quotations about crime
It is indeed strange that with all the knowledge we have gained in the past hundred years we preserve and practice the methods of an ancient and barbarous world in our dealing with crime. So long as this is observed and exercised there can be no change except to heap more cruelties and more wretchedness upon those who are the victims of our foolish system.
CLARENCE DARROW
The Story of My Life
Crime and punishment generally grow out of each other. Punishment is the bitter fruit that, unsuspected, ripens within the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Before crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime--namely, repressive justice.
SIMONE WEIL
"Human Personally"
Crime is like a word--created by thoughts, it springs forth, and often appears harmless; but its consequences stretch through eternity.
FREDRIKA BREMER
The H. Family
Well, when the President does it that means that it is not illegal.
RICHARD NIXON
interview with David Frost, May 19, 1977
There are crimes which become innocent, and even glorious, through their splendor, number, and excess: Hence it is, that public theft is called Address, and to seize on Provinces unjustly, to make Conquests.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
Crime in full glory consolidates authority by the sacred fear it inspires.
EMIL CIORAN
History & Utopia
Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime.
EMMA GOLDMAN
Anarchism
He confesses his crime who flees the tribunal.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus
If poverty is the mother of all crimes, lack of intelligence is their father.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind"
White collar crime, you had the time,
Blue collar crime, you'll do the time every time
GRACE JONES
"White Collar Crime"
Different sorts of crime, committed by different kinds of persons in different social positions in life, require different kinds of men to ferret them out.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On the Detection of Crime and Criminals", Short Essays
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
People like and want to live in a crime free area and have this idea that crime is like a bacterial infection, whereby a liberal introduction of the police is necessary to kick it out and clean it up. Then, they don't want to see cop cars cruising their block. In their world, the infection has been cured; more cops after the cure means a chronic disease or cancer.
ROBERT ELTZHOLTZ
Royce O'Rourke--Realtor!
With the victim at the center, crime is like a pebble in a pond; it ripples, extending its impact outward.
THOMAS L. UNDERWOOD & NANCIE D. PALMER
"Ecological Perspective of Victimization", Victim Assistance
From each crime are born bullets
that will one day seek out in you
where the heart lies.
PABLO NERUDA
"I Explain a Few Things"
The sole means of ridding man of crime is to rid him of freedom.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
Great crimes seldom spring from any sudden demoralization in the natures of their perpetrators. What seems a fearful precipitation of character, is usually no more than the rending of a veil from the hitherto concealed parts of it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
For every crime there is a motive, and the first thing to be done is to try and find who could have a motive for committing such a crime; and, having found such a person, never mind his or her social position; but give him or her until you are satisfied of his or her guilt or innocence your particular attention.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On the Detection of Crime and Criminals", Short Essays