Quotes about cop (172 quotes, page 2) | Quotes of famous people

“Well, first—that term, 'women artists.' I was talking to Joan Mitchell at a party about 10 years ago when a man came up to us and said, 'What do you women artists think…' Joan grabbed my arm and said, 'Elaine, let's get the hell out of here.' That was my first response to Linda Nochlin's article ['Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?']. I was curious about how a man would react. Alex Katz thought it would be a cop-out to answer the piece. Sherman thought it would be a cop-out not to answer it. John Cage thought the question 'divisive and an over-simplification.”

Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989) American painter

I agree with all of them.
n.p.
1950 - 1971, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists' - Rosalyn Drexler with Elaine de Kooning (1971)

Women , Hell , Question , Thinking

“Everywhere, unthinking mobs of "independent thinkers" wield tired clichés like cudgels, pummeling those who dare question “enlightened” dogma. If “violence never solved anything,” cops wouldn’t have guns and slaves may never have been freed. If it’s better that 10 guilty men go free to spare one innocent, why not free 100 or 1,000,000? Clichés begin arguments, they don’t settle them.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.starbucks.com/retail/thewayiseeit_featuredauthor_goldberg.asp Starbucks "The Way I See It" #22]
2000s, 2005

Men , Question

“The dictionary definition of a Christian is one who follows Christ; kind, kindly, Christ-like. Anarchism is voluntary cooperation for good, with the right of secession. A Christian anarchist is therefore one who turns the other cheek, overturns the tables of the moneychangers, and does not need a cop to tell him how to behave. A Christian anarchist does not depend upon bullets or ballots to achieve his ideal; he achieves that ideal daily by the One-Man Revolution with which he faces a decadent, confused, and dying world.”

Ammon Hennacy (1893–1970) American Christian radical

"Christian Anarchism, a Definition"

World , Christ , Dependency

“Some of the [band's] work has a genuine feeling behind it. Some of it is probably just being funny for the sake of being funny. Obviously, there are elements to "Detachable [Penis]" about male identity that are there, but not really overtly there. For the person who wants to find it, it's there. I don't know. I don't think… I like to think I'm not obvious about the humor, and I'm not obvious about the feelings, either. There's a certain degree of subtlety to what I'm doing; even in very obvious things, there's something underneath that's interesting. I think [the band is] guilty of being clever at times, to the detriment of conveying something more important, more real, more honest. I'll cop to that. But I will also say that there's also stuff that does have meaning.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

Interview by Stephen Thompson, The A.V. Club, November 11, 1998 ( link http://www.avclub.com/content/node/23128)
Quotes from interviews

Feeling , Thinking , Time , Personality

“It was the town that made America famous.
The churches full and the kids all gone to hell.
Six traffic lights and seven cops and all the streets kept clean.
The supermarket and the drug store and the bars all doing well.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

What Made America Famous?
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

Hell , Light

“A well-deserved standing ovation from the Lord's faithful and what can you say about any Collingwood innings? Nuggety, earthy, gritty. All hail Ross Kemp - give that man his own cop show on ITV.”

Ben Dirs journalist

England vs West Indies, First Test, day two as it happened, 2006-18-05, BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/6668549.stm,

Faith

“It always bothers me to see people writing 'RIP' when a person dies. It just feels so insincere and like a cop-out. To me, 'RIP' is the microwave dinner of posthumous honors.”

Lou Reed (1942–2013) American musician

Attributed posthumously in social media, but actually a hoax originating from Twitter "Hoax Lou Reed quote fools Twitter (and most of the rest of the internet)", http://en4news.com/2013/10/28/hoax-lou-reed-quote-fools-twitter-and-most-of-the-rest-of-the-internet/ EN4 News, 28 October 2013
Misattributed

People , Feeling , Personality

“You can't be a rascal for 40 years and then cop a plea the last minute. God keeps better books than that.”

