Motivational Quotes

Crime and criminals

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

- Proverb, French

Best Quotes about Crime and criminals

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

Proverb, French

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

Seneca

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.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

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

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

Shakespeare, William

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

Crimes, like virtues, are their own rewards.

Farquhar, George

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

10.

Set a thief to catch a thief.

Proverb, French

11.

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

12.

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

Doctorow, E. L.

13.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

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

Connolly, Cyril

15.

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

16.

All criminals turn preachers under the gallows.

Proverb

17.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

18.

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

Capone, Al

19.

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

Aristotle

20.

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

Genet, Jean

21.

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

Porter, O. Henry

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Boorstin, Daniel J.

25.

He has committed the crime who profits by it.

Seneca

26.

Great thieves punish little ones.

Proverb

27.

Small crimes always precedes great ones.

Racine, Jean

28.

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

Farber, Barry J.

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Kraus, Karl

32.

One crime has to be concealed by another.

Seneca

33.

One crime is everything, two is nothing.

Deluzy, Madame Dorothe

34.

Successful crimes alone are justified.

Dryden, John

35.

From a single crime know the nation.

Virgil

36.

The wrongdoer is more unfortunate than the man wronged.

Democritus

37.

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

Winner, Michael

38.

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

Huston, John

39.

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

40.

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

Howe, Edgar Watson

41.

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

42.

The infectiousness of crime is like that of the plague.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

43.

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

Peterson, Jill

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Scott, Howard

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.

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

50.

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