Crime Quotes - Page 36

• Morality is a burglar's tool whose merit lies in never being left behind at the scene of the crime.

  Karl Kraus

  Lying, Merit, Tools

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

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• I'm responding to the will of the people.

  David Mamet

  People, Responding

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• Crooks aren't the worst people, just the stupidest. The fleas of the world.

  Orson Welles

  People, Stupidity, Crooks

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• When trying a case [the famous judge] L. Cassius never failed to inquire "Who gained by it?" Man's character is such that no one undertakes crimes without hope of gain.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Character, Men, Judging

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• Fear, coercion, punishment, are the masculine remedies for moral weakness, but statistics show their failure for centuries. Why not change the system and try the education of the moral and intellectual faculties, cheerful surroundings, inspiring influences? Everything in our present system tends to lower the physical vitality, the self-respect, the moral tone, and to harden instead of reforming the criminal.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Punishment, Self, Intellectual

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1898). “Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences, 1815-1897”, p.304, UPNE

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• Physical nature lies at our feet shackled with a hundred chains. What of the control of human nature? Do not point to the triumphsof psychiatry, social services or the war against crime. Domination of human nature can only mean the domination of every man by himself.

  Johan Huizinga

  War, Lying, Mean

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• Some smaller crimes always precede the great crimes.

  Jean Racine

  Evil

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• I felt for my crime a just terror; I looked on my life with hate, and my passion with horror.

  Jean Racine

  Hate, Passion, Guilt

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• It is the custom of the immortal gods to grant temporary prosperity and a fairly long period of impunity to those whom they plan to punish for their crimes, so that they may feel it all the more keenly as a result of the change in their fortunes.

  Julius Caesar

  Punishment, Long, May

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• I believe that the members of my family must be as free from suspicion as from actual crime.

  Julius Caesar

  Believe, My Family, Members

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• Jurists say that a capital crime submerges all lesser crimes; and so it is with faith. Its absurdity makes all petty difficultiesvanish.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Faith, Absurdity, Petty

  Soren Kierkegaard (2017). “Philosophical Fragments”, p.67, Jovian Press

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• Fantasy works inwards upon its author, blurring the boundary between the visioned and the actual, and associating itself ever moreclosely with the Ego, so that the child who has fantasied himself a murderer ends by becoming a Loeb or a Leopold. The creative Imagination works outwards, steadily increasing the gap between the visioned and the actual, till this becomes the great gulf fixed between art and nature. Few writers of crime-stories become murderers--if any do, it is not the result of identifying themselves with their murderous heroes.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Art, Children, Hero

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2015). “The Mind of the Maker”, p.93, Open Road Media

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• This is the first time in history that a war has involved the whole world, and also it may last many years more; this thought is soul-shattering for all of us as human beings. It is horrible to think that the crimes committed by this one man Hitler have these many years been destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands and millions, and one would despair entirely were it not certain that the majority, the innumerable majority which opposes him openly or secretly, will succeed in wiping out once and for all him and his.

  Stefan Zweig

  Life, War, Men

  Stefan Zweig, Friderike Maria Burger Winternitz Zweig, Henry G. Alsberg (1954). “Stefan and Friderike Zweig: their correspondence, 1912-1942”

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• When the excessively shy force themselves to be forward, they are frequently surprisingly unsubtle and overdirect and even rude: they have entered an extreme region beyond their normal personality, an area of social crime where gradations don't count; unavailable to them are the instincts and taboos that booming extroverts, who know the territory of self-advancement far better, can rely on.

  Nicholson Baker

  Self, Personality, Rude

  Nicholson Baker (2011). “U and I: A True Story”, p.153, Vintage

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• Can a free people restrain crime without sacrificing fundamental liberties and a heritage of compassion?... Let us show that we can temper together those opposite elements of liberty and restraint into one consistent whole. Let us set an example for the world of a law-abiding America glorying in its freedom as well as its respect for law.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Freedom, Sacrifice, Compassion

  Gerald R. Ford's Address at Yale Law School's 150th anniversary, www.presidency.ucsb.edu. April 25, 1975.

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• No more astounding relic of the subjection of women survives in western civilization than the status of the prostitute.... In connection with what other illegal vice is the seller alone penalized, and not the buyer?

  Crystal Eastman

  Civilization, Vices, Connections

  Crystal Eastman (1978). “Crystal Eastman on Women and Revolution”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• ...I believe it is now the duty of the slaves of the South to rebuke their masters for their robbery, oppression and crime.... Nostation or character can destroy individual responsibility, in the matter of reproving sin.

  Angelina Grimke

  Believe, Character, Responsibility

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• Trying to conceal a crime is like burying a seed in the ground.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Trying, Burying, Seeds

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• The courts used to be, fair and square, the avengers of secular crimes; but nowadays they demand respect even for the criminal.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Respect, Squares, Justice

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• Crime is rampant. We even steal away from responsibility.

  Andre Brie

  Sarcastic, Responsibility, Sarcasm

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• It's strange that men should take up crime when there are so many legal ways to be dishonest.

  Laurence J. Peter

  Sarcastic, Sarcasm, Men

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• The function of the prosecutor under the federal Constitution is not to tack as many skins of victims as possible against the wall. His function is to vindicate the rights of the people as expressed in the laws and give those accused of crime a fair trial.

  William O. Douglas

  Wall, Rights, Law

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• Penalties serve to deter those who are not inclined to commit any crimes.

  Karl Kraus

  Penalties, Commit

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms”

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• I only do business with the people I do business with. The people I do business with find out I do business with the people I don't do business with.... I can't do business with you.

  John Guare

  Business, People, I Can

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• With five to ten hundred pure-minded young women threading the streets of the village every evening unattended, vice must slink away, like frost before the rising sun.

  Anna Julia Cooper

  Rose, Vices, Frost

  Anna Julia Cooper (2016). “A Voice from the South”, p.24, Courier Dover Publications

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