Great Police Quotes & Sayings

I have long believed the city, the country, indeed the world at large to be run by precisely the wrong kind of people. From the government to the great financial institutions, the peerage to the police force, our lives are controlled without exception by the stupid and greedy, the venal, the rapacious and the undeservedly rich. How much more comfortable would it be if the rulers of the world were not the cognoscenti of the bank balance, the ballot box, the offshore account, but were drawn instead from the ranks of the everyday - honest, kind, stout-hearted, commonplace folk. — Jonathan Barnes

I must have wondered if the police were right, if the entire story was a figment of my imagination. This is the worst impact of severe trauma: the victim loses faith in the evidence of her own senses. And this is the great gift Paul Macone gave to me. He believed what I told the police back then. He believed me enough to try to solve the case, and he did.
Perhaps because I've sought out evil in this world, attempting to understand and tame it, I am particularly moved by goodness. There is a light that animates an act of generosity, when a person is kind - not to call attention to his own goodness, or to make a pact with God, but just because he feels it's right. I see this light in Paul Macone. Still, his kindness is almost too much to bear. I feel shy around him, despite this conversation. I even feel shy writing this down. (184) — Jessica Stern

Great. I didn't say thank you, because it seemed wrong. I wanted to call her a bitch and shoot her between the eyes, but then I would have had to shoot Enzo, too. And how would I explain that to the police? She was breaking no laws. Dammit. — Laurell K. Hamilton

A concrete example of this mechanism is found in one of the most alarming phenomena of the last thirty years: the enormous increase in the police force of all countries. The increase of population has inevitably rendered it necessary. However accustomed we may be to it, the terrible paradox should not escape our minds that the population of a great modern city, in order to move about peaceably and attend to its business, necessarily requires a police force to regulate the circulation. But it is foolishness for the party of "law and order" to imagine that these "forces of public authority" created to preserve order are always going to be content to preserve the order that that party desires. Inevitably they will end by themselves defining and deciding on the order they are going to impose- which, naturally, will be that which suits them best. — Ortega Y Gasset

A police reporter walks into the worst moment in someone's life on every single story that he covers. It's not like being a sports reporter. That's a great job and all that and takes certain skills. But, you know, they're glad to see you when you show up to cover the football game. Nobody is ever glad to see a police reporter when he shows up. — Bob Schieffer

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. — Martin Luther King Jr.

This bill will require the creation of a Federal police force of mammoth proportions. It also bids fair to result in the development of an 'informer' psychology in great areas of our national life-neighbors spying on neighbors, workers spying on workers, business spying on businessmen-were those who would harass their fellow citizens for selfish and narrow purposes will have ample inducement to do so. These, the Federal police force an 'informer' psychology, are the hallmarks of the police state and landmarks in the destruction of a free society. — Barry Goldwater

And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.
So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries. — Kurt Vonnegut

The United States cannot reshape other countries in its own image and that, with a few exceptions, its efforts to police the world are neither in its interests nor within the scope of its resources. This whole tendency to see ourselves as the center of political enlightenment and as teachers to a great part of the rest of the world strikes me as unthought-through, vainglorious and undesirable. — George F. Kennan

It takes time. There are milestones, but so many people are traveling along that road at their own pace, and some come along later, and others are trying to stop everyone who's moving forward, and a few are marching backward or are confused about what direction they should go in. Even in our own lives we regress, fail, continue, try again, get lost, and sometimes make a great leap, find what we didn't know we were looking for, and yet continue to contain contradictions for generations. (Pandora's Box and the Volunteer Police Force) — Rebecca Solnit

We'd like to think that it is not our fault that great men and women died fighting for the security of our nation and safety of our communities. But we know this not to be true. They commited their lives for us in instances where either we were too afraid to do it ourselves or failed to find alternate solutions on our own. We enjoy the fruits of their ultimate sacrifice and owe their families a heartfelt thanks and apology everyday. — D'Andre Lampkin

I am for police function that protects citizens of this great Nation, not a police function that is used to terrorize them. — Dennis Kucinich

