Crime Quotes - Page 31

• A woman questions the man who loves exactly as a judge questions a criminal. This being so, a flash of the eye, a mere word, an inflection of the voice or a moment's hesitation suffice to expose the fact, betrayal or crime he is attempting to conceal.

  Honore de Balzac

  Betrayal, Eye, Men

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• President Obama has reduced the sentences of 22 federal prisoners who were arrested for drug-related crimes - eight of whom were serving life sentences. It marks the first time someone has said 'Thanks Obama' but actually meant it.

  Jimmy Fallon

  Eight, Drug, President

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• Today the crime novelist has one advantage denied to writers of 'straight' or 'literary' novels. Unlike them he can range over all levels of society, for crime can easily breach the barriers that exist in our stratified society. Because of these barriers the modern literary novel, unlike its 19th-century predecessors, is often confined to the horizontal, dealing only with one class. But crime runs through society from top to bottom, and so the crime novelist can present a fuller picture of the way we live now.

  Allan Massie

  Running, Book, Class

  Allan Massie (2013). “Life & Letters: The Spectator Columns”, Quartet Books (UK)

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• The crimes of extreme civilization are certainly more atrocious than those of extreme barbarism.

  Jules Amedee Barbey d'Aurevilly

  Art, Philosophy, Civilization

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• We are not supposed to go out and kill all those we suspect to have committed a crime.

  Bianca Jagger

  Committed, Suspects

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• Atheists are often charged with blasphemy, but it is a crime they cannot commit... When the Atheist examines, denounces, or satirises the gods, he is not dealing with persons but with ideas. He is incapable of insulting God, for he does not admit the existence of any such being... We attack not a person but a belief, not a binge but an idea, not a fact but a fancy.

  George William Foote

  Atheist, Ideas, Insulting

  "Who Are the Blasphemers? (June 1882)". "Flowers of Freethought". Book by George William Foote, p. 112, www.ftarchives.net. 1893.

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• All kinds of frankness and honesty are terrible crimes in the eyes of society.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Honesty, Eye, Atheism

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• There is something about big cities that turns me on, and for whatever mysterious reason, places like New York and Paris inspire me. I think it's because cities represent civilization, and as crime-ridden and broken down as some of them are, it's still better than skipping through a meadow.

  Woody Allen

  New York, Thinking, Civilization

  "Woody Allen by Moonlight". Interview with Uzoamaka Maduka, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 16, 2011.

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• The coverage [of crimes] is different. It's less angry when white [athletes] are involved, less accusatory, less judgemental. I see that in the pieces that are written and reported. At times it bothers me to the point that I just stop reading...just stop.

  Michael Wilbon

  Reading, Athlete, White

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• In crime fiction, I just don't write the parts that aren't a thriller and it's exactly the same in my TV reporting - I distill the essence of the story until it's only the jewels of the tale - and leave in only the most compelling and exciting parts.

  Hank Phillippi Ryan

  Writing, Essence, Jewels

  "Interview: Hank Phillippi Ryan, 'The Other Woman'". Interview with Pamela Clare, happyeverafter.usatoday.com. October 4, 2012.

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• A state is absolute in the sense which I have in mind when it claims the right to a monopoly of all the force within the community, to make war, to make peace, to conscript life, to tax, to establish and disestablish property, to define crime, to punish disobedience, to control education, to supervise the family, to regulate personal habits, and to censor opinions. The modern state claims all of these powers, and, in the matter of theory, there is no real difference in the size of the claim between communists, fascists, and Democrats.

  Walter Lippmann

  Real, War, Differences

  Walter Lippmann (1960). “A Preface To Morals”, p.80, Transaction Publishers

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• If a law could keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of dangerous people, there would be virtually no gun crime at all.

  Harry Browne

  Gun, Hands, Law

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• The greater the crime perpetrated by the leadership, the less likely it is that the people will ever believe their leaders to be capable of perpetrating such an event.

  Adolf Hitler

  Believe, People, Leader

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• A sermon without Christ as its beginning, middle, and end is a mistake in conception, a crime in execution.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Mistake, Beginning Middle And End, Execution

  Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1988). “Spurgeon at His Best: Over 2200 Striking Quotations from the World's Most Exhaustive and Widely-read Sermon Series”, Baker Publishing Group

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• While alcohol ... continues to wreak havoc in America, supported by a $6 billion-a-year alcohol industry advertising campaign extolling the joy of inebriation, the far less harmful drug of marijuana remains illegal and continues to ruin people's lives - only if they are caught possessing and convicted of that crime.

  Lawrence O'Donnell

  Marijuana, Years, America

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• All the great crimes of history, lest we forget, have their genesis in the moral wilderness of their times.

  Eskinder Nega

  Moral, Forget, Wilderness

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• Wit implies hatred or contempt of folly and crime, produces its effects by brisk shocks of surprise, uses the whip of scorpions and the branding-iron, stabs, stings, pinches, tortures, goads, teases, corrodes, undermines.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Iron, Hatred, Scorpions

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1851). “Literature and life, lects”, p.46

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• There is a holy love and a holy rage, and our best virtues never glow so brightly as when our passions are excited in the cause. Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues; and the best of us are better when roused.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Passion, Sloth, Causes

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.173

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• Intemperance is the epitome of every crime, the cause of every kind of misery.

  Douglas William Jerrold

  Causes, Misery, Kind

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• There is work to do; that is why I cannot stop or sit still. As long as a child needs help, as long as people are not free, there will be work to do. As long as an elderly person is attacked or in need of support, there is work to do. As long as we have bigotry and crime, we have work to do.

  Rosa Parks

  Children, Elderly, Long

  Rosa Parks, Gregory J. Reed (1994). “Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope, and the Heart of a Woman who Changed a Nation”, Zondervan

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• Both as to high and low indifferently, men are prepossessed, charmed, fascinated by success; successful crimes are praised very much like virtue itself, and good fortune is not far from occupying the place of the whole cycle of virtues. It must be an atrocious act, a base and hateful deed, which success would not be able to justify.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Success, Men, Deeds

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• What moralist can deny that well-bred and vicious people are much more agreeable than their virtuous counterparts? Having crimes to atone for, they provisionally solicit indulgence by showing leniency toward the defects of their judges. Thus they pass for excellent folk.

  Honore de Balzac

  People, Judging, Excellent

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• One admirable trait in women is their lack of illusions about themselves. They never reason about their most blameworthy actions; their feelings carry them away. Even their dissimulation comes naturally to them, and in them crime is free of all baseness. Most of the time they simply do not know how it happened.

  Honore de Balzac

  Women, Feelings, Action

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• War, like all other situations of danger and of change, calls forth the exertion of admirable intellectual qualities and great virtues, and it is only by dwelling on these, and keeping out of sight the sufferings and sorrows, and all the crimes and evils that follow in its train, that it has its glory in the eyes of men.

  William C. Bryant

  War, Eye, Men

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• There is no such thing as a crime of passion, only a crime of possession.

  Gloria Steinem

  Passion, Possession, Crimes Of Passion

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