Motivational Quotes

Crime and criminals

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

- Adler, Freda

Best Quotes about Crime and criminals

Crime generally punishes itself.

Goldsmith, Oliver

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

Shakespeare, William

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

There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.

Hazlitt, William

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Small crimes always precedes great ones.

Racine, Jean

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

From a single crime know the nation.

Virgil

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

Horace

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Proverb, French

13.

Crimes, like virtues, are their own rewards.

Farquhar, George

14.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

15.

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

Scott, Howard

16.

Locks keep out only the honest.

Proverb, Jewish

17.

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

18.

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

Kraus, Karl

19.

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

Boorstin, Daniel J.

20.

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

Doctorow, E. L.

21.

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

22.

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

Will, George F.

23.

There is a new billboard outside Time Square. It keeps an up-to minute count of gun-related crimes in New York. Some goofball is going to shoot someone just to see the numbers move.

Letterman, David

24.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

Seneca

25.

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

26.

He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.

Plato

27.

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

Meredith, Owen

28.

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

Connolly, Cyril

29.

In times of trouble leniency becomes crime.

Proverb

30.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

31.

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

32.

One crime is everything, two is nothing.

Deluzy, Madame Dorothe

33.

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

34.

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

Capone, Al

35.

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

36.

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

Winner, Michael

37.

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

38.

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.

39.

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

Waugh, Evelyn

40.

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

Huston, John

41.

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

Farber, Barry J.

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.

Great thieves punish little ones.

Proverb

44.

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

45.

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

Adler, Freda

46.

Successful crimes alone are justified.

Dryden, John

47.

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

Howe, Edgar Watson

48.

He threatens many that hath injured one.