You!" he cried. "You never hated because you never lived. I know what you are all of you, from first to last
you are the people in power! You are the police
the great, fat smiling men in blue and buttons! You are the Law, and you have never been broken. But is there a free soul alive that does not long to break you, only because you have never been broken? — G.K. Chesterton

Gandhiji would always offer full details of his plans and movements to the police, thereby saving them a great deal of trouble. One police inspector who availed himself of Gandhi's courtesy in this matter is said to have been severely reprimanded by his chief. 'Don't you know,' he told the inspector, 'that everyone who comes into close contact with that man goes over to his side?' — Reginald Reynolds

You can truly grieve for every officer who's been lost in the line of duty in this country, and still be troubled by cases of police overreach, those two ideas are not mutually exclusive. You can have great regard for law enforcement and still want them to be held to high standards. — Jon Stewart

I actually do have a motto," said Heat. "It's 'Never forget who you work for.'" And as she voiced the words, Nikki felt a creeping unease. It wasn't exactly shame, but it was close. For the first time it sounded hollow. Fake. Why? She examined herself, trying to see what was different. The stress, that was new. And when she looked at that, she recognized that the hardest part of her day lately was working to avoid confrontation with Captain Montrose. That's when it came to her. In that moment, sitting nearly naked in Rook's living room, playing some silly nineteenth-century parlor game, she came to an unexpected insight. In that moment Nikki woke up and saw with great clarity who she had become - and who she had stopped being. Without noticing it, Heat had begun seeing herself as working for her captain and had lost sight of her guiding principle, that she worked for the victim. — Richard Castle

Police and firefighters are great, but they don't create wealth. They protect it. That's crucial. Teaching is a wonderful profession. Teachers help educate people to become good citizens so that citizens can then go create wealth. But they don't create the wealth themselves. — Rush Limbaugh

I cannot say that our country could have no secret police without becoming totalitarian, but I can say with great conviction that it cannot become totalitarian without a centralized national police. — Robert H. Jackson

It seems appropriate that the author of '1984' was a British citizen. George Orwell must have seen how easily the great British public's lamb-like disposition toward its leaders could be exploited to create a police state. — Heather Brooke

Great detectives are extremely rare. I believe they are the products of thousands of years of evolution. Their abilities to perceive and understand cannot be learned or taught. We can only wait for them to appear. It is unfortunate they are so few, and even more tragic that fewer still ever find their way into police work. — Laurence Giliotti

I love my local police," Nelson said. "They keep me safe. They look cute in their unforms. I have a great relationship with all the precincts I've ever been in." She said that MARCH seems to be activated in two scenarios: when a venue is in a rapidly gentirfying neighbourhood, or when it gets on some kind of "naughty list" - "sometimes for good reasons, like violence and drugs, and sometimes when, as in the case with art spaces, there's a cultural misunderstanding. — Emily Witt

Great idea," I said. "Call the police. Call the fucking police. — Ava Gardner

I gathered all of the Jewish mukhtars, who have contact with Arabs in different villages and asked them to whisper in the ears of some Arabs that a great Jewish reinforcement has arrived in Galile and that it is going to burn all of the villages of the Huleh. They should suggest to these Arabs, as their friends, to escape while there is still time ... The tactic reached its goal completely. The building of the police station at Halsa fell into our hands without a shot. The wide areas were cleaned ... — Yigal Allon

As for Ms. Banks's claim that she didn't even notice that the gang rapists were Mexican and their victim white, YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. The media always notice race. It is the first thing they look for in any crime - hoping against hope to have finally found Tom Wolfe's "great white defendant." They'll even turn a Hispanic perpetrator white, as the New York Times did with George Zimmerman. After the police shooting in Ferguson, did anyone need to ask: Hey, does anyone know the race of the cop or the race of the guy he shot? — Ann Coulter

The people of Baltimore are great. I love Baltimore. What I looked forward to, every year, was getting a new apartment in a different part of town and hanging out. People started to see you in the character that you were, so everyone thought I was real police. — Wendell Pierce

