Quotes & Sayings About Gangsters

Cannabis never killed anybody and it's use is widespread. You cant stop it. The law defeats itself because all the efforts to stop drugs coming in only drives up the prices and then gangsters move in to push the drugs. If they legalised there wouldn't be gangsters and huge profits ... The police are gradually decriminalising the possession of cannabis because they realise there's not much point prosecuting — James Pickles

I reread Mesrine's book every year because the way the story is told is fascinating. Today, we don't have gangsters like Mesrine - he had humor. — Thomas Langmann

Our country has been overtaken by murderous thugs ... gangsters who lust after fortunes and power. — Cindy Sheehan

What's your name?"
"Emma Gould," she said. "What's yours?"
"Wanted."
"By all the girls or just the law? — Dennis Lehane

Like many Eastern European gangsters, he had been an official in the state security apparatus until the Communist regime collapsed. — Massimo Carlotto

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

I am a close friend of Robert Loggia. And I just love how, with actors, there's the screen persona. Here is Robert, known for his portrayal of many characters, including gangsters. But in real life, he is elegant and erudite. He sits in the garden reading the sonnets of William Shakespeare. — Luanne Rice

Athletes rejected, governors corrected
Gangsters, thugs and smugglers are thoroughly respected
The money gets divided
The women get excited
Now I'm broke and it's no joke
It's hard as hell to fight it, don't buy it!
— Grandmaster Flash

Referring to Russian commissars as half-gramophones, half-gangsters. — George Orwell

Some people go through the heavy stuff. They fight in wars. They're in jail. They start a business and it gets shut down by gangsters. They end up hustling their ass in a foreign country. It's one long list of setbacks and humiliations. But it doesn't touch them, not really. They're having an adventure. It's like: What's next? And then there's other people who are just trying to live quietly, they stay out of trouble, they're maybe ten years old, or fourteen, and one Friday morning at 9:35 something happens to them, something private, something that breaks their heart. Forever. — Michel Faber

The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders, who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others - with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means. — Henry Grady Weaver

I felt like Dirty Harry, only, my weapon wasn't as big as his! I don't know what it is with guns, but once you've got your hand on one, you think you're one of the untouchables. — Stephen Richards

As a child, I was always drawn to heroic characters. I decided I wanted to act when I realised that Superman and all those gangsters and Indians were just real people in costume. — Orlando Bloom

I knew so many gangsters, and I call on that experience with them for characters. — Frank Vincent

Another time, I was at the bar getting a drink and this geezer is stood at the bar with a ciggie in his mouth, trying his best to look rock hard. He takes a drag and points his finger in my face and drawls, 'Don't I know you?'
He was looking snake-eyed at me like a typical big screen gangster.
I stood in front of him and drawled back, 'I don't know, but they call me Richy Horsley,' and then bang, I batter him with a left hook that landed with a strange dull thud. Mr Movie Gangster was stood there leaning against the bar and staring out in to space, knocked out standing up. — Stephen Richards

I'd like to have every gentleman and lady in this room commit themselves to get our government to legalize drugs, so they have to get it through a doctor, not just some gangsters who sell it under the table. Let's legalize drugs like they did in Amsterdam. No one's hiding or sneaking around corners to get it. They go to a doctor to get it. — Tony Bennett

He had seen many criminals in his years in Division. Dangerous men and even more dangerous women. Small-time hucksters and savvy crime lords. Spies, gangsters, assassins, insurgents and wannabe-revolutionaries. True believers and soulless mercs willing to kill children for the right price. — G.S. Jennsen

When you're a kid and you see gangsters living the life, you kind of want to be like that. — Jaume Collet-Serra

A lot of my friends are gangsters. Not like gangsters - well, yeah, all sorts of levels of criminality - but not the types that are preying on innocent people. I have no interest in the type of criminality that has no respect for collateral damage. — Charlie Hunnam

Since the gangsters are glamorized, by extension the women they sleep with are also necessarily glamorous. — Sonia Faleiro

