Criminals Quotes - Page 25

• At night numbers must sleep; it is their duty, just as it is their duty to work in the daytime. Not sleeping at night is a criminal offense.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Sleep, Night, Numbers

  Yevgeny Zamyatin “We”, Two-Gunner Pulp Press

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• I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Forgiving, Lasts, Firsts

  Charlotte Bronte (2004). “Jane Eyre”, p.26, Variocity

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• Until we in the community have made up our minds that what we really want is expiation, or removal, or reform, or or the discouragement of potential criminals, we shall get none of these, but only a confusion in which crime breeds more crime.

  Norbert Wiener

  Confusion, Community, Mind

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.110, Da Capo Press

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• When the last of the Reformers died, religion, instead of emancipating the nations, had become an excuse for the criminal art of despots. Calvin preached, and Bellarmine lectured; but Machiavelli reigned.

  Lord Acton

  Art, Lasts, Excuse

  Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom: Great Event”, p.39, VM eBooks

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• In tracking down and eliminating terrorists, we need to change our metaphor from a "war on terror" - exactly what, pray tell, is that? - to the mind-set of Interpol tracking down master criminals through intense global cooperation among nations, or the FBI stalking the Mafia, or local police determined to quell street gangs without leveling the entire neighborhood in the process.

  Bill Moyers

  War, Police, Mind

  "The Meaning of Freedom". Sol Feinstone Lecture at the United States Military Academy, November 15, 2006. "Moyers on Democracy", p. 78, 2008.

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• And, as for what is called improving conversation, that is merely the foolish method by which the still more foolish philanthropist feebly tries to disarm the just rancour of the criminal classes.

  Oscar Wilde

  Class, Trying, Foolish

  Oscar Wilde, Isobel Murray (2008). “Oscar Wilde - The Major Works”, p.248, Oxford University Press

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• When the people who are in power want to use again, create an image, to justify something that's bad, they use the press. And they'll use the press to create a humanitarian image, for a devil, or a devil image for a humanitarian. They'll take a person who's a victim of the crime, and make it appear he's the criminal, and they'll take the criminal and make it appear that he's the victim of the crime.

  Malcolm X

  People, Devil, Use

  Malcolm X's speech at the Oxford Union debate (December 3, 1964) as quoted in Saladin Ambar "Malcolm X at Oxford Union: Racial Politics in a Global Era" (p. 171), 2013.

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• Whenever you're going after something that belongs to you, anyone who's depriving you of the right to have it is a criminal. Understand that. Whenever you are going after something that is yours, you are within your legal rights to lay claim to it. And anyone who puts forth any effort to deprive you of that which is yours, is breaking the law, is a criminal.

  Malcolm X

  Law, Rights, Effort

  "The Ballot or The Bullet (Cleveland Version)". Malcolm X's speech at Cory Methodist Church in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964) as quoted in "Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements" edited by George Breitman (pp. 23-44), 1965.

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• Laws directed against opinions affect the generous-minded rather than the wicked, and are adapted less for coercing criminals than for irritating the upright.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Law, Wicked, Opinion

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• The inspiration of a single book has made preachers, poets, philosophers, authors, and statesmen. On the other hand, the demoralization of a single book has sometimes made infidels, profligates, and criminals.

  Orison Swett Marden

  Book, Inspiration, Hands

  Orison Swett Marden (2006). “Rising in the World, Or Architects of Fate”, p.432, Cosimo, Inc.

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• When you print out your manuscript and read it, marking up with a pen, it sometimes feels like a criminal returning to the scene of a crime.

  Don Roff

  Sometimes, Crime, Scene

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• But it is recognized that punishment for the abuse of the liberty accorded to the press is essential to the protection of the public, and that the common law rules that subject the libeler to responsibility for the public offense, as well as for the private injury, are not abolished by the protection extended in our constitutions. The law of criminal libel rests upon that secure foundation. There is also the conceded authority of courts to punish for contempt when publications directly tend to prevent the proper discharge of judicial functions.