And they were relieved they found me alive, well and none the worse for wear. They cared and they didn't mind who knew it, not the hotel staff and customer onlookers, the police or the paramedics. Tough guys or not, I was one of them. I wasn't Ms. Townsend anymore. I was Sadie, Rock Chick. How great was that? — Kristen Ashley

Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like. — Laurence Housman

I know you are reporters and I know this is your job, but, you know, take your note pads, take your pencils down, take your grunt-o-meters down, the fashion police, put everything away and just watch the match, you know, from just the fans' perspective. I seriously think that the quality of the match today was great. — Maria Sharapova

It's called a repository spell. Makes something bigger on the inside than on the outside. Works great for bags, barrels, hats, just about anything really, even a 1963 police box. — Chuck

It was a rude and simple society and there were no laws to punish a starving man for expressing his need for food, such as have been established in a more humanitarian age; and the lack of any organised police permitted such persons to pester the wealthy without any great danger. — G.K. Chesterton

I used to be a Catholic, and when I first started police work, I worried about that. I saw a lot of people dead or dying for no apparent reason . . . not people I killed, just people. Little kids who'd drowned, people dying in auto accidents and with heart attacks and strokes. I saw a lineman burn to death, up on a pole, little bits and pieces, and nobody could help . . . . I watched them go, screaming and crying and sometimes just lying there with their tongues stuck out, heaving, with all the screaming and hollering from friends and relatives . . . and I never saw anyone looking beyond. I think, Michael, I think they just blink out. That's all. I think they go where the words on a computer screen go, when you turn it off. One minute they exist, maybe they're even profound, maybe the result of a great deal of work. The next . . . . Whiff. Gone. — John Sandford

No doubt hard work is a great police agent. If everybody were worked from morning till night, and then carefully locked up, the register of crime might be greatly diminished. But what would become of human nature? Where would be the room for growth in such a system of things? It is through sorrow and mirth, plenty and need, a variety of passions, circumstances, and temptations, even through sin and misery, that men's natures are developed. — Arthur Helps

New York is great though. If you?re here and want a one of a kind souvenir be sure to take home the police sketch of your assailant. — David Letterman

I was starting to play the ukulele at the same time I was having all these conversations with [the late Ramones guitarist] Johnny Ramone, these intense tutorials staying up late and listening to the music he grew up on, and picking up what's a great song and what makes a great song. He was all about lists and dissecting songs, like what's a better song by Cheap Trick: "No Surrender" or "Dream Police"? Sometimes you'd be surprised by the answer. It was an interesting dichotomy between hanging out with the godfather of punk rock and starting to play the ukulele. They came together. — Eddie Vedder

I could only think one troubling thought: the police, the state, did the bidding of the holders of great wealth. How much freedom of speech and freedom of assembly you had depended on what class you were in. — Howard Zinn

We have to have armies! We have to have military power! We have to have police forces, whether it's police in a great city or police in an international scale to keep those madmen from taking over the world and robbing the world of its liberties. — Billy Graham

Believe me, it is a great deal better to find cast-iron proof that you're innocent than to languish in a cell hoping that the police
who already think you're guilty
will find it for you. — Douglas Adams

Prison opened my eyes to so many things. It was a great time. I met interesting people. I got to understand the behaviour of the police and the media. I am an observer of the human race. — Jonathan King

If you want to routinely break the law and get away with it, then a police officer would be a great career choice for you. — Steven Magee

The recorder consisted of a biochip smaller than the head of a pin implanted into the hippocampus and nanosensors embedded throughout the body. Normally, the system lay dormant. But as soon as it detected severe deviations from the norm in various brain activity parameters - indicative of the stress caused by imminent death or great danger - the black-box would automatically contact the police and record the short-term memory in the hippocampus via molecular scanning. In the event of death, about one to two minutes of memories preceding the cessation of brain activity could be decrypted from the black box. — Bao Shu

What followed would inaugurate one of the most spatially astonishing crime sprees in U.S. history. Nineteenth-century New York City police chief George Washington Walling estimated that Leslie and his gang were behind an incredible 80 percent of all bank robberies in the United States at the time, until Leslie's betrayal in the spring of 1878. This would include the great Manhattan Savings Institution heist of October 1878, which netted nearly $3 million from one of the most impregnable buildings in North America. — Geoff Manaugh