How many times do I have to tell you? We are not gangsters! — Peter Cimino

Everybody needs love. There are a lot of guys that you think are hard-core gangsters, but all these guys' weaknesses are women. Look at the movie Scarface. At the end of the day, all he wanted to do was to have kids with his woman. — Master P

The truth is, it is the younger inexperience gangsters who often cut down the older original gangsters. The best way for this young thug to prove himself to others, is to simply cut down an established gangster.
Thus, this cruel cycle of senseless violence repeats itself, with the younger being more vicious and rootless than his predecessor. It's the dog, who kills the lion, and once he has killed the lion, he's no longer a dog; he's now a lion himself. — Drexel Deal

There are no ghettos in Heaven,
no suburbs in Hell,
no gutters in Heaven,
but you'll find repentant gangsters. — Matshona Dhliwayo

If being a gangster were a prerequisite to being a musician, there'd be a lot less cello music, for example. — Greg Giraldo

Some of my friends became gangsters. You became a gangster depending upon how fast you wanted a suit. Gangsters weren't the stereotypes you see in the movies. I knew the real ones, and the real ones were out for big money. — Jack Kirby

The first military-trained gang member was Samuel Mason, leader of the Mason gang of river pirates operating along the Ohio River from the 1790s. — Carter F. Smith

I think we have always had a fascination for gangs and gangsters, and I think we always will. — Ross Kemp

Nicky turned and bolted. He'd only had about a thirty foot head start and a few were closing ground on him quickly. He cursed his hundred-dollar shoes and his vanity. The shoes looked great, but were definitely not made for running, nor was the suit he was wearing. He vowed that if he made it out of there alive, he'd only wear sneakers and track suits for the rest of his days. Of course, I'll probably be laughed out of the mob, but I don't care at this point. — Ian McClellan

I certainly didn't look like a gangster, but I had a gangster mentality. Gangsters only care about themselves and theirs. — Piper Kerman

There was a ringing in his ears, like a dead phone line that he couldn't hang up on. — Mark Capell

America is a nation of 270 million people: 100 million of them are gangsters, another 100 million are hustlers, 50 million are complete lunatics, and every single one of us is secretly in show business. Isn't that fabulous? — Tom Robbins

Some call me a gangster of love — Steve Miller

To tell the truth, girls are no longer the way they used to be. They play gangsters, nowadays, just like boys. They organize rackets. They plan holdups and practice karate. They will rape defenseless adolescents. They wear pants ... Life has become impossible. — Alain Robbe-Grillet

Gangs have had connections to the U.S. Military in every period since the founding of the country. — Carter F. Smith

As regards the social apparatus of repression and coercion, the government, there cannot be any question of freedom. Government is essentially the negation of liberty. It is the recourse to violence or threat of violence in order to make all people obey the orders of the government, whether they like it or not. As far as the government's jurisdiction extends, there is coercion, not freedom. Government is a necessary institution, the means to make the social system of cooperation work smoothly without being disturbed by violent acts on the part of gangsters whether of domestic or of foreign origin. Government is not, as some people like to say, a necessary evil; it is not an evil, but a means, the only means available to make peaceful human coexistence possible. But it is the opposite of liberty. It is beating, imprisoning, hanging. Whatever a government does it is ultimately supported by the actions of armed constables. — Ludwig Von Mises

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

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

I was raised in Chicago and I guess that was one of the special breeding grounds for gangsters of all colors. That was the Detroit of the gangster world. The car industry was thugs. — Quincy Jones

A life passed amid gangsters, thieves, smugglers, and gamblers had granted Amelia an unerring nose for greed, vanity, and other assorted venal characteristics, and in Miss Sparrow, she smelled rancid pride combined with the bitter char of unrequited love. She smelled the lemon tang of loneliness mingling with despair. Just under Priscilla Sparrow's skin, Amelia could tell, a rosemary blast of judiciousness rippled, followed by the must decay of jealousy and a lingering note of envy - in short (and in spite of all of Miss Sparrow's better attempts with Dick Crane), the odors of a lifelong spinster. — Tiffany Baker

