Variant: Behind every successful fortune there is a crime.
Source: The Godfather
“Behind every work of art lies an uncommitted crime”
Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu'il a été proprement fait.
Part II
A variant, "Behind every great fortune there is a great crime," has appeared as a quotation of Balzac; but it may have originated in a paraphrase in The Oil Barons: Men of Greed and Grandeur (1971) by Richard O'Connor, p. 47: "Balzac maintained that behind every great fortune there is a great crime." It also appears at the beginning of the novel "The Godfather," published two years earlier.
Le Père Goriot (1835)
“Behind every great man is a pickpocket.”
Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)
“As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.”
“Behind every great man is not a woman, she is beside him, she is with him, not behind him”
“It is said that behind every great man lies a great woman. This is because women lie.”
Attention Scum! (2001), Episode Two
“So that every Crime is a sinne; but not every sinne a Crime.”
The Second Part, Chapter 27, p. 151
Leviathan (1651)
Book 2, Ch. 13
Discourses on Livy (1517)
“A great fortune is a great slavery.”
Magna servitus est magna fortuna. / Magna servitus est magna servitus
From Ad Polybium De Consolatione (Of Consolation, To Polybius), chap. VI, line 5
Other works
Part III, p. 108.
The Autobiography (1818)
