Quotes & Sayings About Homicide

The only thing he likes better than a nice juicy homicide is a sirloin steak smothered with onions. — Richard Brautigan

It should be noted that even if the high-end estimate of fatalities directly or indirectly attributed to the Boko Haram insurgency were accepted at face value, they would still represent a small percentage of the overall violent deaths that have occurred in Nigeria over that same period of time.... According to UNODC data, Nigeria had 18,422 intentional homicides in 2008, the year after the violently contested elections.... Based on those numbers remaining relatively constant, Boko Haram would constitute approximately 5 per cent of all violent deaths in Nigeria since their peak in fatalities in 2009. — Zacharias Pieri

As he was shaking off, it came to Jake Chambers that the Pere would never do this again, or grin at him and point his finger; or cross himself before eating. They had killed him. Taken his life. Stopped his breath and pulse. Save for dreams, the Pere was now gone from the story. Jake began to cry. — Stephen King

The homicide detective was engaging in emotional catharsis, throwing up verbally. "What — Jens Buhler

I know when I was here prosecuting homicides in the District of Columbia, one of the most effective units here was the cold case squad, which had on it FBI agents, as well as Metropolitan Police Department homicide detectives working together. — Robert Mueller

Homicide is the major leagues, the center ring, the show. It always has been ... It goes beyond academic degrees, specialized training or book learning, because all the theory in the world means nothing if you can't read the street. — David Simon

The No. 1 cause of preventable death for young black men is not auto accidents or accidental drowning, but homicide. — Larry Elder

Mr Suttree in what year did your greatuncle Jeffrey pass away?
It was in 1884.
Did he die by natural causes?
No sir.
And what were the circumstances surrounding his death?
He was taking part in a public function when the platform gave way.
Our information is that he was hanged for a homicide. — Cormac McCarthy

It felt like an eternity before he gingerly lifted himself from the table and staggered backwards. Glass shards protruded from chest to groin. The guy looked like a bloody porcupine. A cute, tall bloody porcupine. I'm tall too. Five foot ten. But he had at least four inches on me, even with my thick-heeled boots.
"What's your name?" he slurred.
While visions of reckless homicide charges danced in my head, I contemplated using an alias. Finally, I said my real name, "Sam."
"Nice to meet you, Sammers. I'm Jake," he said. — Betsy Cook Speer

Homicide is not a sin. It is sometimes a necessary violence on resistant and ossified forms of existence which have ceased to be amusing. In the interests of an important and fascinating experiment, it can even become meritorious. Here is the starting point of a new apologia for sadism. — Bruno Schulz

Government does not create wealth; it redistributes it. Whatever it gives you it must first take from someone else. — Robert W. McGee

If I had multiple lives, I'd like to do many things, including being a homicide investigator. I'm not brave enough to chase people and draw down on them. Having spent time with that, it can be an incredibly terrifying job. — Veena Sud

Both 'Oz' and 'Homicide,' they're critically admired, so it's not like they're really neglected, but I wish they'd found bigger audiences. — Zeljko Ivanek

Honour is a homicide and a bloodspiller, that gangs about making frays in the street; but Credit is a decent honest man, that sits at hame and makes the pat play. — Walter Scott

The naturalist E. O. Wilson gave a name to this warm, fuzzy feeling I'm experiencing: biophilia. He defined it as "the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms." Wilson argued that our connection to nature is deeply ingrained in our evolutionary past. That connection isn't always positive. Take snakes, for instance. The chances of encountering a snake, let alone dying from a snakebite, are extraordinarily remote. Yet modern humans continue to fear snakes even more, studies have found, than car accidents or homicide or any of the dozens of other more plausible ways we might meet our demise. The fear of snakes resides deep in our primitive brain. The fear of the Long Island Expressway, while not insignificant, was added much more recently. — Eric Weiner

Mars, when guilty of homicide, and set free from the charge of murder by the Athenians through favour, lest he should appear to be too fierce and savage, committed adultery with Venus. — Lactantius

