From a single crime know the nation.
—Virgil (70–19 BCE) Roman Poet
Life is a sheet of paper white, Whereon each one of us may write His word or two, and then comes night. Greatly begin! Though thou have time But for a line, be that sublime—Not failure, but low aim, is crime.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
Abscond. To “move” in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1913) American Short-story Writer, Journalist
Great thieves punish little ones.
—Common Proverb
Crime and bad lives are the measure of a State’s failure, all crime in the end is the crime of the community.
—H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English Novelist, Historian, Social Thinker
Many a man is saved from being a thief by finding everything locked up.
—E. W. Howe (1853–1937) American Novelist, Editor
Today more Americans are imprisoned for drug offenses than for property crimes
—George Will (b.1941) American Columnist, Journalist, Writer
We are often deterred from crime by the disgrace of others.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65–8 BCE) Roman Poet
The thief. Once committed beyond a certain point he should not worry himself too much about not being a thief any more. Thieving is God’s message to him. Let him try and be a good thief.
—Samuel Butler
There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80) French Writer
A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
All criminals turn preachers under the gallows.
—Common Proverb
A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) (1862–1910) American Writer of Short Stories
Locks keep out only the honest.
—Hebrew Proverb
The man who is admired for the ingenuity of his larceny is almost always rediscovering some earlier form of fraud. The basic forms are all known, have all been practiced. The manners of capitalism improve. The morals may not.
—John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) Canadian-Born American Economist
He reminds me of the man who murdered both his parents, and then when the sentence was about to be pronounced, pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was orphan.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
Crime is a fact of the human species, a fact of that species alone, but it is above all the secret aspect, impenetrable and hidden. Crime hides, and by far the most terrifying things are those which elude us.
—Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French Essayist, Intellectual
Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
He 63 ways of getting money, the most common, most honorable ones being staling, thieving, and robbing.
—Francois Rabelais (1494–1553) French Humanist, Satirist
Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society.
—E. L. Doctorow (b.1931) American Writer, Editor, Academic
It is certain that stealing nourishes courage, strength, skill, tact, in a word, all the virtues useful to a republican system and consequently to our own. Lay partiality aside, and answer me: is theft, whose effect is to distribute wealth more evenly, to be branded as a wrong in our day, under our government which aims at equality? Plainly, the answer is no.
—Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) French Political leader, Revolutionary, Novelist, Poet, Critic
The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment springs from you.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue.—Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass.—Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge, and fox, and squirrel.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Crime is naught but misdirected energy.
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940) Lithuanian-American Anarchist, Feminist
He has committed the crime who profits by it.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
The wrongdoer is more unfortunate than the man wronged.
—Democritus (c.460–c.370 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
There is a new billboard outside Time Square. It keeps an up-to minute count of gun-related crimes in New York. Some goofball is going to shoot someone just to see the numbers move.
—David Letterman (b.1947) American TV Personality, Comedian
If poverty is the mother of crimes, want of sense is the father of them.
—Jean de La Bruyere (1645–96) French Satiric Moralist, Author
Crimes, like virtues, are their own rewards.
—George Farquhar (1677–1707) Irish Dramatist
Small crimes always precede great ones. Never have we seen timid innocence pass suddenly to extreme licentiousness.
—Jean Racine (1639–1699) French Dramatist
He threatens many that hath injured one.
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English Dramatist, Poet, Actor
For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.
—Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist, Author
Many commit the same crime with a different destiny; one bears a cross as the price of his villainy, another wears a crown.
—Juvenal (c.60–c.136 CE) Roman Poet
Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions.
—Agatha Christie (1890–1976) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–66) British Novelist, Essayist, Biographer
One crime is everything; two nothing.
—Dorothee Luzy Dotinville (1747–1830) French Dancer, Actress
Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
In times of trouble leniency becomes crime.
—Common Proverb
All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost—the most legitimate—passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one.
—Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) French Political leader, Revolutionary, Novelist, Poet, Critic
Want of money and the distress of a thief can never be alleged as the cause of his thieving, for many honest people endure greater hardships with fortitude. We must therefore seek the cause elsewhere than in want of money, for that is the miser’s passion, not the thief s.
—William Blake (1757–1827) English Poet, Painter, Printmaker
Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and race. In the suburbs, though, it’s intimate and psychological—resistant to generalization, a mystery of the individual soul.
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b.1941) American Social Critic, Essayist
We cannot be sure that we ought not to regard the most criminal country as that which in some aspects possesses the highest civilization.
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British Sexologist, Physician, Social Reformer
The world of crime is a last refuge of the authentic, uncorrupted, spontaneous event.
—Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American Historian, Academic, Attorney, Writer
Crime generally punishes itself.
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
He that is robbed, not wanting what is stolen, him not know t, and he’s not robbed at all.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
How vainly shall we endeavor to repress crime by our barbarous punishment of the poorer class of criminals so long as children are reared in the brutalizing influences of poverty, so long as the bite of want drives men to crime.
—Henry George (1839–97) American Political Economist, Journalist
No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.
—Hannah Arendt (1906–75) German-American Philosopher, Political Theorist
Locks keep out only the honest.
—Yiddish Proverb