You do not want to be a noble person?" She held her thumb and index finger close together. "A little bit?"
He shook his head. "I've gt nothing against noble people, I've just noticed they rarely live past forty."
"Neither do gangsters."
"True," he said, "but we eat in better restaurants."
(Live By Night - Dennis Lehane) — Dennis Lehane

The Mob essentially created the term 'stand-up comic' - according to eighty-six-year-old comedian Dick Curtis: 'The Outfit used to manage fighters. A stand-up fighter is a guy that is a puncher. A stand-up guy was a guy who was tough and you could depend on. The Outfit managed fighters and they managed clubs that booked comics, so the term found its way into the lexicon of nightclubs. A guy who just stood there and punched jokes - joke, joke, joke - he was a stand-up comic. — Kliph Nesteroff

I play a lot of hard men and gangsters, and I'm not like that at all. — Sean Pertwee

What do you call those things at the bottom of rivers? Frogs? Stones? Unsuccessful gangsters? — Terry Pratchett

Christmas ought to be brought up to date," Maria said. "It ought to have gangsters, and aeroplanes and a lot of automatic pistols. — John Masefield

Summerhill children are allowed to go through their gangster period, and consequentially more furniture is destroyed. — A.S. Neill

He was like the Great Santini of the Strand. Few people could take him on; he was so well-read and had a memory that could retain every detail of everything he'd ever read, as well as jokes, lyrics, arias, names of store owners he'd met on his honeymoon in Paris, names of restaurants where gangsters were gunned down in 1924. He could quote lines from books he disliked better than you could quote lines from what you claimed was your favorite book of all time. — Jeanne Darst

Before we made films about gangsters, everything was about the royal families. They contain so much drama. — Mads Mikkelsen

The British are the last national group who can be insulted by Hollywood without any comeback. These days if you depict Italians as gangsters, Saudis as terrorists or Mexicans as violent drug dealers you'll never hear the end of it. But as still the largest - and possibly the richest - ethnic group in the States, the British just have to take it. — Simon Hoggart

We got into all the trouble you could ever imagine. We figured that if the Jones boys and all the gangsters ran Chicago, we had our own territory now. All the stores, all the crime, we were in charge of everything, my stepbrother and my brother. — Quincy Jones

We talked about phonies. We talked about truth. We talked about gangsters; we talked about business. We talked about the nice poor people who went to the electric chair; and we talked about the rich bastards who didn't. We talked about religious people who had perversions. We talked about a lot of things.
We got drunk. — Kurt Vonnegut

There are allegations actually that he's [Vladimir Putin] associated with real gangsters in the past and that he runs his top circle sort of like a mafia family. But, you know, what is clear is that he seems to prize loyalty above all. He deeply resents anything that he sees as a betrayal. — Corey Flintoff

Cats were the gangsters of the animal world, living outside the law and often dying there. There were a great many of them who never grew old by the fire. — Stephen King

People generally thought that sharks are dumb eating machines. After some study, I began to realize that these 'gangsters' of the deep had gotten a bad rap. — Eugenie Clark

Americans accept that gangsters are running the government. — Tim Robbins

Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison. — C.S. Lewis

To discover what becomes of men who do not pay debts owed to Ratilla, one must visit the underworld. — A.H. Septimius

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

I wrote about Bosnia at the time. Somebody looked out their window and saw gangsters coming down the street and doing ethnic cleansing. I said that was the thing that would happen in the future, someone phoning in what they were seeing on the scene. Whether it's the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, Drudge Report or the BBC, all those reports, you have to assume there's a real person [who] has credibility. — Harold Evans

My strangest media moment a photo session they all had dressed up like 50 gangsters. That was pretty cool. We have to get some more of those kind of photos sometimes. — Kerry King

A lot of these kids have no fathers, and they want to be gangsters. They don't believe in God and have no faith in anything but their own instincts. Boxing provides a way for them to express themselves in a positive way, and I'm happy to be able to help them. — Bobby Slayton

