Source: The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976), Chapter 5, Unstable America, p. 189
“It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.”
1960s, The Role of the Behavioral Scientist in the Civil Rights Movement (1967)
Context: A profound judgment of today's riots was expressed by Victor Hugo a century ago. He said, 'If a soul is left in the darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.' / The policymakers of the white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by law in the ghettos.
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Martin Luther King, Jr. 658
American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Ci… 1929–1968Related quotes
Lee De Forest
(1873–1961) American inventor
Interviewed by Frank Parker Stockbridge, "The Man Who Made Radio Talk" http://books.google.com/books?id=bCoDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA32, Popular Science Monthly, May 1929
“A king is sometimes obliged to commit crimes; but they are the crimes of his position.”
Napoleon I of France
(1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French
Political Aphorisms, Moral and Philosophical Thoughts (1848)
“To have committed every crime but that of being a father.”
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born
“For man's greatest crime is to have been born.”
Pues el delito mayor
Del hombre es haber nacido.
Segismundo, Act I, Scene II.
La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream)
Variant: Since man's greatest crime on earth
Is the fatal fact of birth.
(trans. Denis MacCarthy)
“Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem.”
Source: Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Toll the Hounds (2008)
Context: When undeniable crime had been committed, justification was the act of a coward. And it was cowardice that permitted such crimes in the first place. No tyrant could thrive where every subject said no. The tyrant thrives when the first fucking fool salutes.
“For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.”
Noam Chomsky
(1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist
Source: Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World
“A crime is something someone else commits.”
Source: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part Two, Chapter XX
“You have to remember that it is impossible to commit a crime while reading a book.”
John Waters
(1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer