Criminal Quotes & Sayings

Outdoors, we knew, was the real terror of life. The threat of being outdoors surfaced frequently in those days. Every possibility of excess was curtailed with it. If somebody ate too much, he could end up outdoors. If somebody used too much coal, he could end up outdoors. People could gamble themselves outdoors, drink themselves outdoors. Sometimes mothers put their sons outdoors, and when that happened, regardless of what the son had done, all sympathy was with him. He was outdoors, and his own flesh had done it. To be put outdoors by a landlord was one thing - unfortunate, but an aspect of life over which you had no control, since you could not control your income. But to be slack enough to put oneself outdoors, or heartless enough to put one's own kin outdoors - that was criminal. — Toni Morrison

There isn't any drug worse than money. Madness, deceptions and criminal behavior emerge from the need of more of it. — Robin Sacredfire

There is some kind of message..., in Dexter criminal series. Just try to find it and focus. — Deyth Banger

Oh, I think the biggest lesson in Wisconsin is that 60 percent of the people do not believe that recall elections were proper for policy differences, short of some criminal offense. — Martin O'Malley

That's a hard one because right now it seems that all I'm watching is Teletoons and Nickelodeon. You know what I love? I love Criminal Minds. I love CSI. Those are my kind of shows. I also love Modern Family ... MasterChef, I'm huge into that. I'm a big Gordon Ramsay fan ... I don't get a whole lot of time to watch anything but, if I can, those are some of the ones that I do tend to watch. — Teryl Rothery

There is no law in the world - there is no law unwritten, there's no law on the books - that's gonna stop a criminal from getting a gun. — Rush Limbaugh

We've been told by the people on the other side who don't like the campus sexual assault movement that these are all "he-said, she-said" cases. Quite rightly, they say campus procedures are often very flawed, the investigation methods are not that good, and we aren't sure what we can trust. [Opponents say that] it seems like a lot to call somebody a rapist if they haven't gone to a criminal trial. — Michele Landis Dauber

Governor Tinubu's criminal case is of international dimension. — Nuhu Ribadu

Judges, like the criminal classes, have their lighter moments — Oscar Wilde

A criminal has only a stone in the cold chest
that does not breathe.
Amen, Petra Hermans
25-9-2016
God
Babaji — Petra Hermans

As readers, as people, we might not have the capacity to change the justice system. But as Dylan says in the book, we can change one person's perspective at a time. We can notice. We can speak up. We can teach this generation, my generation, that the way sexual assault is viewed and treated in this country is not okay, so that when it is our turn to step into the shoes of political office and criminal justice, we can continue changing the narrative from a place of power.
And more than anything, we can support. And we can empower. We can love.
We can be better. — Cora Carmack

If Spiderman was real, and I was a criminal, and he shot me with his web, I would say, "Dude, thanks for the hammock." — Mitch Hedberg

The artist can within limits make what he likes of his life ... It is only the artist, and maybe the criminal, who can make his own. — W. Somerset Maugham

The cruel man is of misanthropic temperament, and is a man of moods, oscillating from quiet brooding to sudden explosions. If a man like this does not fight this unhappy provision of his soul during his youth, under no circumstances could he a void becoming furious - and foolish. There are those who would leave it up to God, but to ensure justice on the earth, and not fob it off to the Divinity, it is mandatory that people know both virtue and its benefits, since the virtues lead to unity among them, not the war of all against all. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to conserve them, and show that crime can only return misfortunes and destruction, including of the criminal himself. Who is the last victim of his crimes. — Frederick The Great

The fact of the Watergate cover-up is not nearly as interesting as the step into making the cover-up. And when you understand the step, you understand that Richard Nixon lied. That he was a criminal. — Bob Woodward

I messed up the hairdo of the greatest criminal in Chaldea. — Paul Eluard

Johnny Cash was a rebel, not only just in the musical sense, but he was somebody who was for the people, and an advocate for labor, for workers, for prisoners, people who have been trapped by the criminal justice system. — Michael Franti

I stand, walk over to him, sit down on his bed, put my arms around him, hug him. He hugs me back strong and I can feel the shame coming through his arms. I am a Criminal and he is a Judge and I am white and he is black, but at this moment none of that matters. He is a man who needs a friends and I can be his friend. — James Frey

Here is the dirty little secret: the error rate in criminal verdicts is much higher than anyone imagines. — William Landay