Wilson Mizner (1876–1933) American writer

On his deathbed.
Quoted by Stuart B. McIver, Dreamers, Schemers and Scalawags, Pineapple Press, Sarasota, Florida, 1994. ISBN 1-56164-034-4.
On Death and Dying

God , Books

“I have not told the police about it. Every member of the police department I have encountered during my stay in San Francisco has been nearly as surly and intractable as my rapist friend, because I look like a hippie. Each time I attempted to explain myself I was rebuffed or threatened.
From this experience I am tempted to draw an odd analogy: under stress, neither the policeman nor the rapist allows an opportunity for rational communication. Each one relies on violence to make to make his impression. This is not an accident, but, rather evidence of a widespread sickness. When will violence stop long enough for communication to begin? On second thought, perhaps I am doing the police department a grave disservice in not attempting to put them in contact with the rapist. Maybe, with just a little mind-bending, that rapist would make a damned good cop, and both could swagger together, true soul brothers, under the many-colored cloak of Fascism.”

Lisa Mason book Summer of Love

Source: Summer of Love (1994), Chapter 10 “Dedicated to the One I Love” (p. 230)

Color , Soul , Communication , Time

“So he imports this special breed of scorpions and feeds them on metal meal and the scorpions turned a phosphorescent blue color and sort of hummed. “Now we must find a worthy vessel,” he said. So we flush out this old goof ball artist and put the scorpion to him and he turned sort of blue and you could see he was fixed right to metal. These scorpions could travel on a radar beam and service the clients after Doc copped for the bread. It was a good thing while it lasted and the heat couldn’t touch us. However all these scorpion junkies began to glow in the dark and if they didn’t score on the hour metamorphosed into scorpions straight away. So there was a spot of bother and we had to move on disguised as young junkies on the way to Lexington. Bill and Johnny we sorted out the names but they keep changing like one day I would wake up as Bill the next day as Johnny. So there we are in the train compartment shivering junk sick our eyes watering and burning.”

William S. Burroughs book The Soft Machine

Source: The Soft Machine (1961), Chapter One: "Dead on Arrival"

Color , Way , Travel , Water

“When they dug the body out of the alley, it made even the hardened construction workers and emergency squad cops ill. Not one bone was left unbroken. The very flesh seemed to have been masticated as if by a nation of cannibal dogs. Even so, the three inured excavators who finally used winding sheets and shovels to bring the shapeless mess up from its five-foot grave agreed that it was incredible, totally past belief, that the head and face were untouched.
And they all agreed that the expression on the face was not one of happiness. There were many possible explanations for that expression, but no one would have said terror, for it was not terror. They would not have said helplessness, for it was not that, either. They might have settled on a pathetic sense of loss, had their sensibilities run that deep, but none of them would have felt that the expression said, with great finality: a man may truly live in his dreams, his noblest dreams, but only, only if he is worthy of those dreams.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

This last line has often been paraphrased: "You can live in your dreams, but only if you are worthy of them."
Delusion for a Dragon Slayer (1966)

Dogs , Dreams , Sense , Loss

“Don't worry, I don't underrate the cops. But cops can't break a guy's arm to make him talk, and they can't shove his teeth in with the muzzle of a.45 to remind him that you aren't fooling. I do my own leg work, and there are a lot of guys who will tell me what I want to know because they know what I'll do to them if they don't. My staff is strictly ex officio, but very practical.”

Mickey Spillane book I, the Jury

I, the Jury (1947)

Fools , Guy

“Dump the reds in a pile, boys
Dump the reds in a pile
You'd better wipe off that smile, boys
Better wipe off that smile
We'll spit through the streets of the cities we wreck
We'll find you a leader that you can't elect
Those treaties we signed were a pain in the neck
'Cause we're the cops of the world, boys
We're the cops of the world.”

Phil Ochs (1940–1976) American protest singer and songwriter

"Cops of the World" http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/lyrics/cops-of-the-world.html from Phil Ochs in Concert (1966)
Lyrics

Pain , World , Smile , Boy

“The hell with him, he thought bitterly. The hell with patriotism in general. In the specific and the abstract. Birds of a feather, soldiers and cops. Anti-intellectual and anti-Negro. Anti-everything except beer, dogs, cars and guns.”