Arnobius wrote in the fourth century: "Evil ought not be repaid with evil. . . . It is better to suffer wrong than inflict it. . . . We should rather shed our own blood than stain our hands and our conscience with the blood of another" (Sider, 101). In his writings on "public homicide," Lactantius raged against the ways we have glorified death - that we have a "thirst for blood" and "lose our humanity." Here are his powerful words insisting that it is wrong to kill, even legally: It makes no difference whether you put a person to death by word or rather by sword, since it is the act of putting to death itself which is prohibited. . . . There ought to be no exception at all but that it is always unlawful to put to death a person who God willed to be a sacred creature. (Sider, 110) He goes on to say that when we kill, even legally execute, "the bloodshed stains the conscience. — Shane Claiborne

The experience left me with a very strong sense of just how destructive this simple, seemingly mundane tool can be. A knife never jams. A knife never runs out of ammunition; you rarely see a gunshot murder victim who has been shot more than a few times, but any homicide investigator can tell you how common it is for the victim of a knife murder to bear twenty, thirty, or more stab and/or slash wounds. "A knife comes with a built-in silencer." Knives are cheap, and can be bought anywhere; there used to be a cutlery store at LaGuardia Airport, not far outside the security gates. There is no prohibition at law against a knife being sold to a convicted felon. Knives can be small and flat and amazingly easy to conceal. Anywhere — Massad Ayoob

We could endlessly reminisce, live in the past to an unhealthy degree, then politely kill each other some winter night before bedtime, stirring poison into our cups of whiskey-spiked chamomile tea, wearing party hats. Then, nervous about our double homicide, we could lie in bed together, holding hands again, frightened and waiting, still wondering, after all these years, if we even believed in our own souls. — Timothy Schaffert

She was a cop, a Homicide lieutenant with eleven years on the job protecting and defending the hard, merciless streets of New York. There was little she hadn't seen, touched, smelled, or waded through. Because people, to her mind, would always and could always find more inventive and despicable ways to kill their fellow man, she knew just what torments could be inflicted on the human body.
But bloody and brutal murder was nothing compared to giving birth. — J.D. Robb

Rather than trying to control or confiscate guns, it might be smarter to offer free, public gun-safety courses. In countries like Switzerland, every man within a certain age range is required to possess a gun and to know how to use it, and Switzerland has one of the lowest gun homicide rates in the world. It is clear that guns do not kill people by themselves. Rather, people who are determined to kill will find whatever means are available to accomplish their mission. — Ben Carson

Homicide through gun violence is the leading cause of death among young African American males in the United States. If people look a certain way, they have a higher tendency of dying, of having their lives taken away. — Ryan Coogler

Just be careful," a Seattle homicide detective warned. "Maybe we'd better know where to find your dental records in case we need to identify you."
I laughed, but the words were jarring; the black humor that would surround Ted Bundy evermore begun. — Ann Rule

In America, it is reported by some sources that there were more domestic violence related murders in the home than the 58,000 Americans soldiers killed in the entire Vietnam War — Sara Niles

Have you ever slept with a member of a race of another color?
Have you ever committed culpable homicide?
Have you ever bombed anything?
Have you ever murdered anyone?
Have you ever kidnapped anyone? — L. Ron Hubbard

If your opponent is playing several shots in vain attempts to extricate himself from a bunker, do not stand near him and audibly count his strokes. It would be justifiable homicide if he wound up his pitiable exhibition by applying his niblick to your head. — Harry Vardon

Skyla's back," he continues, "and before she's formally charged with yet another homicide, a few things are going to change around here. For one, your mother and I will be around the house more often because we no longer have to babysit that linebacker your sister tried to force feed her Michelins. — Addison Moore

In 2013, there were 6,261 black homicide victims in the US - almost all killed by black civilians. — John Podhoretz

For example, compared with hunter-gatherers, citizens of modern industrialized states enjoy better medical care, lower risk of death by homicide, and a longer life span, but receive much less social support from friendships and extended families. My motive for investigating these geographic differences in human societies is not to celebrate one type of society over another but simply to understand what happened in history. — Jared Diamond

I was just saying goodnight." Logan quipped and pecked Sienna on the cheek before slipping something in to her hand. She looked down to see it was a sleek new cellphone. He turned to leave but Mrs. Rivers interrupted him.
"Your fly is undone." She told him grimly giving him her the full extent of her medusa glare. If looks could kill, Mrs. Rivers had homicide down to a science. When had that happened? Sienna thought. Probably sometime when they were too busy pressing themselves against each other. Sienna was mortified. Logan however looked mildly amused. He zipped up his trousers and quietly thanked her.