Authors of light pieces have, nobody knows why, a genius for getting into minor difficulties: they walk into the wrong apartments, they drink furniture polish for stomach bitters, they drive their cars into the prize tulip beds of haughty neighbors, they playfully slap gangsters, mistaking them for old school friends. — James Thurber

Hitler is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder. Not content with having all Europe under his heel, or else terrorized into various forms of abject submission, he must now carry his work of butchery and desolation among the vast multitudes of Russia and of Asia. The terrible military machine, which we and the rest of the civilized world so foolishly, so supinely, so insensately allowed the Nazi gangsters to build up year by year from almost nothing, cannot stand idle lest it rust or fall to pieces. It must be in continual motion, grinding up human lives and trampling down the homes and the rights of hundreds of millions of men. Moreover it must be fed, not only with flesh but with oil. — Winston S. Churchill

Civilization is drugs, alcohol, engines of war, prostitution, machines and machine slaves, low wages, bad food, bad taste, prisons, reformatories, lunatic asylums, divorce, perversion, brutal sports, suicides, infanticide, cinema, quackery, demagogy, strikes, lockouts, revolutions, putsches, colonization, electric chairs, guillotines, sabotage, floods, famine, disease, gangsters, money barons, horse racing, fashion shows, poodle dogs, chow dogs, Siamese cats, condoms, peccaries, syphilis, gonorrhea, insanity, neuroses, etc., etc. — Henry Miller

What Wall Street and credit card companies are doing is really not much different from what gangsters and loan sharks do who make predatory loans. While the bankers wear three-piece suits and don't break the knee caps of those who can't pay back, they still are destroying people's lives. — Bernie Sanders

The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes. — Stanley Kubrick

I'd like to do a number of films. Westerns. Genre pieces. Maybe another film about Italian Americans where they're not gangsters, just to prove that not all Italians are gangsters. — Martin Scorsese

Night gangsters! For this crime I will exact a thousand fold revenge! — Adolf Hitler

He said, Yeah, well, artists are a lot like gangsters. They both know that the official version, the one everyone else believes, is a lie. — Russell Banks

Rental formal wear of the sky-blue, brocade and shiny varieties is favored by upwardly mobile young gangsters drafted as groomsmen for weddings. — George V. Higgins

You had to grow up sometime. The fellows who grew early, they were in jeopardy. They became the cops and the crooks, and the crooks became the gangsters. The crooks became the Al Capones. — Jack Kirby

Pug said: "I'm trying to think of the best way of knocking you off."
"The Chinese do it with rats," I said. "They let 'em eat the victim."
"Where am I going to get the rats?"
"Well," I said, "there're three in the car now."
I don't know which one hit me; Pug or the guy with the garlic breath. It was the barrel of a pistol and it cooled me for a couple of minutes. When I came to we had stopped by a small shack. I was alone with the guy on my left. — Jonathan Latimer

Westerns was why I got into the business. I grew up on a small farm in California and all I ever wanted to do was to play gangsters and cowboys in movies. — Brion James

She was floating in the midst of a black sea, in the darkest of nights, with no hope or care to see light again. She was a mere wave away from drowning in blackness. — Anam Iqbal

By the spring of 1963, Las Vegas was made up of an odd convergence of gamblers, gangsters, and government. All three forces, intentionally or unintentionally, catered to every kind of human weakness. Although the aboveground nuclear blasts were gone, the town was still full of glitzy, beckoning casinos; flamboyant, roguish celebrities; down-and-out and entrepreneurial prostitutes; and notorious, brutal criminals. By now it had gained its much deserved reputation as "Sin City" - universally considered a town where "just about anything goes." And surrounding it were the infamous "holes in the desert." Many of Las Vegas's problems were known to be buried in those same holes.
So, naturally, as a woman who relished audacity, this would be the place to which my mother would move my sister and me. As it turned out, that was the other part of her telephone call's "exciting news. — Gary Spetz

The United States has entered the ranks of the failed states. One of the most remarkable manifestations of a failed state is that the criminals are all inside the government operating against the people, whereas in a normal state, the criminals are on the outside of the government, operating against it. So, we now have every manifestation of being a failed state, with the government in the hands of a few Wall Street gangsters. — Paul Craig Roberts

