Crime Quotes - Page 37

• High buildings have no genuine advantages, except in speculative gains for banks and land owners. They are not cheaper, they do not help create open space, they destroy the townscape, they destroy social life, they promote crime, they make life difficult for children, they are expensive to maintain, they wreck the open spaces near them, and they damage light and air and view.

  Christopher Alexander

  Children, Light, Air

  Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein (1977). “A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction”, p.115, Oxford University Press

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• After me there are no more jazz singers . . . It's a crime that no little singer is back there sockin' it to me in my field. To keep it going, to keep it alive, because I'm not going to live forever.

  Betty Carter

  Forever, Alive, Littles

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• Each man's private conscience ought to be a nice little self-registering thermometer: he ought to carry his moral code incorruptibly and explicitly within himself, and not care what the world thinks. The mass of human beings, however, are not made that way; and many people have been saved from crime or sin by the simple dislike of doing things they would not like to confess.

  Katharine Fullerton Gerould

  Nice, Simple, Men

  Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1920). “Modes and Morals”

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• If you are passed out drunk or if there is a gun to your head, it is the same crime. It is a crime where there is not consent. It is a felony. And we need to start making sure victims understand that, so they don't do the self blame.

  Claire McCaskill

  Reality, Gun, Self

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• Everybody gets pinched but you did it right. You told them nothing and they got nothing. You learned the two greatest things in life: Never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut.

  Nicholas Pileggi

  Friends, Things In Life, Two

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• This is Wall Street, and today is important. Because tomorrow, July 4th, I intended to make my first million dollars--an excitingday in a man's life. The enterprise was slightly illegal.

  Abraham Polonsky

  Money, Wall, 4th Of July

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• A grifter's got an irresistible urge to be the guy who's wise. There's nothin' to whipping a fool. Hell, fools are made to be whipped. But to take another pro. Even your partner, who knows you and has his eye on you. That's a score! No matter what happens.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Wise, Cheating, Eye

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• Prostitution is the most hideous of the afflictions produced by the unequal distribution of the world's goods; this infamy stigmatizes the human species and bears witness against the social organization far more than does crime.

  Flora Tristan

  Organization, Bears, Doe

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• ... what's been building since the 1980's is a new kind of social Darwinism that blames poverty and crime and the crisis of our youth on a breakdown of the family. That's what will last after this flurry on family values.

  Stephanie Coontz

  Family, Politics, Lasts

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• Consider children as a beat. Clearly not an institution of power, children don't vote and they don't pass taxes. They have no money, and they don't buy newspapers or watch the news on television. Consequently, children are one of the most neglected segments of society in the news, except as a subtopic of other power beats such as education, family, and crime. Children are in serious trouble in this society, which means the foundation of our society is in trouble, which means the future is in trouble, and that is news.

  Joan Konner

  Children, Mean, Foundation

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• Los Angeles is a Yukon for crime-story writers.

  Christina Stead

  Story Writers, Stories, Yukon

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• Reading Tomato Red-the first Daniel Woodrell novel I came upon-was a transformative experience. It expanded my sense of the possibilities not only of crime fiction, but of fiction itself-of language, of storytelling. Time and again, his work just dazzles and humbles me. God bless Busted Flush for these glorious reissues. It's a service to readers everywhere, and a great gift.

  Megan Abbott

  Reading, Tomatoes, Fiction

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• There are a lot of stats and a strong correlation between dropout rates and crime as well as poverty.

  Cedric Richmond

  Strong, Poverty, Rate

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• There is a fascination about crime, which is understandable, but hardly anyone talks about the families of victims of violent crime and the devastation that is beyond the victim alone.

  Werner Herzog

  Fascination, Devastation, Victim

  "Werner Herzog's Abyss Stares Back". Interview with Leah Carroll, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 10, 2011.

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• The Collector [John Fowles book] does such a good job of capturing the mindset of a capturer, and also that's become a banal trope of every second crime novel: the weirdo, fetishistic watcher/stalker/kidnapper/kidnapper of women or children.

  Emma Donoghue

  Jobs, Children, Book

  "Emma Donoghue Chats About 'Room'". The New Yorker Chat, www.newyorker.com. January 21, 2011.

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• When you're smart on crime, you start off by recognizing that both the victim, first of all, the victim, but also the person who did the crime are both human.

  Benjamin Jealous

  Smart, Firsts, Victim

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

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• A range of studies shows there is no evidence immigrants commit more crime than native-born Americans. In fact, first generation immigrants are predisposed to lower crime rates than native-born Americans. The two cities in this country most impacted by undocumented immigrants, you would think of the New York City with over 500,000 and Los Angeles, with a similar amount. Both those cities are among the safest in the free world.

  Geraldo Rivera

  Country, New York, Thinking

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• Before we snap to judge someone who's done a horrible crime, is it possible that all of us in the worst possible circumstances could be capable of something like that? So it's about not judging people before really considering what the circumstance was and that not all murderers are created equal. We have a tendency in our society to just say murder? Cut and dried. Go away forever. Or maybe you should have the electric chair yourself.

  Jack Black

  Cutting, Should Have, Judging People

  "Actor Jack Black". "The Tavis Smiley show" with Tavis Smiley, www.pbs.org. November 1, 2012.

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• Preventive war is a crime not easily committed by a country that retains any traces of democracy.

  George Orwell

  Country, War, Democracy

  George Orwell, Peter Hobley Davison, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “It is what I think: 1947-1948”

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• Deep thinkers who look everywhere for the mysterious causes of poverty, ignorance, crime and war need look no further than their own mirrors. We are all born into this world poor and ignorant, and with thoroughly selfish and barbaric impulses. Those of us who turn out any other way do so largely through the efforts of others, who civilized us before we got big enough to do too much damage to the world or ourselves.

  Thomas Sowell

  War, Selfish, Ignorance

  Thomas Sowell (1987). “Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays”, William Morrow

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• I heard some good news today, the FBI and the CIA are going to start cooperating. They are going to start working together. And if you don't know the difference between the FBI and the CIA, the FBI bungles domestic crime, the CIA bungles foreign crime.

  David Letterman

  Differences, Together, News

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• The police have enough work to keep them busy regulating automobile traffic, preventing robberies and crimes of violence and helping lost children and little old ladies find their way home. As long as the police confine themselves to such activities they are respected friends of the public. But as soon as they begin inquiring into people's private morals, they become nothing more than armed clergymen.

  Alan Watts

  Children, Home, Long

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• When poor and ordinary Americans who commit crimes are prosecuted and imprisoned, that is Justice. When the same thing is done to Washington elites, that is Ugly Retribution.

  Glenn Greenwald

  Justice, Ordinary, Done

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• The method of electrocution would be much better than the old method of hanging.

  Meldrim Thomson, Jr.

  Punishment, Would Be, Method

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• Trying a case a second time is like eating yesterday morning's oatmeal.

  Lloyd Paul Stryker

  Morning, Oatmeal, Yesterday

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