Crime Quotes - Page 38

• Crime is the soul of lust. What would pleasure be if it were not accompanied by crime? It is not the object of debauchery that excites us, rather the idea of evil.

  Marquis de Sade

  Ideas, Evil, Soul

  Sade (marquis de), Marquis de Sade (1987). “The 120 days of Sodom and other writings”, Grove Pr

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• It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.

  Mark Twain

  Criticism, Bears, Burden

  Mark Twain, Harriet Elinor Smith (2012). “Autobiography of Mark Twain: Reader's Edition”, p.201, Univ of California Press

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• Of all crimes the worst
  Is to steal the glory
  From the great and brave,
  Even more accursed
  Than to rob the grave.

  Robert Frost

  Brave, Stealing, Glory

  Robert Frost (1971). “The poetry of Robert Frost”

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• I went straight from shenanigans to crimes against humanity.

  George Carlin

  Humanity, Shenanigans, Crimes Against Humanity

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• You may charge me with murder--or want of sense--
  (We are all of us weak at times):
  But the slightest approach to a false pretence
  Was never among my crimes!

  Lewis Carroll

  Honesty, May, Want

  Lewis Carroll “Alice in Wonderland”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• For man's greatest crime is to have been born.

  Pedro Calderon de la Barca

  Men, Birth, Born

  "Life Is a Dream". Play by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, 1635.

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• Much is made of the accelerating brutality of young people's crimes, but rarely does our concern for dangerous children translateinto concern for children in danger. We fail to make the connection between the use of force on children themselves, and violent antisocial behavior, or the connection between watching father batter mother and the child deducing a link between violence and masculinity.

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin

  Mother, Children, Father

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin (1983). “Family politics: love and power on an intimate frontier”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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• You cannot undermine police authority and then complain about rising crime.

  Thomas Paine

  Fear, Police, Complaining

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• Knowing what [Christ] knew , knowing all about mankind--ah! who would have thought that the crime is not so much to make others die, but to die oneself--confronted day and night with his innocent crime, it became too difficult to go on. It was better to get it over with, to not defend himself, to die, in order not to be the only one to have survived, and to go elsewhere, where, perhaps, he would be supported.

  Albert Camus

  God, Night, Order

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• Remember that it's never a crime in the face of humanity and enlightenment to distribute the works of the great humanists among the merchants and moneychangers of this godforsaken country... You better slip me the dough.

  John Dos Passos

  Country, Book, Humanity

  John Dos Passos (2013). “The 42nd Parallel”, p.32, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The criminal element now calculates that crime really does pay.

  Ronald Reagan

  Success, Law, Criminals

  United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan), United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan)., Ronald Reagan, United States. Office of the Federal Register (1982). “Ronald Reagan”

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• I once heard of a murderer who propped his two victims up against a chess board in sporting attitudes and was able to get as far as Seattle before his crime was discovered.

  Robert Benchley

  Attitude, Games, Two

  Robert Benchley (2010). “The Athletic Benchley: 105 Exercises from the Detroit Athletic Club News”, p.24, Glendower Media

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• Therefore with idle hands and head I sit
  In late December before the fire's daze
  Punished by crimes of which I would be quit.

  Allen Tate

  Christmas, Hands, Fire

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.103, Macmillan

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• I'm responding to the will of the people.

  David Mamet

  People, Responding

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• Crooks aren't the worst people, just the stupidest. The fleas of the world.

  Orson Welles

  People, Stupidity, Crooks

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• Fear, coercion, punishment, are the masculine remedies for moral weakness, but statistics show their failure for centuries. Why not change the system and try the education of the moral and intellectual faculties, cheerful surroundings, inspiring influences? Everything in our present system tends to lower the physical vitality, the self-respect, the moral tone, and to harden instead of reforming the criminal.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Punishment, Self, Intellectual

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1898). “Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences, 1815-1897”, p.304, UPNE

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• Physical nature lies at our feet shackled with a hundred chains. What of the control of human nature? Do not point to the triumphsof psychiatry, social services or the war against crime. Domination of human nature can only mean the domination of every man by himself.

  Johan Huizinga

  War, Lying, Mean

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• Jurists say that a capital crime submerges all lesser crimes; and so it is with faith. Its absurdity makes all petty difficultiesvanish.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Faith, Absurdity, Petty

  Soren Kierkegaard (2017). “Philosophical Fragments”, p.67, Jovian Press

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• Fantasy works inwards upon its author, blurring the boundary between the visioned and the actual, and associating itself ever moreclosely with the Ego, so that the child who has fantasied himself a murderer ends by becoming a Loeb or a Leopold. The creative Imagination works outwards, steadily increasing the gap between the visioned and the actual, till this becomes the great gulf fixed between art and nature. Few writers of crime-stories become murderers--if any do, it is not the result of identifying themselves with their murderous heroes.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Art, Children, Hero

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2015). “The Mind of the Maker”, p.93, Open Road Media

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• When the excessively shy force themselves to be forward, they are frequently surprisingly unsubtle and overdirect and even rude: they have entered an extreme region beyond their normal personality, an area of social crime where gradations don't count; unavailable to them are the instincts and taboos that booming extroverts, who know the territory of self-advancement far better, can rely on.

  Nicholson Baker

  Self, Personality, Rude

  Nicholson Baker (2011). “U and I: A True Story”, p.153, Vintage

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• Can a free people restrain crime without sacrificing fundamental liberties and a heritage of compassion?... Let us show that we can temper together those opposite elements of liberty and restraint into one consistent whole. Let us set an example for the world of a law-abiding America glorying in its freedom as well as its respect for law.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Freedom, Sacrifice, Compassion

  Gerald R. Ford's Address at Yale Law School's 150th anniversary, www.presidency.ucsb.edu. April 25, 1975.

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• Trying to conceal a crime is like burying a seed in the ground.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Trying, Burying, Seeds

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• The courts used to be, fair and square, the avengers of secular crimes; but nowadays they demand respect even for the criminal.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Respect, Squares, Justice

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• It's strange that men should take up crime when there are so many legal ways to be dishonest.

  Laurence J. Peter

  Sarcastic, Sarcasm, Men

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• The function of the prosecutor under the federal Constitution is not to tack as many skins of victims as possible against the wall. His function is to vindicate the rights of the people as expressed in the laws and give those accused of crime a fair trial.

  William O. Douglas

  Wall, Rights, Law

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