"Oh and Logan, you left your souvenir behind." She added now giving Sienna the full extent of the medusa glare. Logan and Sienna both frowned momentarily before realizing what she meant. He snatched the condom and put it back in his pocket and quickly left the house leaving Sienna to battle with the Gorgon. — Ali Harper

We gotta have a toast." Rocky on her pins, Peabody used the table for balance. She managed to raise her glass without spilling more than half its contents on Eve's head. "To the best fucking cop in the whole stinking city, who's gonna marry the sexiest sumbitch I, personally, have ever laid eyes on, and who, because she's so goddamn smart, has seen to it that I'm perman'ly attached to Homicide. Which is where any half-blind asshole could tell you I belong. So there." She downed the rest of her drink, fell backward into her chair, and grinned foolishly.
"Peabody," Eve said and flicked a finger under her eyes. "I've never been more touched."
"I'm shit faced. Dallas."
"The evidence points to it. — J.D. Robb

I was a prosecutor in Brooklyn in the homicide division and then as a senior assistant district attorney. — Star Jones

...And suddenly, from behind me, I hear the metaphysically abrupt arrival of the office boy. I feel like I could kill him for barging in on what I wasn't thinking. I turn around and look at him with a silence full of hatred, tense with latent homicide, my mind already hearing the voice he'll use to tell me something or other. He smiles from the other side of the room and says 'Good afternoon' in a loud voice. I hate him like the universe. My eyes are sore from imagining. — Fernando Pessoa

In our town, Halloween was terrifying and thrilling, and there was a whiff of homicide. We'd travel by foot in the dark for miles, collecting candy, watching out for adults who seemed too eager to give us treats. — Rosecrans Baldwin

So while you're getting ripped apart head to toe as you fall into a black hole, you will also extrude through the fabric of space and time, like toothpaste squeezed through a tube. To all the words in the English language that describe ways to die (e.g., homicide, suicide, electrocution, suffocation, starvation) we add the term spaghettification. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Pregnant women are more likely to die from homicide by domestic violence than any other cause of death. — Lois Capps

These Norsemen are excellent persons in the main, with good sense, steadiness, wise speech, and prompt action. But they have a singular turn for homicide; their chief end of man is to murder or to be murdered; — Ralph Waldo Emerson

No other organization rouses anything like the loyalty aroused by the national State. And the chief activity of the State is preparation for large-scale homicide. — Bertrand Russell

Crime reporting was aggressive in Richmond, an old Virginia city of 220,000, which last year was listed by the FBI as having the second-highest homicide rate — Patricia Cornwell

Yes. I did more research than I ever wanted to and saw some things I wish I didn't. I went on ride-alongs, spent time with Homicide, Cold Case, and SVU detectives, hung out in subways learning how to spot pervs and pick-pockets, viewed an autopsy, went to a police firing range, and witnessed court cases and I read, read, read. — Mariska Hargitay

The maintenance of secrecy in the matter, the confining all knowledge of it for a time to the place where the homicide occurred, the quarter-deck cabin; in these particulars lurked some resemblance to the policy adopted in those tragedies of the palace which have occurred more than once in the capital founded by Peter the Barbarian. — Herman Melville

In other words, a gun is twenty-two times more likely to be used in a criminal assault, an accidental death or injury, a suicide attempt, or a homicide than it is for self-defense.67 — Michael Shermer

Homicide thats a big word means i killed a guy. seven years. im sprung in four for keep'n my nose clean. (18) the hich hiker is saying this to the truck driver and i think it puts alot of meanning to the book because the truck driver just realized that he could have just died. it adds suspense to the story and makes it kinda scary. — John Steinbeck

Well it was sent to me, well because almost everything that is written in Baltimore is sent to me. And David Simon, who was a writer for the Baltimore Sun, spent one year following the homicide squad in Baltimore and he chronicled that period of time. — Barry Levinson

The same comparison holds true within the United States itself: Southern and Midwestern states, characterized by the highest levels of religious literalism, are especially plagued by [high rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, and infant mortality], while the comparatively secular states of the Northeast conform to European standards. — Sam Harris