Philip K. Dick book Eye in the Sky

Source: Eye in the Sky (1957), Chapter 2 (p. 15)

Dogs , Cars , Hell , Beer

“But racial bias isn’t epidemic in law enforcement any more than it is epidemic in academia or the arts. In fact, I believe law enforcement overwhelmingly attracts people who want to do good for a living—people who risk their lives because they want to help other people. They don’t sign up to be cops in New York or Chicago or L. A. to help white people or black people or Hispanic people or Asian people. They sign up because they want to help all people. And they do some of the hardest, most dangerous policing to protect people of color.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

People , Law , Art , Color

“You don't know what I'm all about / Like killing cops and reading Kerouac”

Blake Schwarzenbach (1967) American singer

"Boxcar"
24 Hour Revenge Therapy (1993)

Reading

“Producers like Organized Noize mix samples and live instruments really well, but for me, it almost feels like a cop-out, because I'm a collage artist. It's like, 'Damn, if only I could find this one part. Well, maybe if I just had somebody paint it, and then I'll put it out.' That almost feels like cheating. Lots of times, I have trouble finding bass lines, because it's not very often on a record that there are good open bass lines. Sometimes I wish I could just have somebody come in and do what I want him to do on a bass line. It would be so easy. But what I do just keeps things much more challenging, I guess.”

DJ Shadow (1972) American trip-hop musician

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_%28music%29
On Sampling

Feeling , Time , Parting , Painting

“You know who doesn't like that bit? Cops. They don't like it. They don't like it. And I think its important -- I'm being sincere. I think its important that we acknowledge, all of us, that there are plenty of good, decent, ethical, very brave cops, who put their lives on the line every day, and they don't appreciate being painted with this broad brush as being violent predators just because of the actions of a minority of their brothers. They don't like being stereotyped so that when you see blue, you just think "Oh, violent thug."”

David Cross (1964) American comedian, writer and actor

They don't appreciate it.
Making America Great Again

Thinking , Painting , Sincerity

“I was familiar with that and “Rio Bravo.” “Rio Bravo” was what John Carpenter did, that brilliant move of taking a western and turning it into an urban flick. And from there you got, you know, all the cop genre movies of the time.”

John Leguizamo (1964) Colombian and American actor, film producer, voice artist, and comedian

John Leguizamo Talks About "Assault on Precinct 13", January 16, 2005. http://movies.about.com/od/assaultonprecinct13/a/assaultjl011205.htm

Time

“Truck driver gets his truck stuck under an overpass, with Engvall watching.
Cop: You get your truck stuck?
Engvall: And God bless this trucker, without missing a beat, he goes: "Nope, I was deliverin' that overpass, I ran outta gas."”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Here's your sign.
Now That's Awesome (2000)
Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie (2003)
Here's Your Sign

God

“They [social workers] were always calling police stations telling them. 'There is a riot in the Northon street settlement. Send the riot squad right away.' A couple of cops would come down and joke with the boys [Native Whites], because they were good friends.”

William Foote Whyte book Street Corner Society

Source: Street Corner Society, 1943, p. 7

Boy

“We were the kids that made America famous.
The kind of kids that long since drove our parents to dispair.
We were lazy long hairs dropping out, lost confused, and copping out.
Convinced our futures were in doubt and trying not to care.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

What Made America Famous?
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

Parent , Future

“We would go out and ambush cops, but if we got caught we would blame it on them and claim innocence. I did that personally in the case I was involved in.… We went after the cops that night, but when we got caught we said they came after us. We always did that. When you talk about the legacy of the '60s, that's one legacy. That's what I try to address, because it helped to distort the image of the police, but I've come to the point where I realize that our police department is necessary.”

Eldridge Cleaver (1935–1998) American activist

Interview by Reason magazine (1986), referring to the death of Bobby Hutton
1980s

Help , Personality , Night

“But Richard had already gone the cop route and found it not nearly as productive as driving around with a sledgehammer and retaining the services of men with oxyacetylene torches.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 6
Reamde (2011), Part II: American Falls

Men

“Let's be clear: all professions look bad in the movies. And there's a good reason for this. Movies don't portray career paths, they conscript interesting lifestyles to serve a plot. So lawyers are all unscrupulous and doctors are all uncaring. Psychiatrists are all crazy, and politicians are all corrupt. All cops are psychopaths, and all businessmen are crooks. Even moviemakers come off badly: directors are megalomaniacs, actors are spoiled brats. Since all occupations are portrayed negatively, why expect scientists to be treated differently?”

