Motivational Quotes

Crime and criminals

Today more Americans are imprisoned for drug offenses than for property crimes

- Will, George F.

Best Quotes about Crime and criminals

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

Huston, John

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

Shaw, George Bernard

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

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Adler, Freda

In times of trouble leniency becomes crime.

Proverb

Want of money and the distress of a thief can never be alleged as the cause of his thieving, for many honest people endure greater hardships with fortitude. We must therefore seek the cause elsewhere than in want of money, for that is the miser's passion, not the thief s.

Blake, William

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

The man who is admired for the ingenuity of his larceny is almost always rediscovering some earlier form of fraud. The basic forms are all known, have all been practiced. The manners of capitalism improve. The morals may not.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

10.

Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.

Waugh, Evelyn

11.

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

Proverb, French

12.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

13.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

14.

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

Howe, Edgar Watson

15.

There is no society known where a more or less developed criminality is not found under different forms. No people exists whose morality is not daily infringed upon. We must therefore call crime necessary and declare that it cannot be non-existent, that the fundamental conditions of social organization, as they are understood, logically imply it.

Durkheim, Emile

16.

It is because they took the easy way out that rivers, and people, go crooked.

Peterson, Jill

17.

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

18.

Today more Americans are imprisoned for drug offenses than for property crimes

Will, George F.

19.

Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

20.

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

Meredith, Owen

21.

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

Genet, Jean

22.

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

Mencken, H. L.

23.

He has committed the crime who profits by it.

Seneca

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Capone, Al

28.

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

29.

The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment springs from you.

Miller, Henry

30.

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

Connolly, Cyril

31.

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

32.

Set a thief to catch a thief.

Proverb, French

33.

Great thieves punish little ones.

Proverb

34.

A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.

Twain, Mark

35.

Crime generally punishes itself.

Goldsmith, Oliver

36.

One crime is everything, two is nothing.

Deluzy, Madame Dorothe

37.

Crimes, like virtues, are their own rewards.

Farquhar, George

38.

Small crimes always precedes great ones.

Racine, Jean

39.

Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions.

Christie, Agatha

40.

A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else.

Porter, O. Henry

41.

Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society.

Doctorow, E. L.

42.

One crime has to be concealed by another.

Seneca

43.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

Seneca

44.

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

45.

He threatens many that hath injured one.

Jonson, Ben

46.

Locks keep out only the honest.

Proverb, Jewish

47.

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

48.

Every rascal is not a thief, but every thief is a rascal.

Aristotle

49.

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

Farber, Barry J.

50.

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.