Motivational Quotes

Crime and criminals

Set a thief to catch a thief.

- Proverb, French

Best Quotes about Crime and criminals

The thief. Once committed beyond a certain point he should not worry himself too much about not being a thief any more. Thieving is God's message to him. Let him try and be a good thief.

Butler, Samuel

One crime has to be concealed by another.

Seneca

All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost -- the most legitimate -- passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one.

Sade, Marquis De

Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is also true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.

Kennedy, John F.

We cannot be sure that we ought not to regard the most criminal country as that which in some aspects possesses the highest civilization.

Ellis, Havelock

We are often deterred from crime by the disgrace of others.

Horace

Crime is a fact of the human species, a fact of that species alone, but it is above all the secret aspect, impenetrable and hidden. Crime hides, and by far the most terrifying things are those which elude us.

Bataille, Georges

How vainly shall we endeavor to repress crime by our barbarous punishment of the poorer class of criminals so long as children are reared in the brutalizing influences of poverty, so long as the bite of want drives men to crime.

George, Henry

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

Mencken, H. L.

10.

If poverty is the mother of crime, lack of good sense is the father.

La Bruyere, Jean De

11.

The world of crime is a last refuge of the authentic, uncorrupted, spontaneous event.

Boorstin, Daniel J.

12.

Set a thief to catch a thief.

Proverb, French

13.

He has committed the crime who profits by it.

Seneca

14.

Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and race. In the suburbs, though, it's intimate and psychological -- resistant to generalization, a mystery of the individual soul.

Ehrenreich, Barbara

15.

There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

16.

The greatest crime in the world is not developing your potential. When you do what you do best, you are helping not only yourself, but the world.

Williams, Roger

17.

The truth of the matter is that muggers are very interesting people.

Winner, Michael

18.

It is certain that stealing nourishes courage, strength, skill, tact, in a word, all the virtues useful to a republican system and consequently to our own. Lay partiality aside, and answer me: is theft, whose effect is to distribute wealth more evenly, to be branded as a wrong in our day, under our government which aims at equality? Plainly, the answer is no.

Sade, Marquis De

19.

After all, crime is only a left-handed form of human endeavor.

Huston, John

20.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

Seneca

21.

He reminds me of the man who murdered both his parents, and then when the sentence was about to be pronounced, pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was orphan.

Lincoln, Abraham

22.

Many a man is saved from being a thief by finding everything locked up.

Howe, Edgar Watson

23.

Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit.

Adler, Freda

24.

All criminals turn preachers under the gallows.

Proverb

25.

Great thieves punish little ones.

Proverb

26.

Crimes of which a people is ashamed constitute its real history. The same is true of man.

Genet, Jean

27.

The lyricism of marginality may find inspiration in the image of the outlaw, the great social nomad, who prowls on the confines of a docile, frightened order.

Foucault, Michel

28.

Crimes, like virtues, are their own rewards.

Farquhar, George

29.

Slums may well be breeding-grounds of crime, but middle-class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.

Connolly, Cyril

30.

Abscond. To move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.

Bierce, Ambrose

31.

From a single crime know the nation.

Virgil

32.

One usually dies because one is alone, or because one has got into something over one's head. One often dies because one does not have the right alliances, because one is not given support. In Sicily the Mafia kills the servants of the State that the State has not been able to protect.

Falcone, Giovanni

33.

A person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.

Scott, Howard

34.

Save a thief from the gallows and he will cut your throat.

Proverb, French

35.

The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.

Shaw, George Bernard

36.

Crime generally punishes itself.

Goldsmith, Oliver

37.

Squeeze human nature into the straitjacket of criminal justice and crime will appear.

Kraus, Karl

38.

Locks keep out only the honest.

Proverb, Jewish

39.

He that is robbed, not wanting what is stolen, let him not know't, and he's notrobbed at all

Shakespeare, William

40.

For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.

Camus, Albert

41.

My rackets are run on strictly American lines and they're going to stay that way.

Capone, Al

42.

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

43.

Crime expands according to our willingness to put up with it.

Farber, Barry J.

44.

There is no crime of which I do not deem myself capable.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

45.

He threatens many that hath injured one.

Jonson, Ben

46.

We may live without friends; we may live without books. But civilized men cannot live without cooks.

Meredith, Owen

47.

Repudiating the virtues of your world, criminals hopelessly agree to organize a forbidden universe. They agree to live in it. The air there is nauseating: they can breathe it.

Genet, Jean

48.

The fear of burglars is not only the fear of being robbed, but also the fear of a sudden and unexpected clutch out of the darkness.

Canetti, Elias

49.

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.

Arendt, Hannah

50.

One crime is everything, two is nothing.

Deluzy, Madame Dorothe