A police force, wherever they are, is made up of amazing people, and I respect them a great deal. — Nancy McKeon

Since 2015, the media and the public have paid more attention than ever before to the use of deadly force by American police officers. That's a great thing. The more questions the public asks, the more the public demands police produce believable, transparent evidence that they are treating people fairly, the better off our nation will become. You will see how true this is throughout this book, but until 2015, not many Americans had noticed that the data gathering done by the government on this subject was, to put it mildly, really bad. — Nick Selby

Most teachers have little control over school policy or curriculum or choice of texts or special placement of students, but most have a great deal of autonomy inside the classroom. To a degree shared by only a few other occupations, such as police work, public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid. — Tracy Kidder

One of the great things about Houston is that they police themselves. It's the way Boston was in the '80s. No hacks or thieves are tolerated in the community, and that's HUGE. — Joe Rogan

It wasn't as if crack was getting great press in the South Bronx in 1999, but it took a particular kind of idiot to wake up one day and say, 'Angel dust is a product I've heard nothing but good about, and it's about time I was involved. — Edward Conlon

Though we were all taught to be proud of living in this great parliamentary democracy the civil servants who ran it were a fearsome bunch - a nameless mass of people with jobs (police, social workers, record-keepers, teachers, councilmen) whose sole purpose was to keep everyone shuffling from birth to death in a nice orderly queue. Surely some social-service record had been passed to the local constabulary bearing a huge black question mark beside the name Finn and the scrawled words, Why isn't this boy in school — Meg Rosoff

And if you want to know why great editors scare the pants off of writers everywhere, read 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' by Lynne Truss. The punctuation police are everywhere! — Dorothea Benton Frank

I read Freud because I find him an excellent writer ... a writer of police thrillers that can be followed with great passion. — Italo Calvino

Dostoevsky's visible world was a world of sensationalism. He may in the last analysis be a great mystic or a great psychologist; but he almost always reveals his genius on a stage crowded with people who behave like the men and women one reads about in the police news. — Robert Wilson Lynd

I'm delighted that our high school kids are developing these positives relationships with our police officers and getting such terrific hands-on experience. This will provide great benefits to our community now and in the future. — Deb Matthews

Great! I hope different police officers are here this time."
"Might be, but we're in the same police jurisdiction. I'm certain from the last time you were here, they probably have a record about you. What was it you said? You were playing some game re-enactment the last time you were injured?"
"Yes. How did your brother come up the idea of a paint-ball game? That's a good one."
"He's played them here before. He would like to bring the game back to our world, but we fight for real. — Terry Spear

It is human agitation, with all the vulgarity of needs small and great, with its flagrant disgust for the police who repress it, it is the agitation of all menthat alone determines revolutionary mental forms, in opposition to bourgeois mental forms. — Georges Bataille

As the data from the past decade clarify, there is no evidence that poverty causes crime but a great deal of evidence that crime causes poverty. By aligning themselves against the police, against commonsense tactics like stop and frisk, against metal detectors in public housing, against swift and certain punishment, and for a broad array of legal protections for accused criminals, liberals helped to aggrieve the lives of the poor and society as a whole. — Mona Charen

This police commissary was a great patron of all the arts and industries; but what he liked above everything else was a cheque. "That's the thing," he used to say, "to which it is not easy to find an equivalent; it requires no food, it does not take up much room, it stays in one's pocket, and if it falls, it is not broken. — Nikolai Gogol

There is a little phrase commonly used in police work that says, "in accordance with the evidence." You say that over six times a day as a grace before and after meals, and perhaps it will keep your feet on the ground and stop you ending up thinking you're Frederick the Great or a hedgehog or something. — Josephine Tey