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) American author, screenwriter, film producer

"Ritual Abuse, Hot Air, and Missed Opportunities: Science Views Media" http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote01.html - Speech to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Anaheim, California (25 January 1999)

“One time, I was watching a shootout live on CNN, and it went on for so long that the criminal eventually shot himself. And the cops are complaining by saying, "He's got on body armor, he's got on body armor!" And I'm thinking, "I can see his head! Shoot him in his fuckin' head!"”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

They Call Me Tater Salad

Thinking , Time

“And I'm not going to apologize for it, I'm just quoting Emanuel. It's in the news. I think the news is that he's out there calling Obama's number one supporters effing retards. So now there's going to be a meeting. There's going to be a retard summit at the White House, much like the beer summit between Obama and Gates and that cop in Cambridge.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

Rush Limbaugh: ‘There’s Going to Be a Retard Summit at the White House’
New York
2010-02-03
Chris
Rovzar
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/02/rush_limbaugh_theres_going_to.html

Quotes , Beer , Support , Thinking

“Good-bye to the game all the spoils, the adrenaline rush
Your blood boils, you in a spot knowin' cops could rush
you in the drop, you so easy to touch
No two days are alike, except the 1st and 15th pretty much
And trust, is a word you seldom hear from us
Hustlers, we don't sleep, we rest one eye up
And a drought could define a man when the well dries up
You learn the worth of water
Without work you thirst 'til you die, yup!”

Jay-Z (1969) American rapper, businessman, entrepreneur, record executive, songwriter, record producer and investor

December 4th
The Black Album (2003)

Game , Sleep , Learning , Water

“Okay, thees Hench no good, but poor guy, drunk, no job. Pay no rent, but I got lotsa money. So I say, Look, Hench, you make the confess. You sick man. Two three weeks sick. You go into court. I have a lawyer for you. You say to hell with the confess. I was drunk. The damn coppers are stuck. The judge he turn you loose and you come back to me and I take care of you. Okay? So Hench say okay, make the confess. That's all.'
I said: 'And after two or three weeks the bad brother is a long way from here and the trail is cold and the cops will likely just write the Phillips killing off as unsolved. Is that it?”

Raymond Chandler book The High Window

'Si.' He smiled again. A brilliant warm smile, like the kiss of death.
Source: The High Window (1942), chapter 24

Death , Money , Smile , Way

“I felt eyes upon me, and they pulled me away. I looked at the gathering of eager cops; some were merely curious, while others, I knew, sought their own secret satisfaction. They all wanted to see it, my face, a defense attorney's face, here in this musty place where murder was more than a case file, where the victim was flesh and blood, the smell that of family gone to dust.I felt their eyes. I knew what they wanted, and so I turned to look again upon the almost empty clothes, the flash of bone so pale and curving. But I would give them nothing, and my body did not betray me, for which I was grateful. For what I felt was the return of a long-quiescent rage, and the certain conviction that this was the most human my father had ever appeared to me.”

John Hart (1965) American author with multiple books and awards

Source: The King of Lies (2006), Ch. 1.

Secret , Family , Appearance , Rage

“I can fully appreciate the fury and anger that a person can feel when put through a humiliating experience by a cop, but I would recommend strongly that a person maintain his cool, and in no circumstances lose his temper. If you lose your temper, you are playing right into the cop's hands.”