America is fascinated by crime. — Floyd C. Forsberg

Criminality is now legal. I guess criminal racketeering these days would be like burning little children at the stake or something. That's about what it takes to get anyone to care. — Alex Jones

To the mind, God is a perfect criminal. He has done such a perfect crime by creating this world that mind cannot trace how He did it. That is why the mind always freaks out about God. — Prem Rawat

I was looking for a way to be someone else,'I said. — Scott Frost

By providing our school districts with direct access to criminal information records, we can help ensure timely and complete information on prospective school employees. — Jon Porter

Mostly they all were products of single parents, and in the most tragic category - black boys, with no particular criminal inclinations but whose very lack of direction put them in the crosshairs of the world. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

He's the guy that the joke was wrote about: 'Is he a criminal lawyer?' 'Yes, very. — Dashiell Hammett

The United States has held out against taking part in any of the world consensus that there should be a court of human rights or that there should be an international court of criminal justice. — Roger Waters

Wall Street crime, in part, is a confidence game in which the criminal justice system itself is the mark. — Matt Taibbi

Criminal justice is what happens after a complicated series of events has gone bad. It is the end result of failure
the failure of a group of people that sometimes includes, but is never limited to, the accused person. — Paul Delano Butler

Strangely, the subsequent AIDS works that have become iconic in our culture rarely mention the movement, or the engaged community of lovers, but both formations were inseparable from the crisis itself. Now, looking back, I fear that the story of the isolated helpless homosexual was one far more palatable to the corporations who control the reward system in the arts.The more truthful story of the American mass - abandoning families, criminal governments, indifferent neighbors - is too uncomfortable and inconvenient to recall. The story of how gay people who were despised, had no rights, and carried the burden of a terrible disease came together to force the country to change against its will, is apparently too implicating to tell. Fake tales of individual heterosexuals heroically overcoming their prejudices to rescue helpless dying men with AIDS was a lot more appealing to the powers that be, but not at all true. — Sarah Schulman

Prohibitionism is based on the premise that citizens will refrain from behaviors that are deemed immoral or harmful if such behaviors are decreed unlawful and criminal, even though such behaviors do not harm or unreasonably endanger others without their informed consent. Prohibitionism stems from totalitarian paternalism, an ideology rather prevalent among governing elites around the world, based on the presumption that people are feeble, foolish and irresponsible, needing constant protection from themselves. — Jeffrey Dhywood

There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice. — Montesquieu

No man can delegate, ... any right of arbitrary dominion over a 3rd person; for that would imply a right in the 1st person, not only to make the 3rd person his slave, but also a right to dispose of him as a slave to still other persons. Any contract to do this is necessarily a criminal one ... To call such a contract a "constitution" does not at all lessen its criminality, or add to its validity. — Lysander Spooner

Who is the more righteous? The stoic farmer who dutifully tends his fields while the world burns? Or the man who brings merciless violence to the enemies of peace? Is the common criminal an equal villain to the agent who kills on behalf of a cause greater than himself? I've answered these questions and made peace with their consequences. As I mounted my horse alongside Vettias, my mentor in the dark arts, I would need to draw on the fortitude these answers provided more than ever. We — Christian Kachel

Alafair Burke understands the criminal mind. Long Gone is both an education and an entertainment of the first order. This is a very clever and very smart novel by a very clever and smart writer. The dialogue crackles, the plot is intriguing, and the pacing is perfect. — Karin Slaughter

Now look here, Bailey," she said, "see here, read this," and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did. — Flannery O'Connor

40 million Russians are convinced that I am a scoundrel, a thief, a criminal or a CIA agent, who deserves to be shot, hanged or drawn and quartered. — Anatoly Chubais

The proliferation of the federal criminal code, now at twenty-seven thousand pages and counting. — John Grisham

There is a difference between the inmates of your criminal prisons and the inmates of your cultural prison: The former understand that the distribution of wealth and power inside the prison had nothing to do with justice. — Daniel Quinn

The accession of not one but three illegal drug users in a row to the US presidency constitutes an existential challenge to the prohibitionist regime. The fact that some of the most successful people of our time, be it in business, finances, politics, entertainment or the arts, are current or former substance users is a fundamental refutation of its premises and a stinging rebuttal of its rationale. A criminal law that is broken at least once by 50% of the adult population and that is broken on a regular basis by 20% of the same adult population is a broken law, a fatally flawed law. How can a democratic government justify a law that is consistently broken by a substantial minority of the population? What we are witnessing here is a massive case of civil disobedience not seen since alcohol prohibition in the 1930 in the US. On what basis can a democratic system justify the stigmatization and discrimination of a strong minority of as much as 20% of its population? — Jeffrey Dhywood

