Gangsters Quotes - Page 8

• He was the class clown, the court jester, because he'd learn early that if you cracked jokes and pretended you weren't scared, you usually didn't get beat up. Even the baddest gangster kids would tolerate you, keep you around for laughs. Plus, humor was a good way to hide the pain

  Rick Riordan

  Pain, Kids, Class

  14 Copy quote

• If it wasn't for hustlers, gangsters & gamblers there'd be no Jazz. Wasn't middle~class who said Let's go hear Bird tonight.

  Betty Carter

  Music, Bird, Tonight

  6 Copy quote

• How did we suddenly become entranced with gangster culture? I saw it this morning on campus. When did the black community say we should all look like criminals?

  Tim Reid

  Morning, Community, Black

  8 Copy quote

• The Italian gangster thing has become a form of the modern-day Western

  Armand Assante

  Italian, Gdp, Modern

  5 Copy quote

• I felt my country should do more for its children. Its children are not born gangsters. In fact, they have in them the potential to be heroes because most of the kids who are in these gangs are leaders, very charismatic and good organizers.

  Azim Khamisa

  Country, Children, Hero

  4 Copy quote

• If Dr. Mahathir thinks that by ordering the police to act like gangsters he will frighten the people from supporting this reformation movement, he is dreaming. I think he has cut himself off from reality.

  Wan Azizah Wan Ismail

  Dream, Cutting, Reality

  5 Copy quote

• I've debated many economists who claim to specialize in risk and probability: when one takes them slightly outside their narrow focus, but within the discipline of probability, they fall apart, with the disconsolate face of a gym rat in front of a gangster hit man.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Fall, Men, Gym Rats

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2012). “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder”, p.245, Random House

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I like the days when all the filmmakers had was a film roll, a camera and a gangster. The Mack Sennett comedies were all like that. They'd create little teams to go out and shoot films.

  Michel Gondry

  Team, Cameras, Littles

  7 Copy quote

• All eyes, all attention at the federal level, are on al Qaeda and the war on terror. Fact is, al Qaeda wouldn't last a day in parts of Philadelphia. I've got gangsters with .45s that would run them out of town.

  Michael Nutter

  Running, War, Eye

  4 Copy quote

• It ought to have gangsters, and aeroplanes and a lot of automatic pistols.

  John Masefield

  Pistols, Ought, Aeroplanes

  John Masefield (2011). “The Box of Delights”, p.20, Egmont UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The experience of the gangster as an experience of art is universal to Americans. There is almost nothing we understand better or react to more readily or with quicker intelligence. In ways that we do not easily or willingly define, the gangster speaks for us, expressing that part of the American psyche which rejects the qualities and the demands of modern life, which rejects Americanism itself.

  Robert Warshow

  Art, Quality, Way

  6 Copy quote

• It is Toussaint's supreme merit that while he saw European civilisation as a valuable and necessary thing, and strove to lay its foundations among his people, he never had the illusion that it conferred any moral superiority. He knew French, British, and Spanish imperialists for the insatiable gangsters that they were, that there is no oath too sacred for them to break, no crime, deception, treachery, cruelty, destruction of human life and property which they would not commit against those who could not defend themselves.

  C. L. R. James

  People, Deception, Sacred

  48 Copy quote

• But alas, the most terrifying aspect of the whole fascist episode is the dark fact that most of its poisons are generated not by evil men or evil peoples, but by quite ordinary men in search of an answer to the baffling problems that beset every society.

  John T. Flynn

  Dark, Men, Evil

  "As We Go Marching".

  46 Copy quote

  Show source

• I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

  Smedley Butler

  Wall, Marine, Men

  "War Is a Racket". Smedley Butler's speech in the U.S. (1933); later published as a book "War Is a Racket", www.businessinsider.com. 1935.