William Powell (author) book The Anarchist Cookbook

"Postscript", p. 154.
The Anarchist Cookbook (1971)

Feeling , Personality , Anger

“Americans expect Seoul to play good cop to their bad cop. They assume the commonality of language, ethnicity and culture will help the South build trust with the North, so it can put the alliance’s demands over more persuasively. They also reckon the North Koreans will find it easier to yield to soft-spoken fellow Koreans than to the foreigners with whom they have been exchanging threats and insults for decades. But to play such a role the South must overcome an exceptionally high barrier of mistrust. It gets no brownie points for Koreanness alone. On the contrary; from the North’s standpoint it’s precisely that co-ethnicity which makes the puppet state’s long collusion with the Yankees so heinous.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Portrait of the Ally as an Intermediary (March 2018)

Help

“Suppose you wanted to kill people. You would need to know ahead of time how to do it. That part is not too difficult. There are many ways. Some of them are better than others. Most of them have drawbacks. So you use what knowledge you've got, and you invent a new way. You think, and you think, and you think, and you come up with the perfect method. You pay a lot of attention to the setup. Because the perfect method is not an easy method, and careful preparation is very important. But that stuff is meat and potatoes to you. You have no problem with careful preparation. No problem at all. How could you, with your intelligence? After all your training? You know the big problems will come afterward. How do you make sure you get away with it? You use your knowledge. You know more than most people about how the cops work. You've seen them on duty many times, sometimes close-up. You know what they look for. So you don't leave anything for them to find. You go through it all in your head, very precisely and very exactly and very carefully. Just as carefully as you would mark the play card you knew for sure was going to win you a fortune.”

Lee Child book Running Blind

Source: Running Blind (2000), Ch. 1.

People , Way , Intelligence , Knowledge

“Morgenbesser was leaving a subway station in New York City and put his pipe in his mouth as he was ascending the steps. A police officer told him that there was no smoking on the subway. Morgenbesser pointed out that he was leaving the subway, not entering it, and hadn't lit up yet anyway. The cop again said that smoking was not allowed in the subway, and Morgenbesser repeated his comment. The cop said, "If I let you do it, I'd have to let everyone do it." Morgenbesser replied, "Who do you think you are, Kant?" The word "Kant" was mistaken for a vulgar epithet and Morgenbesser had to explain the situation at the police station.”

Sidney Morgenbesser (1921–2004) American philosopher

"Kant", properly pronounced, sounds much like a vulgar "C-word" which is what he was mistaken for having said The Independent, The Independent, Professor Sidney Morgenbesser: Philosopher celebrated for his withering New York Jewish humour http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/professor-sidney-morgenbesser-550224.html, 6 August 2004. The Times, Sidney Morgenbesser: Erudite and influential American linguistic philosopher with the analytical acuity of Spinoza and the blunt wit of Groucho Marx https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sidney-morgenbesser-5cz8gg8qfvm, September 8, 2004.

Thinking

“The cops aren't exactly dumb, you know. We can get our own answers.
Not like I can. That's why you buzzed me so fast. You can figure things out as quickly as I can, but you haven't got the ways and means of doing the dirty work. That's where I come in. You'll be right behind me every inch of the way, but when the pinch comes I'll get shoved aside and you slap the cuffs on. That is, if you can shove me aside. I don't think you can.”

Mickey Spillane book I, the Jury

I, the Jury (1947)

Way , Thinking

“A cop won't pick you up for vagrancy in Los Angeles if you wear a fancy polo shirt and a pair of sunglasses. But if there is dust on your shoes and that sweater you wear is thick like the sweaters they wear in the snow countries, he'll grab you.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Angels , Shoe , Country

“Leiderman thought it was not enough that the government dropped charges. He wanted the criminal justice system to recognize Gonzalez’s innocence affirmatively. There is such a thing as a declaration of factual innocence, he explained to Gonzalez. A judge can grant it. It is exceedingly rare – so rare that many cops and lawyers go a career without seeing one. It means not just that prosecutors couldn’t make a case against you, but that you didn’t do the crime. The case remained on the docket of Ventura County Superior Court Judge Patricia Murphy, who had earlier ordered Gonzalez held without bail. Leiderman petitioned the judge, trying not to get his client’s hopes up. He laid out the case, pointing out the holes in West’s story and the numerous alibi witnesses. Prosecutors did not want Gonzalez declared innocent. They knew a jury wouldn’t convict him but said they couldn’t be positive of his innocence. [ ] Ventura County’s chief assistant district attorney, later explained their reasoning: The attack West described was “improbable, but it wasn’t physically impossible.””