Be informed, also, that this good and savoury Parish is the home of Hectors, Trapanners, Biters who all go under the general appelation of Rooks. Here are all the Jilts, Cracks, Prostitutes, Night-walkers, Whores, Linnen-lifters, who are like so many Jakes, Privies, Houses of Office, Ordures, Excrements, Easments and piles of Sir-reverence: the whores of Ratcliffe High-way smell of Tarpaulin and stinking Cod from their continuall Traffick with seamen's Breeches. There are other such wretched Objects about these ruined Lanes, all of them lamentable Instances of Vengeance. And it is not strange (as some think) how they will haunt the same Districts and will not leave off their Crimes until they are apprehended, for these Streets are their Theatre. Theft, Whoredom and Homicide peep out of the very Windows of their Souls; Lying, Perjury, Fraud, Impudence and Misery are stamped upon their very Countenances as now they walk within the Shaddowe of my Church. — Peter Ackroyd

A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

I could have just said I'm good at my job, but I didn't. Didn't want the police thinking I was holding out information when I wasn't. I've got one advantage over a normal homicide detective, I expect it to be a monster. No one ever calls me in if it's just a stabbing, or a hit-and-run. I don't spend a lot of time trying to come up with nice, normal explanations. It means I get to ignore a lot of theories. — Laurell K. Hamilton

It is impossible for me to estimate how many of my early impressions of the world, correct and the opposite, came to me through newspapers. Homicide, adultery, no-hit pitching, and Balkanism were concepts that, left to my own devices, I would have encountered much later in life. — A.J. Liebling

All I know is, a writer ever walks into Homicide looking to shadow someone, I'm shooting them on-sight. — J.D. Cunegan

You know what they call a guy who switches sides in homicide? They call him a Jane Fonda, as in hanging with the North Vietnamese. You get it? It's crossing to the dark side. — Michael Connelly

If a parricide is more wicked than anyone who commits homicide-because he kills not merely a man but a near relative-without doubt worse still is he who kills himself, because there is none nearer to a man than himself. — Saint Augustine

What I learned on 'Homicide' was that each show deserves its own look. — Clark Johnson

Anonymous, faceless homicides, he decides, lack the thrill of human contact. — David Mitchell

Homicide investigations are about people, — Camilla Lackberg

Earth is a homicide victim. We lose our children. There are wars. Disease. And God comes strolling by like a cosmic Billie Burke. — William Peter Blatty

Michael Taylor is not being executed for homicide. Michael Taylor is being executed for raping a white female. — John Simon

The chuckle happens again, and I swear to the Almighty God of Justifiable Homicide, I'm going to murder him with my bare hands. — Leisa Rayven

Her feet tingled. One whole hour to forget about the leaky kitchen sink, her father's retirement party, and her mother's relentless questions about it. She closed her eyes. One whole hour to completely unwind and indulge her thoughts in something beside caterers, plumbers, and homicide cases. — Lisa Harris

I think TV has been a little bit irresponsible in how they portray these people because homicide detectives are not brooding, tortured souls who are stained with the stink of the city and who have blood on their hands. They are real, live people that are incredibly entertaining. — Nathan Fillion

Believe me, although I really like the show, the reality of Philly Homicide is nothing like CBS's 'Cold Case.' — Richard Montanari

Hamas is responsible for countless homicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Israeli citizens. They have waged a terror war with the sole intent of murdering innocent people. — Vito Fossella

My wife is a former homicide detective, LAPD. The wonderful thing that I was able to capture is my wife's experiences from human and professional, and how do you deal with some of the atrocities that happen in L.A. and not bring them home. — Ving Rhames

Our only hope to speak with kindness, to lead with patience, and to not threaten our children with homicide is to ensure our spiritual reserves are not bone-dry. Moms are the middle of the flow chart; the arrows of exertion flow constantly out from us, but when no arrows of strength, grace, and peace are flowing in, the whole mechanism is in danger. Goodness in equals goodness out. — Jen Hatmaker

My dad was a homicide cop in the gay neighborhood in the city when gay neighborhoods were desperate, depressing, sad places run by the mob. The only gay people he'd met when I came out to him were corpses. — Dan Savage

Ordinary citizens can encounter violence at their jobs to the point that homicide is now the leading cause of death for women in the workplace. — Gavin De Becker

This is CID homicide, mister, and neither heat nor rain nor gloom of night will stay these men from their rendezvous with callousness. Cruel jokes? The cruelest. Sick humor? The sickest. And, you ask, how can they possibly do it? Volume. That's right, volume. They won't be outsold, they won't be undersold; they will solve no crime before its time. — David Simon