I'm not romanticizing black people, because we've got gangsters like everybody else. — Cornel West

In the 1970s and early '80s, Shanghai was quiet, cautious, a ghost of a once-great city - and yet physically, little was changed from its glittering heyday. When visiting, I enjoyed reading books on local history and used my time off to scope out the former haunts of gangsters and jazzmen. — Nicole Mones

In the tide pool I was riveted by fat pink sea stars sitting like satisfied gangsters and seemingly unconcerned by their exposure; gulls would peck at them but the sea stars simply grew replacement limbs. — Mary Ellen Hannibal

The ethical practices of lawyers are probably no worse than those of other professions. Lawyers bring some of the trouble on by claiming in a sanctimonious way that they are interested only in justice, not power or wealth. They also suffer guilt by association. Their clients are often people in trouble. Saints need no lawyers: gangsters do. — Lawrence M. Friedman

I decided that if the police couldn't catch the gangsters, I'd create a fellow who could. — Chester Gould

An archetypal gangster is always at a remove. We can't get into his mindset. — Jacques Audiard

Anarchism is opposed to states, armies, slavery , the wages system, the landlord system, prisons, monopoly capitalism, oligopoly capitalism, state capitalism, bureaucracy, meritrocracy, theocracy, oligarchy, governments, patriarchy, matriarchy, monarchy, oligarchy, protection rackets, intimidation by gangsters, and every other kind of coercive institution. In other words, anarchism opposes government in all it's forms. — Donald Rooum

Dancing in speakeasies was a job, and none of us knew for sure who were gangsters. No one told us, so how could we know? My mother used to come and take me home. We thought nothing of walking home together at two in the morning. — Ruby Keeler

Cops, Hoshino concluded, not for the first time in his life, are just gangsters who get paid by the state. — Haruki Murakami

Gun control? It's the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. I'm a bad guy; I'm always gonna have a gun. Safety locks? You will pull the trigger with a lock on, and I'll pull the trigger. We'll see who wins. — Sammy Gravano

The conclusion of this little package of insight is that there are no victims. Wise people often say this, but when they declare that all is wisely and justly ordered, their listeners remain baffled. What about wars, fires, random murders, aircraft disasters, despotism, gangsters, and on and on? All of these imply victims and often cruel victimizers, too. — Deepak Chopra

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

Some of your worst gangsters are guys who were very low-key. — Mickey Rourke

When I was growing up, kids used to talk about snitching ... It never extended as a cultural norm outside of the gangsters. — Geoffrey Canada

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

How many gangsters you know, from Al Capone up to John Gotti, been gay? — Method Man

It wasn't fair, but maybe Tommy was right on that score. Maybe a man didn't have no right to ask for fair. Maybe a man made fair for himself. — Miles Watson

Never piss off a gangster. — Chael Sonnen

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

Of course, political leaders are much more ambitious than gangsters. The latter are content to take your money, whereas the former, besides taking far more of your money, have the effrontery to violate your just rights whenever their convenience dictates ... — Robert Higgs

My work means that we have lived in different parts of the world and in each there has always been something to be afraid of. Gangsters, extremist political groups Right and Left tossing bombs into restaurants, hijacks, holdups, a city plumb on the line of an earthquake fault. We have long had a compact, with ourselves, with life; life is dangerous. We live with that; in the one certainty that fear is the real killer. — Nadine Gordimer

Mulberry Street was the beating heart of the Italian-American experience, but you don't find those gangsters now. I live with a bunch of yuppies and models. — Abel Ferrara

The fact is, all gangsters live in dog years. We come up fast in terms of making a name for ourselves, but, once our names have been established on the streets, we are on our way out. — Drexel Deal

My father ran London Films. He made films like 'The Red Shoes,' 'The Third Man.' And he had had a long career in the film business, which was bifurcated with a career in intelligence. He had to deal with gangsters, and sometimes he would take me with him. Also, I went to school with their children. — Mark Helprin