Jay Leiderman (1971) lawyer

In January 2009, nearly a year after Gonzalez’s arrest, Leiderman called him excitedly: The judge had sided with them. Gonzalez was soon holding a certified copy of the judge’s order declaring him factually innocent.
As stated in, A Man Falsely Accused of Rape and Kidnap. http://jayleiderman.com/blog/jay-leiderman-quoted-part-5/

Justice , Hope

“The real damage from terrorist attacks doesn't come from the explosion. The real damage is done after the explosion, by the victims, who repeatedly and determinedly attack themselves, giving over reason in favor of terror. Every London cop who stops someone from taking a picture of a public building, every TSA agent who takes away your kid's toothpaste, every NSA spook who wiretaps your email, does the terrorist's job for him. Terrorism is about magnifying one mediagenic act of violence into one hundred billion acts of terrorized authoritarian idiocy.”

Cory Doctorow (1971) Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author

"BBC photographer prevented from shooting St Paul's because he might be 'al Qaeda operative'" BoingBoing (30 November 2009) http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/30/bbc-photographer-pre.html

“There's a lot of dealings with police officers right now. I don’t think all cops are bad. You know, I think there’s some great cops out there, who do everything in their power to uphold the badge and uphold the honor and protect the people in society. But there are bad cops, and I think that also needs to be addressed. I think the police officers we have right now, you know, some of it is being brought to light, because of video cameras, everybody has a camera phone. But these are things a lot of us have dealt with our whole lives. And I think right now is a perfect time to deal with it. The climate we're in, everybody's being more accepting, you know, so I think the ignorance should stop. I think people realize that, at the end of the day, we're all human beings. So, you know, before we're black, white, Asian, Polynesian, Latino. We're humans. So, it's up to us to stop it.”

Richard Sherman (American football) (1988) American football player

Press conference (16 September 2015), as quoted in "Video: Richard Sherman speaks passionately on Black Lives Matter" https://web.archive.org/web/20150917000340/http://www.seattletimes.com/sports/seahawks/video-richard-sherman-speaks-passionately-on-black-lives-matter/ (16 September 2015), by Bob Condotta, The Seattle Times, Seattle, Washington.
Press conference (16 September 2015)

People , Thinking , Light , Time

“They found me in the gutter. The night was the only thing I had left and not much of it at that. I heard the car stop, the doors open and shut and two voices talking. A pair of arms jerked me to my feet and held me there.
"Drunk," the cop said.
The other one turned me around into the light. "He don't smell bad. That cut on his head didn't come from a fall either."
"Mugged?"
"Maybe."
I didn't give a damn which way they called it. They were both wrong anyhow. Two hours ago I was drunk. Not now. Two hours ago I was a roaring lion. Then the bottle sailed across the room. No lion left now.
Now was a time when I wasn't anything. Nothing was left inside except the feeling a ship must have when it's torpedoed, sinks and hits bottom.”

Mickey Spillane book The Girl Hunters

The Girl Hunters (1962)

Cars , Jerk , Way , Feeling

“We should just make it a little bit more difficult for people with known violent tendencies to be able to get a gun. And I'm not talking about the cops. No. Not talking about the cops. I'm saying, let's make it a little bit more difficult for mentally unstable people with known violent tendencies to be able to get a gun. And again, I'm not talking about the cops. If you can go on their Facebook page and see that this guy is a virulent racist, right? Make it a little more difficult for virulent racists, who are mentally unstable with known violent tendencies to be able to get-- And again, I'm not talking about the cops.”

David Cross (1964) American comedian, writer and actor

Making America Great Again

People , Guy

“A lot of people seem to believe in a big-daddy-God or a big-cop-God or a big-king-God. They believe in a kind of superperson. A few believe God is another word for nature. And nature turns out to mean just about anything they happen not to understand or feel in control of.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), Chapter 2 (p. 15)

God , People , Feeling , Understanding

“The cop climbed out of his car exactly four minutes before he got shot. He moved like he knew his fate in advance.”

Lee Child book Persuader

Persuader, Ch. 1 (2003).