The atom bomb fueled the entire world that came after it. It showed that indiscriminate killing and indiscriminate homicide on a mass level was possible ... whereas if you look at warfare up until that point, you had to see somebody to shoot them or maim them, you had to look at them. You don't have to do that anymore. — Bob Dylan

While his history of depression is compatible with suicide ... and the location and direction of the stab wounds are consistent with self-infliction, several aspects of the circumstances (as they are known at this time) are atypical of suicide and raise the possibility of homicide. — Elliott Smith

Men have a higher death rate than women for nine out of ten leading causes of death: heart disease, cancer, injuries, cerebrovascular disease, chronic lower respiratory disease, diabetes, pneumonia and flu, HIV infection, suicide, and homicide. We all die of something, but if you're a guy, you are more likely to get a serious disease and die from it than are women. — Jed Diamond

Supposed to be commissioned by the Church, the pardoners would sell absolution for any sin from gluttony to homicide, cancel any vow of chastity or fasting, remit any penance for money, most of which they pocketed. — Barbara W. Tuchman

So ... have you ever thought about dyeing your hair punk-rocker-chick black? As I'm sure you've heard, I have a thing for brunettes and always avoid blondes."
"I've heard. And no."
"Too bad. Because you're making me rethink my stance about doing my friends' exes." I snorted, not even trying to hide my ... incredulity? Surely I wasn't amused.
"Your making me rethink my stance on cold-blooded homicide — Gena Showalter

People don't have a constitutional right to leave loaded guns lying around. And if they choose to do so - and a kid gets shot and killed because of it - it's not an accident. It's negligent homicide. — Kurt Eichenwald

Selena between them at a long counter overlooking the dance floor. Backs to the D.J. booth, they faced the door. Two other homicide detectives, hand-picked by Lt. Lee, posed as a waitress and a bouncer, covering the crowd and the door. The composite the police sketch artist had created with Selena's help burned in their brains, but nothing so far. "This is not nearly — Victoria Heckman

In Alabama, even though 65 percent of all homicide victims were black, nearly 80 percent of the people on death row were there for crimes against victims who were white. — Bryan Stevenson

He liked being in a place where everything from forgetfulness to homicide might be blamed on the heat. — Jan Karon

Mr. Lecky had proceeded quickly for several moments before he drew up, shocked. A few more steps and he might have stumbled on his idiot, for the stairs he had been approaching were the front stairs to the silverware department, which he wished to avoid. Shaken by this unpleasant mistake, he re-directed himself, turning back down the center of the dark floor. Certainly he did not want to see the corpse; the corpse could not very well want to see him. — James Gould Cozzens

Being a homicide detective ca be the loneliest job in the world. The friends of the victim are upset and in despair, but sooner or later - after weeks or months - they go back to their everyday lives. For the closest family it takes longer, but for the most part, to some degree, they too get over the grieving and despair. Life has to go on; it does go on. But the unsolved murders keep gnawing away and in the end there's only one person left who thinks night and day about the victim: it's the office who is left with the investigation. — Stieg Larsson

The police were also ready with more formidable tools of intimidation. The office also assigned a veteran homicide prosecutor to oversee the investigation. All this activity sent a signal to Condit. If he didn't play ball, he might find himself called to testify before a grand jury under oath. — Wolf Blitzer

The guy who shot him had quite a temper. Homicide had always made sense to him. He would say that there wasn't a problem in the world that couldn't be solved by shooting someone in the face. You just had to find the right person. Hell, you didn't even need to do that. Sometimes just shooting the person next to him was enough. — Henry Rollins

[I]n all mammalian species that have so far been carefully studied, the rate at which their members engage in the killing of conspecifics is several thousand times greater than the highest homicide rate in any American city. — Daniel Dennett

I want my job to include a little adventure, a little more of a heightened reality than what I'm actually living. And 'Castle' has that. He gets this opportunity to tail these homicide detectives, and he's driven by that. He's a little immature, but he's obviously loving life. — Nathan Fillion

John Updike, in that book you gave me, he said the dead make space. Do you know what I think? Updike doesn't know dick about what it's like to be a homicide cop in Baltimore. — Laura Lippman

