a crime to be intolerant.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Tolerance, Merit, Tolerate

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• Remember that it's never a crime in the face of humanity and enlightenment to distribute the works of the great humanists among the merchants and moneychangers of this godforsaken country... You better slip me the dough.

  John Dos Passos

  Country, Book, Humanity

  John Dos Passos (2013). “The 42nd Parallel”, p.32, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The criminal element now calculates that crime really does pay.

  Ronald Reagan

  Success, Law, Criminals

  United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan), United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan)., Ronald Reagan, United States. Office of the Federal Register (1982). “Ronald Reagan”

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• Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honorable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on the circulation and you know what circulation depends on.

  Raymond Chandler

  Sex, Hate, Mean

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.216, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• I once heard of a murderer who propped his two victims up against a chess board in sporting attitudes and was able to get as far as Seattle before his crime was discovered.

  Robert Benchley

  Attitude, Games, Two

  Robert Benchley (2010). “The Athletic Benchley: 105 Exercises from the Detroit Athletic Club News”, p.24, Glendower Media

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• Therefore with idle hands and head I sit
  In late December before the fire's daze
  Punished by crimes of which I would be quit.

  Allen Tate

  Christmas, Hands, Fire

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.103, Macmillan

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• Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime--and a cruelty, too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.

  Sigmund Freud

  Plato, Believe, Book

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