Fate , Cars

“Mom! It's the cops! I'm gonna get nicked, I'm gonna get nicked!”

Jack Osbourne (1985) Son of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne

The Osbournes television show.

Moms

“The comics medium is a very specialized area of the Arts, home to many rare and talented blooms and flowering imaginations and it breaks my heart to see so many of our best and brightest bowing down to the same market pressures which drive lowest-common-denominator blockbuster movies and television cop shows. Let's see if we can call time on this trend by demanding and creating big, wild comics which stretch our imaginations. Let's make living breathing, sprawling adventures filled with mind-blowing images of things unseen on Earth. Let's make artefacts that are not faux-games or movies but something other, something so rare and strange it might as well be a window into another universe because that's what it is.”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

2004
https://web.archive.org/web/20040803000924/http://www.popimage.com/content/grant20041.html Popimage interview
On comics

Art , Home , Imagination , Game

“So many young men of color become part of that officer’s life experience because so many minority families and communities are struggling, so many boys and young men grow up in environments lacking role models, adequate education, and decent employment—they lack all sorts of opportunities that most of us take for granted. A tragedy of American life—one that most citizens are able to drive around because it doesn’t touch them—is that young people in “those neighborhoods” too often inherit a legacy of crime and prison. And with that inheritance, they become part of a police officer’s life, and shape the way that officer—whether white or black—sees the world. Changing that legacy is a challenge so enormous and so complicated that it is, unfortunately, easier to talk only about the cops. And that’s not fair.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Life , Men , People , World

“Finally, law enforcement needs to increase the consequences for kids found intoxicated or in possession of drugs. The current slap on the wrist leaves kids with the idea "Cops are cool. When they take our drugs they are going to use them to get high. They are really helping us avoid the silly law.”

Virgil Miller Newton (1938) American priest

Miller Newton (1983). The Teenage Drug Epidemic, El Paso Physician, vol 6, pp. 5-6.
On Teenage Drug Use

Law , Idea , Help

“THE COP GROWLS "TAKE OFF TH OSE JEANS, CITIZEN." I COMPLY, REVEALING THE FULL LENGTH DENIM TATTOOS ON BOTH LEGS. THE COP SCREAMS; DEFEATED”

Dril Twitter user

Tweets by year, 2012

Tattoo

“Perhaps this sort of claptrap was good for the Stone Age, when people actually believed that if they prayed for rain they would get it. But we're a grown-up world now, and it's time to put away childish things. But people don't, because most of them don't even know what atheism is. It's not a negation of anything. You don't have to negate what no one can prove exists. No, atheism is a very positive affirmation of man's ability to think for himself, to do for himself, to find answers to his own problems. I'm thrilled to feel that I can rely on myself totally and absolutely; that my children are being brought up so that when they meet a problem they can't cop out by foisting it off on God. Madalyn Murray's going to solve her own problems, and nobody's going to intervene. It's about time the world got up off its knees and looked at itself in the mirror and said: "Well, we are men. Let's start acting like it."”

Madalyn Murray O'Hair (1919–1995) Atheist activist

"Playboy Interview: Madalyn Murray", Playboy (October 1965)

Men , God , Children , People

“I give up. Game over. The blame game is not over. Try as I may to get this administration to move on and claim ownership for this economy it's still, still blaming the prior administration for this economy. More than a year in still copping out. The mess we inherited, the bailouts we had to figure out, the banks that went bust, not on our watch but their watch, blah, blah, blah.”

Neil Cavuto (1958) American television presenter

"Cavuto is tired of hearing about inherited recession, bank foreclosures and bailouts, 'blah blah blah'" http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201002030047, mediamatters.org, (February 3, 2010).

Game

“A note to our enemies. You think you know America, but you only see the tiny, inept, incompetent, cowering political tip of a very big, very capable iceberg. You don't know the Heartland where the people are fiercely independent and willing to defend this nation with their bare hands if that's what it takes. You don't know the steel workers in Pittsburgh with muscles that could break a man's neck like a twig. You don't know the swamp folks in Cajun country that can wrestle a full-grown alligator out of the water. You don't know the mountain folks in Appalachia who can knock a squirrel's eye out from a hundred yards away with a small caliber rifle. You don't know the farmers, the cowboys, the loggers and the seagoing folks. You don't know the truck drivers, the carpenters, the mountain men who live off the land, the hard rock miners or the small town cops who keep the peace in the rowdy border towns. No, you don't know America.”