I am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me. — David Levithan

Ty bit his lip, watching his lover just because he could. He firmly believed that being able to rile Zane like he could was one of the aspects of their relationship that had saved Zane from tumbling back into his destructive past. Every now and then, Zane just needed to feel like he was alive. Everyone should be able to feel that. And if annoying him to the point of homicide was what it took, Ty was up to the challenge. — Abigail Roux

Sentimentalists ... adopt whatever merit is in good repute, and almost make it hateful with their praise. The warmer their expressions, the colder we feel ... Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debauchee of sentiment? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The redheaded homicide detective stepped through the door at 7:30 A.M. and out into the August heat that already had reached 88 degrees. By noon the temperature would hit 100, and by two or three o'clock it would be hovering around 105. Frayed nerves would then start to snap and produce a marked increase in the detective's business. Breadknife weather, the detective thought. Breadknives in the afternoon. — Ross Thomas

On average, around 500,000 people die on the planet every year as a result of intentional violence and homicide. These acts span domestic violence, war, terrorism, infanticide, gang violence, honor killings and state executions. Many of these deaths pass relatively unnoticed while some attract attention. — Chris Rhyss Edwards

This homicide proves only the beginning of his murderous spree. In just the first year of his existence Batman will send some twenty-four men, two vampires, a pack of werewolves, and several giant mutants to their ultimate ends, occasionally at the business end of a gun. — Glen Weldon

Homicide central, East New York, Where the manic-depressive psycho murderers stalk — Jeru The Damaja

Iran has long sponsored terrorists who carry out homicide bombings in Israeli cities. However, it is a mistake to believe the danger Iran poses is directed at Israel alone. — John Doolittle

A half-dozen or so FBI techies and LAPD homicide detectives were still on the scene. The latest Pearl Jam played from somebody's radio. The lead singer seemed to be in terrible pain. — James Patterson

Men often have grievances against prominent and powerful persons. Historically, the grievances of the powerless against the powerful have furnished the steam for the engines of revolutions. My point is that in many of the famous medicolegal cases involving the issue of insanity, persons of relatively low social rank openly attacked their superiors. Perhaps their grievances were real and justified, and were vented on the contemporary social symbols of authority, the King and the Queen. Whether or not these grievances justified homicide is not our problem here. I merely wish to suggest that the issue of insanity may have been raised in these trials to obscure the social problems which the crimes intended to dramatize. — Thomas Szasz

Before I write anything, before I create any assumption in my mind about what it's like to be in that world, I go out there first. I'm very drawn to darkness and light, very drawn to cop drama, because there are very few places besides war and murder and a homicide investigation where you see the extremes of human nature - the darkest crevices and cracks in what people do to one another. — Veena Sud

Right,' Thomas said. 'Where are we headed?'
'To where they treat me like royalty,' I said.
'We're going to Burger King?'
I rubbed the heel of my hand against my forehead and spelled fratricide in a subvocal mutter, but I had to spell out temporary insanity and justifiable homicide, too, before I calmed down enough to speak politely. 'Just take a left and drive. Please.'
'Well,' Thomas said, grinning, 'since you said 'please'
- Thomas Raith & Harry Dresden, Small Favor, Jim Butcher — Jim Butcher

It is the ultimate metafictional act, not homicide but suicide. (Wallace would say that one of the problems of metafiction is that there is no difference.) — D.T. Max

A human being is still more likely to die of a bee sting, snake bite or, Lord knows, automobile accident than by shark attack. We do not execute the perpretrators of death by car. We should not butcher an animal for an inadvertent homicide. — Peter Benchley

We should be wary what persecution we raise against the living labors of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books, since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom; and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself; slays an immortality rather than a life. — John Milton

Countries with a high percentage of nonbelievers are among the freest, most stable, best-educated, and healthiest nations on earth. When nations are ranked according to a human-development index, which measures such factors as life expectancy, literacy rates, and educational attainment, the five highest-ranked countries
Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands
all have high degrees of nonbelief. Of the fifty countires at the bottom of the index, all are intensly religious. The nations with the highest homicide rates tend to be more religious; those with the greatest levels of gender equality are the least religious. These associations say nothing about whether atheism leads to positive social indicators or the other way around. But the idea that atheists are somehow less moral, honest, or trustworthy have been disproven by study after study. — Greg Graffin

Three thousand jurisdictions across the U.S. are estimated to have had gang activity in 2001. In 2002, 32% of cities with a population of 25 to 50 thousand reported a gang-related homicide. — Bob Filner