Poirot was an extraordinary looking little man. He was hardly more than five feet, four inches, but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. The neatness of his attire was almost incredible. I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound. Yet this quaint dandyfied little man who, I was sorry to see, now limped badly, had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police. As a detective, his flair had been extraordinary, and he had achieved triumphs by unravelling some of the most baffling cases of the day. — Agatha Christie

is a fact known to almost everyone familiar with the Anarchist movement that a great number of acts, for which Anarchists had to suffer, either originated with the capitalist press or were instigated, if not directly perpetrated, by the police. For a number of years acts of violence had been committed in Spain, for which the Anarchists were held responsible, hounded like wild beasts, and thrown into prison. Later it was disclosed that the perpetrators of these acts were not Anarchists, but members of the police department. The scandal became so widespread that the conservative Spanish papers demanded the apprehension and punishment of the gang-leader, Juan Rull, who was subsequently condemned to death and executed. The sensational evidence, brought to light during the trial, forced Police Inspector Momento to exonerate completely the Anarchists from any connection with the acts committed during a long period. — Emma Goldman

Soccer matches in Europe have riot police. Metal is just people sloshing around drunk and sloppy and having fun, and there's nothing wrong with that. It is a great outlet for aggression. — Chris Reifert

Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidae, yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- match on one of them, as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts. — Henry David Thoreau

If you are asked any question by a police officer or a government agent and you realize that it is not in your best interest to answer, you should not mention the Fifth Amendment privilege or tell the police that you wish to exercise your right to avoid incriminating yourself. In this day and age, there is too great a danger that the police and the prosecutor might later persuade the judge to use that statement against you as evidence of your guilt. And if they do, to make matters much worse, you have no guarantee that the FBI agent in your case will not slightly misremember your exact words. — James Duane

When agents of the Turkmen secret police came up short in arrests of counterrevolutionaries in 1937-38, they filled their quota by going to the Ashgabat marketplace and rounding up all men who wore beards, on theory that they were likely to be mullahs. — Douglas Northrop

Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus - the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others. — Simone Weil

I think The Police made five great records and then called it a day. They went out on top. — Art Alexakis

Great powers reserve the right to police bad actors in their neighborhoods. — Thomas P.M. Barnett

Ethics based on this faultily quoted verse have changed nothing in post-Gandhi India, save the color of its administration. From a hungry man's point of view, though, it's all the same who makes him hungry. I submit that he may even prefer a white man to be responsible for his sorry state if only because this way social evil may appear to come from elsewhere and may perhaps be less efficient than the suffering at the hand of his own kind. With an alien in charge, there is still room for hope, for fantasy.
Similarly in post-Tolstoy Russia, ethics based on this misquoted verse undermined a great deal of the nation's resolve in confronting the police state. What has followed is known all too well: six decades of turning the other cheek transformed the face of the nation into one big bruise, so that the state today, weary of its violence, simply spits at that face. As well as at the face of the world. — Joseph Brodsky

You stand now between anarchy and law. The Police have done their duty. Let the jury have the same courage so that the police can indeed rest in peace. The flowers of spring shall bloom upon their graves moistened by the tears of a great city. Outraged and violated law shall be redeemed and in their martyrdom anarchy shall be buried forever. — Jason Epstein

The second tunnel's a Ministry of Defence tunnel ... dug for a nuclear bomb shelter. The entrance is in the garden center at Woolworth's in Great Malvern ... When the four-minute warning goes off, the Ministry of Defence lot at the RSRE'll be ferried up to Woolies by the military police. Councillors from Malvern Council'll be allowed in, so will Woolworth's manager and assistant manager. Then the military police ... They'll grab one or two of the prettier shop assistants for breeding ... Then that door'll close and all of us'll get blown to kingdom come. — David Mitchell

If the new military elite is anything like the old one, it would, in any great crisis, tend to side with the Old Order and defend the status quo, if necessary, by force. In the words of the standard police bulletin known to all radio listeners, These men are armed -and they may be dangerous. — Ferdinand Lundberg

Hadn't we better turn it lower?" Tony whispered.
"Eh, what? It's quiet enough, I think."
Tony flung a hunted glance at the window. "You have let me listen in to Germany. If the police find out, there will be great trouble -"
"There won't be any trouble at all," said Thomas. "You're in England, remember. You're free to tune in to any station you please. — Constance Savery