We need to keep making our streets safer and our criminal justice system fairer - our homeland more secure, our world more peaceful and sustainable for the next generation. — Barack Obama

Isabelle looked dubious. "Mom and Dad won't be pleased if they find out."
"That you freed a possible criminal by trading away your brother to a warlock who looks like a gay Sonic the Hedgehog and dresses like the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Band? Simon inquired. "No, probably not. — Cassandra Clare

In China the underworld and officialdom have interpenetrated and become one. Criminal elements have become officialized as officials have become criminalized. — Liu Xiaobo

We need to incorporate that age-old concept of redemption into the work that we do in the criminal justice system in California. — Kamala Harris

I'm 68 years old, and I'm as much a criminal now as I was at the age of 22. And, I'm even more of a dissident than I was then. — Felice Picano

I hold another creed, which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention, but in which I delight, and to which I cling, for it extends hope to all; it makes eternity a rest - a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss. Besides, with this creed, I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last; with this creed, revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low. I live in calm, looking to the end. — Charlotte Bronte

What a world this will be when human possibilities are freed, when we discover each other, when the stranger is no longer the potential criminal and the certain inferior! — W.E.B. Du Bois

The maker of kitsch does not create inferior art, he is not an incompetent or a bungler, he cannot be evaluated by aesthetic standards; rather, he is ethically depraved, a criminal willing radical evil. And since it is radical evil that is manifest here, evil per se, forming the absolute negative pole of every value-system, kitsch will always be evil, not just kitsch in art, but kitsch in every value-system that is not an imitation system. — Hermann Broch

Oh, there are plenty of people," the Duc used to observe, "who never misbehave save when passion spurs them to ill; later, the fire gone out of them, their now calm spirit peacefully returns to the path of virtue and, thus passing their life going from strife to error and from error to remorse, they end their days in such a way there is no telling just what roles they have enacted on earth. Such persons," he would continue, "must surely be miserable: forever drifting, continually undecided, their entire life is spent detesting in the morning what they did the evening before. Certain to repent of the pleasures they taste, they take their delight in quaking, in such sort they become at once virtuous in crime and criminal in virtue. — Marquis De Sade

Any new legal measures, or cooperative arrangements between government and companies meant to keep people from organizing violence or criminal actions, must not be carried out in ways that erode due process, rule of law and the protection of innocent citizens' political and civil rights. — Rebecca MacKinnon

Therefore, to you, and to the fifty governors, I have a request. Please, do not send me politicians. We do not have the time to do the things that must be done through that process. I need people who do real things in the real world. I need people who do not want to live in Washington. I need people who will not try to work the system. I need people who will come here at great personal sacrifice to do an important job, and then return home to their normal lives. I want engineers who know how things are built. I want physicians who know how to make sick people well. I want cops who know what it means when your civil rights are violated by a criminal. I want farmers who grow real food on real farms. I want people who know what it's like to have dirty hands, and pay a mortgage bill, and raise kids, and worry about the future. I want people who know they're working for you and not themselves. That's what I want. That's what I need. I think that's what a lot of you want, too. — Tom Clancy

Freedom without opportunity is a devil's gift, and the refusal to provide such opportunities is criminal — Noam Chomsky

We've got to turn this backward thinking around where ignorance is championed over intelligence. Young black kids being ridiculed by their peers for getting A's and speaking proper English: that's criminal. — Spike Lee

Executing a criminal often makes a martyr of him. Once he's dead and gone, people all too often forget the crimes he's committed and start to see a more sanitised version. A person like that starts to be seen as a victim. — John Flanagan

What was my great sin? To have revealed the private property of the bank - well if this is being a criminal, then maybe I'm a great criminal. — Jose Mujica

From the views I have already expressed, you will infer the sad conviction, which I share, I believe, with numbers, of the universal decay and now almost death of faith in society. The soul is not preached. The Church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct. On this occasion, any complaisance would be criminal which told you, whose hope and commission it is to preach the faith of Christ, that the faith of Christ is preached. It — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later. — Lord Chesterfield

Strength and success - they are above morality, above criticism. It seems, then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is for failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught. — John Steinbeck

