“Me?! What? I don’t know, unless I must go to the dictionary and learn what a crook is. I’ve never been a crook. … I'm saying I'm not a crook, I have never been a crook. I will never be a crook.”
In reply to the question 'Are you a crook?', from BBC Panorama http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/7243095.stm interviewer Fergal Keane, 11 February 2008
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Jacob Zuma11
4th President of South Africa 1942Related quotes
Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America
I've earned everything I've got. <br class="br">Televised press conference with 400 Associated Press Managing Editors at Walt Disney World, Florida. (17 November 1973) <br class="br">Often transcribed as "I am not a crook." <br class="br"> 'I Am Not A Crook': How A Phrase Got A Life Of Its Own http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=245830047, on National Public Radio <br class="br">1970s
“I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.”
John Green book Looking for Alaska
Miles "Pudge" Halter, p. 218
Looking for Alaska (2005)
“The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
“Crooked spin can't come to rest,I'm damaged bad at best.”
Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter
Say Yes.
Lyrics, Either/Or (1997)
John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs
Part I, chapter 11.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“No man can get rich in politics unless he's a crook.”
Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)
Variant: Similarly on pg. 136: "About this getting rich in politics. Like I said, you just can't do it unless you're a crook." And earlier: "An honest public servant can't become rich in politics." - Truman's diary, 24 April 1954.
Source: Harry S Truman, quoted in Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S Truman by Merle Miller, 1973-1974 SBN 425-02664-7 LOC 73-87198, Berkeley Medallion Edition, October, 1974, Chapter 10. "The Only Defeat − and Then Victory", pg. 134.
Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity
Book II, Chapter 1, "The Rival Conceptions of God"
Mere Christianity (1952)
Context: My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?