It's certainly an interesting moment to try to talk about, 'cause you could make a great show about the police force right now, with all that's happening in the news and Ferguson and all of it. — Ethan Hawke

Assuming that a tax increase is necessary, it is clearly preferable to impose the additional cost on land by increasing the land tax, rather than to increase the wage tax - the two alternatives open to the City (of Pittsburgh). It is the use and occupancy of property that creates the need for the municipal services that appear as the largest item in the budget - fire and police protection, waste removal, and public works. The average increase in tax bills of city residents will be about twice as great with wage tax increase than with a land tax increase. — Herbert Simon

I don't see any police cars."
"They probably had to park a couple blocks over. Anyway, as I was saying, I noticed illegal substances in the hands of a few guests."
"So?" she snapped. "It's a party."
"Alcohol is illegal under the age of twenty-one."
"Great!" Marcie shouted. "What am I going to do?" She paused, then raised her voice again. "You probably called them!"
"Who, me?" Vee said. "And lose the free food? No way. — Becca Fitzpatrick

Saying that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic worth, is like saying that he had rheumatism or suffered from diabetes. Madness, in fact, is a medical term that can claim no more notice from the objective critic than he grants the charge of heresy raised by the theologian, or the charge of immorality raised by the police. — James Joyce

My great grandmother threw herself in front of a bus. The police tried to say she was committed suicide but the family knew she was just trying to stop civil rights. — Anthony Jeselnik

I was part of the first generation of girls and women to be educated and go to grammar school even if we didn't have much money. Then that generation went, 'OK, great', and went into medicine or the police, and hit this wall of discrimination from older men who hadn't caught up. — Helen Mirren

The night I was born, my great uncle Moanea, the village forester, shot a wolf. The villagers roasted it in the fire and fed the meat to the dogs. — Teodor Flonta

We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known. They have known for thousands of years that to lock a sick person into solitary confinement makes him worse. They have known for thousands of years that a poor man who is frightened of his landlord and of the police is a slave. They have known it. We know it. But do the great enlightened mass of the British people know it? No. It is our task, Ella, yours and mine, to tell them. Because the great men are too great to be bothered. They are already discovering how to colonise Venus and to irrigate the moon. That is what is important for our time. You and I are the boulder-pushers. All our lives, you and I, we'll put all our energies, all our talents into pushing a great boulder up a mountain. The boulder is the truth that the great men know by instinct, and the mountain is the stupidity of mankind. — Doris Lessing

My version of events sounded perfectly rational until I was forced to say the words aloud, and then it sounded insane, particularly on the day I had to say them to the police officer who came to our house. I told him everything that had happened, even about the creature, as he sat nodding across the kitchen table, writing nothing in his spiral notebook. When I finished all he said was, "Great, thanks." and then turned to my parents and asked if I'd "been to see anyone." As if I wouldn't know what that meant. I told him I had another statement to make and then held up my middle finger and walked out. — Ransom Riggs

This formidable officine dates from Peter the Great, who formed it in 1697...its historic origins must, however, be looked for much earlier; one finds them in the byzantine traditions and in the operations of the Tartar domination...espionage, delation, torture, and secret executions were the normal and regulating instruments of the |||||||| police. — Maurice Paleologue

There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there - good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory ... Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea - God bless! Keep a hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along. — Elizabeth Warren

Twenty-one years ago, when I first heard Mia Farrow had accused me of child molestation, I found the idea so ludicrous I didn't give it a second thought. We were involved in a terribly acrimonious breakup, with great enmity between us and a custody battle slowly gathering energy. The self-serving transparency of her malevolence seemed so obvious I didn't even hire a lawyer to defend myself. It was my show business attorney who told me she was bringing the accusation to the police and I would need a criminal lawyer. — Woody Allen

If the great figures of this nation's history were alive today, they would all have to say that they committed a felony when they applied for a job at McDonald's. — Justin King

In Huntington Beach, California, three police instructors lost their jobs after ordering two cadets who were caught smoking to eat cigarette sandwiches as punishment. And of course the tobacco companies are thinking, 'Cigarette sandwiches - what a great idea. — Jay Leno