Seven thousand of them were indicted and arraigned, and then they entered the maw of the criminal justice system - right here - through the gateway into Gibraltar, where the vans were lined up. That was about 150 new cases, 150 more pumping hearts and morose glares, every week that the courts and the Bronx County District Attorney's Office were open. And to what end? The same stupid, dismal, pathetic, horrifying crimes were committed day in and day out, all the same. What was accomplished by assistant D.A.'s, by any of them, through all this relentless stirring of the muck? The Bronx crumbled and decayed a little more, and a little more blood dried in the cracks. The Doubts! One thing was accomplished for sure. The system was fed, and those vans brought in the chow. — Tom Wolfe

Consider me your rescuer, not your jailer," he said to Frankie, without looking at her. His gut told him that, on the criminal mastermind scale, this one landed closer to Tinker Bell than Lizzie Borden. — Roxanne Snopek

No one should ever be wrongfully deprived of their rights to liberty and freedom without just cause, yet in the past 25 years alone thousands of people have been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to tens of thousands of years in prison. — Bernard B. Kerik

Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may be properly charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it. — Samuel Johnson

Today the Israeli government continues seizures of Palestinian land for settlements, military incursions into surrounding countries and denial of the right of Palestinians expelled by terror to return. Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, is a war criminal who should be in prison, not in office. Israel's own Kahan commission found that Sharon shared responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacres. — Ken Livingstone

If I was a criminal, stationery stores and bakeries would be the two kinds of places I would concentrate on. — John Turturro

Murder is a horror, but an often necessary horror, never criminal, which it is essential to tolerate in a republican State. Is it or is it not a crime? If it is not, why make laws for its punishment? And if it is, by what barbarous logic do you, to punish it, duplicate it by another crime? — Marquis De Sade

The DVR thing has rocked my world. Being on the road, I used to not keep up with any shows. Now I got a DVR, so I'm watching everything: 'CSI: Miami,' my favorites 'Criminal Minds' and 'The Mentalist.' I like some of the HBO stuff, 'Entourage' and 'Eastbound & Down.' My wife got me into the 'Grey's Anatomy' deal, so I'm watching that. — Jason Aldean

Private-sector firms are increasingly active in the prison industry and they and the militantly unionized correctional officers, almost all unskilled labor, constantly lead public demands for more criminal statutes and more draconian penalties. — Conrad Black

The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal. — Erich Fromm

A dragon did not crawl on its belly in front of its enemies, begging for their help. A dragon did not vow to rid the world of infidels, and then invite them into its home. A dragon did not flee its land in the middle of the night like a criminal.

A dragon burned everything around herself until it was purified in ash. — Kiersten White

I'm a hacker, but I'm the good kind of hackers. And I've never been a criminal. — Mikko Hypponen

Criminal law is one of the few professions where the client buys someone else's luck. The luck of most people is strictly non-transferrable. But a good criminal lawyer can sell all his luck to a client, and the more luck he sells the more he has to sell. — William S. Burroughs

We have secrets, and we have the same secrets that criminals have. Sometimes the only difference between a criminal and a law-abiding citizen is that somebody found out the criminal's secret. — Jane Velez-Mitchell

I am ready to face the International Criminal Court of Justice at the Hague for prosecution over roles played by me when the war ended — Yakubu Gowon

The Black Panthers was what we would call today a criminal gang that was formed by Huey Newton. Now, interestingly enough, I knew Huey Newton before he formed the Black Panthers. He was a student of mine when I was a teacher, instructor at Oakland City College back in the very early 1960s. — Edwin Meese

I think the federal government should be doing only what the Constitution says it should be. We don't have authority under the federal Constitution to have a big federal criminal justice system. — Paul Broun

Many a criminal has finally given himself over to the authorities because the accusations of a guilty conscience were worse than prison bars. — Billy Graham

If we are in a position to affect the happiness or suffering of others, we have ethical responsibilities toward them2 - and many of these responsibilities are so grave as to become matters of civil and criminal law. Taking — Sam Harris

Anybody who's against birth control and abortion has to be a criminal idiot. — Eleanor Clark

I'm not working-class: I come from the criminal classes. — Peter O'Toole

We need to notice and be aware of the injustices embedded in our criminal system. — Rand Paul

Mysteries include so many things: the noir novel, espionage novel, private eye novels, thrillers, police procedurals. But the pure detective story is where there's a detective and a criminal who's committed a murder and leaves clues for the detective and the careful reader to find. — Otto Penzler

Nothing makes a man feel more heroic than lying on the floor while his wife captures a criminal with a poinsettia — Margaret Scherf

The goal is not to just have rapists expelled from schools. I don't want rapists transferring schools. I don't want them out there, being able to commit these crimes. I want them to go to prison. But if you understand this crime and you understand what happens in the reporting of this crime and the support that a victim does or does not get, you realize that our legislation increases the likelihood that a young woman will go to the police in a timely manner and that the police will investigate and that they will be able to administer real justice in the criminal system. — Claire McCaskill

The White House, that whole criminal mob, those arrogant goons who see themselves as justified to operate above the law-they disgrace democracy by claiming that what they do they do for democracy! They should be in jail. They should be in Hollywood! — John Irving

No man owns me. All man can do is practice the timeless, criminal art of threatening to separate my soul from her physical host. — Tiffany Madison

Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. — John Locke

Jonathan Green had a firm handshake, clear eyes, and a jawline not dissimilar to Dudley Do-Right's. He was in his early sixties, with graying hair, a beach-club tan, and a voice that was rich and comforting. A minister's voice. He wasn't a handsome man, but there was a sincerity in his eyes that put you at ease. Jonathan Green was reputed to be one of the top five criminal defense attorneys in America, with a success rate in high-profile criminal defense cases of one hundred percent. Like Elliot Truly, Jonathan Green was wearing an impeccably tailored blue Armani suit. So were the lesser attorneys. Maybe they got a bulk discount. I was wearing impeccably tailored black Gap jeans, a linen aloha shirt, and white Reebok sneakers. Green said, Did Elliot explain why we wanted to see you? — Robert Crais

None of my 'clients' - not Eichmann, not Stangl, not Mengele, and not even Hitler or Stalin - was born a criminal. Somebody had to teach them to hate: maybe the society, maybe the politics, maybe just a Jewish prostitute. — Simon Wiesenthal

Without taking enforcement actions against all criminal aliens, programs such as Secure Communities may result in large numbers of identified criminal aliens being released back into the society which, of course, is an unacceptable outcome for our communities. — Candice S. Miller

I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions
poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed
which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished.
It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity. — Howard Zinn

It might be pardonable to refuse to defend some men, but to defend them negligently is nothing short of criminal. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The reality is that most celebrity defendants are extremely unknowledgeable, naive, and vulnerable, and if they get into trouble, they usually call their lawyer friends who handle criminal cases, and if they don't know any, they call their business lawyers, who then refer them to lawyer friends of theirs. — Vincent Bugliosi

The Commission agrees that the federal government should help alleviate these costs. The best way to do so is to reduce illegal immigration ... We recommend immediate reimbursement of criminal justice costs, because these conditions can now be met, but we urge further study of the costs of health care and education before impact aid is provided. — Barbara Jordan

Even a criminal has the right to a new life, but they made sure I did not have that. They just didn't stop calling me a prostitute for ever and ever and ever and ever. — Christine Keeler

My father is a practicing criminal law attorney in the Seattle area. — David Guterson

If the author of the Declaration of Independence were to utter such a sentiment today, the Post Office Department could exclude him from the mail, grand juries could indict him for sedition and criminal syndicalism, legislative committees could seize his private papers and United States Senators would be clamoring for his deportation that he should be sent back to live with the rest of the terrorists. — Frank I. Cobb

She's a princess and you're a jock," he says. He thrusts his chin toward Bronwyn, then at Nate. "And you're a brain. And you're a criminal. You're all walking teen-movie stereotypes. — Karen M. McManus

I had field experience, a vocabulary and a criminal mind. I was a danger to myself and others. — Anthony Bourdain

You know, Watson, I don't mind confessing to you that I have always had an idea that I would have made a highly efficient criminal.
Sherlock Holmes — Arthur Conan Doyle

You and Nick are good together," Jake said. "Probably in more ways than you know."
"Let's not go there."
"You keep saying that to yourself, but maybe it's time for a rethink."
"Since when are you interested in my love life?"
"You don't have one. You're all about the job. With Bob, you can have both."
"You don't know anything about Bob."
"I know it's got to be Nick, because there isn't anybody else," Jake said. "Who could possibly compete?"
"Someone who isn't a criminal on the FBI's Most Wanted list for starters."
"How boring would that guy be? He couldn't match the excitement Nick brings to your life. — Janet Evanovich