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crime quotes

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“In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.” Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
“DESTINY, n. A tyrant's authority for crime and fool's excuse for failure.” Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
“In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” George Orwell, 1984
“The workings of the mind discover oft Dark deeds in darkness schemed, before the act. More hateful still the miscreant who seeks When caught, to make a virtue of a crime.” Sophocles, Antigone
“The source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding; or some errour in reasoning, or some sudden force of the passions.” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
“If one can't be a great artist or a great soldier, the next best thing is to be a great criminal.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
“poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.” Aristotle, Politics
“But, as often happens, a crime committed with extraordinary audacity is more successful than others.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
“How many condemnations have I seen more criminal than the crimes themselves?” Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne
“In a well-governed State, there are few punishments, not because there are many pardons, but because criminals are rare; it is when a State is in decay that the multitude of crimes is a guarantee of impunity.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
“I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,—a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,—and a dark shelter under, which the darkest,...” Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
“The death-penalty inflicted upon criminals may be looked on in much the same light: it is in order that we may not fall victims to an assassin that we consent to die if we ourselves turn assassins.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
“AMNESTY, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.” Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
“All previous crimes of the Russian empire had been committed under the cover of a discreet shadow. The deportation of a million Lithuanians, the murder of hundreds of thousands of Poles, the liquidation of the Crimean Tatars remain in our memory,...” Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“It was as if she had been made afresh, out of new elements, and must perforce be permitted to live her own life, and be a law unto herself, without her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“It is no secret that organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.” Woody Allen, Getting Even
“He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.” Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
“There was only one guy in the whole Bible Jesus ever personally promised a place with him in Paradise. Not Peter, not Paul, not any of those guys. He was a convicted thief, being executed. So don’t knock the guys on death row. Maybe they know...” Neil Gaiman, American Gods
“You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.” Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
“the more society treats drug addiction as a crime, the more money drug dealers will make 'relieving' the suffering of the addicts.” JAY-Z, Decoded
“Most people lived their lives like criminals: act first, worry about the consequences later.” Nicholas Sparks, The Lucky One
“Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.” Oscar Wilde, Intentions
“It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery. The most commonplace crime is often the most mysterious because it presents no new or special features from which deductions may be drawn.” Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet
“Ingratitude is among them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries: for they reason thus; that whoever makes ill returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of mankind, from whom he has received...” Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

Related topics

society punishment passion slavery life death stupidity good words dream success religion reason darkness virtue poverty thought forgiveness judgement law

Related authors

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (2)
Ambrose Bierce (2)
Neil Gaiman (1)
Michel de Montaigne (1)
Thomas Hobbes (1)
Oscar Wilde (1)
George Orwell (1)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1)
Leonardo da Vinci (1)
Aristotle (1)
Frederick Douglass (1)
Milan Kundera (1)
Arthur Conan Doyle (1)
JAY-Z (1)
Jonathan Swift (1)
Sophocles (1)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1)
Woody Allen (1)
Nicholas Sparks (1)

Related sources

The Social Contract (2)
American Gods (1)
The Devil's Dictionary (2)
1984 (1)
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1)
This Side of Paradise (1)
The Brothers Karamazov (1)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1)
Crime and Punishment (1)
Intentions (1)
The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1)
Decoded (1)
A Study in Scarlet (1)
Politics (1)
The Scarlet Letter (1)
Antigone (1)
Leviathan (1)
Lolita (1)
Getting Even (1)
The Lucky One (1)