Crime Quotes - Page 20

• Celtic civilization was tribal, but by no means savage or uncultivated. People who regarded the theft of a harp from a bard as a crime second only to an attack on the tribal chieftain cannot be regarded as wanting in cultivated feeling.

  Robertson Davies

  Mean, Civilization, People

  Robertson Davies, Surridge, Jennifer (1997). “Happy Alchemy: Writings on the Theatre and Other Lively Arts”, M&S

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• When we think of a criminal, we imagine someone with criminal motives. And when we look at Eichmann, he doesn't actually have any criminal motives. Not what is usually understood by "criminal motives." He wanted to go along with the rest. He wanted to say "we," and going-along-with-the-rest and wanting-to-say-we like this were quite enough to make the greatest of all crimes possible. The Hitlers, after all, really aren't the ones who are typical in this kind of situation--they'd be powerless without the support of others.

  Hannah Arendt

  Thinking, Support, Typical

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• For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be a falsehood, or falsehood a truth.

  Lysander Spooner

  Truth, Government, Vices

  Lysander Spooner (2006). “Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty”, p.2, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Ainsi que la vertu, le crime a ses degre  s. Crime, like virtue, has its degrees.

  Jean Racine

  Degrees, Virtue

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• The U.S. incarceration binge is not tied to crime. It's a strategy to control the surplus population in a capitalist system that is breaking down.

  Jerry Brown

  Population, Strategy, Breaking Down

  "As Mayor of Oakland, Jerry Brown Woos Business and Trumpets Order". www.wsj.com. August 10, 1999.

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• Money-crimes have an abstract quality. History is laden with the victims of gold, but their remains are odourless.

  Georges Bernanos

  Quality, Gold, Victim

  "A Diary of My Times". Book by Georges Bernanos, 1938.

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• The duty to disclose knowledge of crime rests upon all citizens.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Citizens, Duty

  "Stein v. New York, 346 U.S. 156, 184". Judicial opinion, 1953.

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• And while we destroy / Our children will grow / Not missing the things they'll never know / A crime against them / Against you and me / A crime against all humanity

  Kim Wilde

  Children, Missing, Humanity

  Song: Who's To Blame, Album: Love Moves, 1990

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• Nothing that is not a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency, especially when it regards religion or party. In either of these cases, though a man perhaps does but his duty in changing his side, he not only makes himself hated by those he left, but is seldom heartily esteemed by those he comes over to.

  Joseph Addison

  Real, Party, Eye

  Joseph Addison, Richard Steele (1854). “The Spectator”, p.30

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• Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts?... Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity.

  Mark Twain

  Law, Insanity, Want

  Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.2441, GENERAL PRESS

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• Crime, folly, sickness and all phenomena must be contemplated with complete freedom from fear aversion or shame. Otherwise we shall fail to see accurately, and interpret intelligently; in which case we shall be unable to outwit and outfight them.

  Aleister Crowley

  Aversion, Sickness, Failing

  Aleister Crowley (1991). “Magick: In Theory and Practice”, Book Sales

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• Toronto as a city carries out the idea of Canada as a country. It is a calculated crime against the aspirations of the soul and the affection of the heart.

  Aleister Crowley

  Country, Heart, Cities

  "The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography". Book by Aleister Crowley, 1969.

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• I think silence is the condition you accept as the judgment on your crimes.

  Don DeLillo

  Thinking, Silence, Judgment

  Don DeLillo (2015). “Underworld: Picador Classic”, p.342, Pan Macmillan

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• Admittedly or not, conscious or unconscious, the poetic state, a transcendent experience of life, is what the public is fundamentally seeking through love, crime, drugs, war, or insurrection.

  Antonin Artaud

  War, Poetry, Drug

  Antonin Artaud (1958). “The Theater and Its Double”, p.122, Grove Press

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• For a punishment to be just it should consist of only such gradations of intensity as suffice to deter men from committing crimes.

  Cesare Beccaria

  Men, Intensity, Should

  Cesare Beccaria (1963). “On Crimes and Punishments”, Pearson College Division

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• We are a democracy, and there is only one way to get a democracy on its feet in the matter of its individual, its social, its municipal, its State, its National conduct, and that is by keeping the public informed about what is going on.There isnot a crime, there isnot a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.Get these things out in the open, describe them, attack them, ridicule them in the press, and sooner or later public opinion will sweep them away.

  Joseph Pulitzer

  Feet, Democracy, Vices

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• Thou knowest not the endless artifices of a court. Invented crimes are often there alleged; but real ones, and those especially, which may offend his pride, are oftentimes not to a king divulged.

  Vittorio Alfieri

  Kings, Real, Pride

  Vittorio Alfieri (1876). “The Tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri: Complete, Including His Posthumous Works”

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• To live one's love and hatred, to live that which one is means defeat, resignation, and death. The crimes of society, the hell that man has made or man become unconquerable cosmic forces.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Mean, Men, Hatred

  Herbert Marcuse (2012). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.61, Beacon Press

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• Crime, especially crime involving money, reflects the gap between the expectation to provide and the ability to provide... If we really want men to commit crime as infrequently as women, we can start by not expecting men to provide for women more than we expect women to provide for men.

  Warren Farrell

  Men, Expectations, Want

  Warren Farrell (1994). “The myth of male power: why men are the disposable sex”

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• In the case of a man and a woman [accused of commiting a crime together], both will often agree to the man taking the rap despite the man being more likely to receive a longer sentence and more likely to be raped in prison. If blacks were agreeing to do that for whites, the black community would be smart enough to call that 'learned subservience.'

  Warren Farrell

  Smart, Rap, Men

  "The Myth of Male Power". Book by Warren Farrell, 1993.

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• Stupidity is always a capital crime.

  Larry Niven

  Stupidity

  "N-Space". Book by Larry Niven, 1989.

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• Lying is a crime the least liable to variation in its definitions. A child will upon the slightest temptation tell an untruth as readily as the truth. That is, as soon as he can suspect that it will be to his advantage; and the dread that he afterward has of telling a lie is acquired principally by his being threatened, punished, and terrified by those who detect him in it, till at length, a number of painful impressions are annexed to the telling of an untruth, and he comes even to shudder at the thought of it.

  Joseph Priestley

  Children, Lying, Numbers

  Joseph Priestley (1831). “The Theological and Miscellaneous Works. Ed. with Notes by John Towill Rutt”, p.196

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• John Howard turned the prime ministership into something like a state police minister. He's at the scene of every crime, twice a day on radio, the guy did no thinking.

  Paul Keating

  Thinking, Guy, Police

  "Keating in the Hot Seat". Interview with Kerry O'Brien, www.abc.net.au. August 06, 2008.

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• For the last 30 years, I've been leading a life of crime and international intrigue that's involved 40 stamps in my passport, love affairs, and broken hearts to go with each one of them. You would have to live three lifetimes to catch up with just the allegations that follow me!

  David Lee Roth

  Heart, Years, Broken

  "Diamond Dave hits the airwaves". Jay Lustig, The Star-Ledger, January 1, 2006.

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• The rest of Sitka's homicides are so-called crimes of passion, which is a shorthand way of expressing the mathematical product of alcohol and firearms.

  Michael Chabon

  Passion, Alcohol, Way

  Michael Chabon (2012). “The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel”, p.6, Harper Collins

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