  111 Copy quote

  Show source

• My general theory since 1971 has been that the word is literally a virus, and that it has not been recognized as such because it has achieved a state of relatively stable symbiosis with its human host; that is to say, the word virus (the other Half) has established itself so firmly as an accepted part of the human organism that it can now sneer at gangster viruses like smallpox and turn them in to the Pasteur Institute.

  William S. Burroughs

  Past, Viruses, Half

  William S. Burroughs (2013). “The Adding Machine”, p.59, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Repetita iuvant. Italy, a land of great saints, poets, sailors, artists, statesmen, businessmen, lawyers, intellectuals, professors, journalists, whores, gangsters, religious parasites and dickheads.

  William C. Brown

  Religious, Artist, Land

  4 Copy quote

• Empty the cup every time and it comes back at twice as full. I developed that attitude when I was very, very young, when I decided I didn't want to be a gangster anymore. Whether it's just shining shoes, I said okay, I'm going to do this better than anybody else did it in my life.

  Quincy Jones

  Attitude, Shoes, Shining

  "Quincy Jones Recalls 'Freaking Out' at Michael Jackson's Death and His Private Nickname for the Star (Q&A)". Interview with Stephen Galloway, www.hollywoodreporter.com. April 11, 2015.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• I play a lot of hard men and gangsters, and I’m not like that at all.

  Sean Pertwee

  Men, Play, Hard

  4 Copy quote

• In the case of drama (stage, movies, television ), there appear to be people in almost every audience who never quite fully realize that a play is a set of fictional, symbolic representations. An actor is one who symbolizes other people, real or imagined. [...] Also some years ago it was reported that when Edward G. Robinson, who used to play gangster roles with extraordinary vividness, visited Chicago, local hoodlums would telephone him at his hotel to pay their professional respects.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Real, Drama, Years

  "Language in Thought and Action". Book by S. I. Hayakawa (p.27-28), 1991.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pop music is great, but there's a lot of BS about the attitude of guys being super-gangster - that's why the whole thing is silly. It's making fun of itself. That self-awareness is why people enjoy it. It's refreshing.

  Emily Ratajkowski

  Fun, Attitude, Silly

  "Q&A: Emily Ratajkowski on 'Blurred Lines' and Her Song of the Summer". Interview with Mike Ayers, www.esquire.com. July 22, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We say that if America has entered the war to make the world safe for democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America. How else is the world to take America seriously, when democracy at home is daily being outraged, free speech suppressed, peaceable assemblies broken up by overbearing and brutal gangsters in uniform; when free press is curtailed and every independent opinion gagged? Verily, poor as we are in democracy, how can we give of it to the world?

  Emma Goldman

  War, Home, Independent

  Address to the Jury, delivered 9 July 1917, New York

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A famous, very often quoted phrase says: "That government is best, which governs least." I do not believe this to be a correct description of of the functions of a good government. Government ought to do all the things for which it is needed and for which it is established. Government ought to protect the individuals within the country against the violent and fraudulent attacks of gangsters, and it should defend the country against foreign enemies. These are the functions of government within a free system, within the system of the market economy.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Country, Believe, Government

  Ludwig Von Mises (2006). “Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow”, p.37, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm not a gangster, I don't have no desire to be hard.

  Drake

  Desire, Hard

  HipHop Canada Interview, www.hiphopcanada.com. July 12, 2006.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I feel like your city - with hip hop in particular, because we're always beating our chest and shouting where we're from - your city is just as influential as your parents. Even the grimy, hardcore gangster rap from New York - KRS-One and Wu Tang, the stuff acknowledges it.

  Talib Kweli

  New York, Rap, Cities

  Interview with Paul D. Miller, www.marandapleasantmedia.com. April 7, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Misrepresentation, false propaganda, innuendoes soon sprout into poisonous weeds, and before long the people find themselves victims of a pollution that has robbed them of their individual liberty and enslaved them to a group of political gangsters.

  David O. McKay

  Weed, Long, People

  4 Copy quote