Quotes about crime and criminals

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

Adler, Freda on crime and criminals   

"Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one consider that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies."

Allen, Woody on crime and criminals   

"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 on crime and criminals   

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

Aristotle on crime and criminals   

"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 on crime and criminals   

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

Bierce, Ambrose on crime and criminals   

"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 on crime and criminals   

"The infectiousness of crime is like that of the plague."

Bonaparte, Napoleon on crime and criminals   

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

Boorstin, Daniel J. on 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 on crime and criminals   

"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 on crime and criminals   

"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 on crime and criminals   

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

Capone, Al on crime and criminals   

"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 on crime and criminals   

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

Connolly, Cyril on crime and criminals
3 fans of this quote   

"One crime is everything, two is nothing."

Deluzy, Madame Dorothe on crime and criminals   

"The wrongdoer is more unfortunate than the man wronged."

Democritus on crime and criminals   

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

Doctorow, E. L. on crime and criminals   

"Successful crimes alone are justified."

Dryden, John on crime and criminals   

"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 on crime and criminals   

"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 on crime and criminals   

"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 on 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 on crime and criminals   

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on crime and criminals   

"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 on crime and criminals   

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

Farber, Barry J. on crime and criminals   

"Crimes, like virtues, are their own rewards."

Farquhar, George on crime and criminals   

"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 on crime and criminals   

"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 on crime and criminals   

"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 on crime and criminals   

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

Genet, Jean on crime and criminals   

"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 on crime and criminals   

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on crime and criminals   

"Crime is naught but misdirected energy."

Goldman, Emma on crime and criminals   

"Crime generally punishes itself."

Goldsmith, Oliver on crime and criminals   

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

Hazlitt, William on crime and criminals   

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

Horace on crime and criminals   

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

Howe, Edgar Watson on crime and criminals   

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

Huston, John on crime and criminals   

"He threatens many that hath injured one."

Jonson, Ben on crime and criminals