  Charles Evans Hughes

  Responsibility, Law, Punishment

  "Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697". Judicial opinion, 1931.

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• Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal.

  George Washington

  Learning, Crime, Cases

  Nancy Spannaus, Christopher White, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas More, Henry VIII (2015). “The Political Economy of the American Revolution”, p.282, Executive Intelligence Review

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• To secure approval one must remain within the bounds of conventional mediocrity. Whatever lies beyond, whether it be greater insight and virtue, or greater stolidity and vice, is condemned. The noblest men, like the worst criminals, have been done to death.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Lying, Men, Vices

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• It is not altogether a bad thing to have criminal ancestors. An arsonist grandfather may bequeath one a nose for smelling smoke.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Grandfather, Noses, May

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.103, Penguin

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• What after all, has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities, and courage to advocate them. Doubtless many times these new possibilities were declared by a man who, quite unconscious of courage, bore the "sense of being an exile, a condemned criminal, a fugitive from mankind." Did every one so feel who, in order to travel on his own proper path had been obliged to leave the traditional highway?

  Jane Addams

  Men, Race, Order

  Jane Addams (2010). “Peace and Bread in Time of War”, p.85, University of Illinois Press

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• When we think of a criminal, we imagine someone with criminal motives. And when we look at Eichmann, he doesn't actually have any criminal motives. Not what is usually understood by "criminal motives." He wanted to go along with the rest. He wanted to say "we," and going-along-with-the-rest and wanting-to-say-we like this were quite enough to make the greatest of all crimes possible. The Hitlers, after all, really aren't the ones who are typical in this kind of situation--they'd be powerless without the support of others.

  Hannah Arendt

  Thinking, Support, Typical

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• The abhorrence of society to the use of involuntary confessions does not turn alone on their inherent untrustworthiness. It also turns on the deep-rooted feeling that the police must obey the law while enforcing the law; that, in the end, life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves.

  Earl Warren

  Law, Police, Feelings

  Writing for the court, Spano v. New York 360 U.S. 321, 1959.

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• For when a nation becomes civilized, if it does not drop human sacrifices altogether, it at least selects as victims only such wretches as would be put to death at any rate. Thus the killing of a god may sometimes come to be confounded with the execution of a criminal.

  James G. Frazer

  Sacrifice, Doe, Would Be

  "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion". Book by James G. Frazer, 1890.

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• Look at the whole criminal correction game, which is a big piece of our economy. It's just an invention. Crime is being invented to put people to work.

  Jerry Brown

  Games, People, Looks

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• A lot of street crime is horrible, but in terms of the dislocation, the undermining of the family - the corporate criminals, many of whom reside in Congress and the White House - are getting away literally with murder.

  Jerry Brown

  White, House, Murder

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• The sovereignty of America has just been eroded in plain daylight by Clinton and the Congress, who take an oath to the Constitution. Those criminals continue to destroy this country and the world itself.

  Jerry Brown

  Country, America, World

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• We've got to turn this backward thinking around where ignorance is championed over intelligence. Young black kids being ridiculed by their peers for getting A's and speaking proper English: that's criminal.

  Spike Lee

  Ignorance, Kids, Thinking

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• Today the Israeli government continues seizures of Palestinian land for settlements, military incursions into surrounding countries and denial of the right of Palestinians expelled by terror to return. Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, is a war criminal who should be in prison, not in office. Israel's own Kahan commission found that Sharon shared responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

  Ken Livingstone

  Country, Military, War

  "This is about Israel, not anti-semitism" by Ken Livingstone, www.theguardian.com. March 4, 2005.

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• Criminals are dumb as stumps. If they were smart they could go be investment bankers. Or judges.

  Jeff Abbott

  Smart, Judging, Dumb

  Jeff Abbott (2002). “Black Jack Point”, Signet

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