Motivational Quotes

Crime and criminals

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

Best Quotes about Crime and criminals

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

Shakespeare, William

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

Mencken, H. L.

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

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

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

Set a thief to catch a thief.

Proverb, French

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

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

Great thieves punish little ones.

Proverb

10.

In times of trouble leniency becomes crime.

Proverb

11.

Crimes, like virtues, are their own rewards.

Farquhar, George

12.

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

13.

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

Horace

14.

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

15.

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

Adler, Freda

16.

All criminals turn preachers under the gallows.

Proverb

17.

The wrongdoer is more unfortunate than the man wronged.

Democritus

18.

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

Connolly, Cyril

19.

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.

20.

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

Farber, Barry J.

21.

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

Peterson, Jill

22.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

Seneca

23.

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

Porter, O. Henry

24.

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

25.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

26.

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

Boorstin, Daniel J.

27.

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

Proverb, French

28.

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

Kraus, Karl

29.

Crime generally punishes itself.

Goldsmith, Oliver

30.

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

31.

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

32.

One crime is everything, two is nothing.

Deluzy, Madame Dorothe

33.

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

Huston, John

34.

Crime and bad lives are the measure of a State's failure, all crime in the end is the crime of the community.

Wells, H.G.

35.

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

Waugh, Evelyn

36.

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

Plato

37.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

38.

Small crimes always precedes great ones.

Racine, Jean

39.

He has committed the crime who profits by it.

Seneca

40.

The infectiousness of crime is like that of the plague.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

41.

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

42.

One crime has to be concealed by another.

Seneca

43.

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

Aristotle

44.

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

Capone, Al

45.

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

46.

Locks keep out only the honest.

Proverb, Jewish

47.

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

48.

Many commit the same crime with a different destiny; one bears a cross as the price of his villainy, another wears a crown.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

49.

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

50.

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