Charlie Daniels (1936) American singer and musician

2010s, 2016, Letter to America's Enemies (2016)

Men , People , Peace , Mountain

“I don't think we're politically correct when we're private. I don't know what politically correct means. I'm just watching this thing going down in Baltimore, all the officers charged in the Freddie Gray death and I just think it's wonderful and sad at the time because this has been happening since the beginning of time in America and if it wasn't for cell phones these cops would be getting off.”

Brad Garrett (1960) actor, comedian, voice actor

Interviewed by Nicki Gostin, " 'Everybody Loves Raymond' star Brad Garrett talks costars, religion and politics http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2015/05/05/everybody-loves-raymond-star-brad-garrett-talks-costars-religion-and-politics/," (5 May 2015).

Death , Sadness , Thinking , Time

“The streets of every city in America are filled with men who would pay all the money they could lay their hands on to be transformed, even for a day, into hairy, hard-fisted brutes who walk all over cops, extort drinks from terrified bartenders and roar out of town on big motorcycles after raping the banker's daughter.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1960s, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1966)

Men , Money , Drink , Daughters

“I never saw any of them again — except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them.”

Raymond Chandler book The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye (1954)

Way

“I could issue manifestos summoning seraphim to revolt against the Haavenly State we're in, or trumpets to summon American mankind to rebellion against the Authority which has frozen all skulls in the cold war, That is, I could, make sense, invoke politics and try organize a union of opinion about what to do to Cuba, China, Russia, Bolivia, New Jersey, etc. However since in America the folks are convinced their heaven is all right, those manifestos make no dent except in giving authority & courage to the small band of hipsters who are disaffected like gentle socialists. Meanwhile the masses the proletariat the people are smug and the source of the great Wrong. So the means then is to communicate to the grand majority- and say I or anybody did write a balanced documented account not only of the lives of America but the basic theoretical split from the human body as Reich has done- But the people are so entrenched in their present livelihood that all the facts in the world-such as that China will be 1/4 of world pop makes no impression at all as a national political fact that intelligent people can take counsel on and deal with humorously & with magnificence. So that my task as a politician is to dynamite the emotional rockbed of inertia and spiritual deadness that hangs over the cities and makes everybody unconsciously afraid of the cops- To enter the Soul on a personal level and shake the emotion with the Image of some giant reality-of any kind however irrelevant to transient political issue- to touch & wake the soul again- That soul which is asleep or hidden in armor or unable to manifest itself as free life of God on earth- To remind by chord of deep groan of the Unknown to most Soul- then further politics will take place when people seize power over their universe and end the long dependence on an external authority or rhetorical set sociable emotions-so fixed they don't admit basic personal life changes-like not being afraid of jails and penury, while wandering thru gardens in high civilization.”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Gordon Ball (1977), Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties, Grove Press NY
Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties

Life , God , War , People

“You see a kid eating an ice cream cone and you notice there's no cop around and you can take the ice cream cone from him because you're bigger and walk away. You can do that. Probably there are people who do. We call them "pathological." On the other hand, if they do it within existing social structures we call them "normal." But it's just as pathological. It's just the pathology of the general society.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994
Context: Of course it's extremely easy to say, the heck with it. I'm just going to adapt myself to the structures of power and authority and do the best I can within them. Sure, you can do that. But that's not acting like a decent person. You can walk down the street and be hungry. You see a kid eating an ice cream cone and you notice there's no cop around and you can take the ice cream cone from him because you're bigger and walk away. You can do that. Probably there are people who do. We call them "pathological." On the other hand, if they do it within existing social structures we call them "normal." But it's just as pathological. It's just the pathology of the general society.

Interview with Michael Albert, January 1993 http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/interviews/9301-albchomsky-2.html.

People

“I am an anarchist in my personal life. I try to live my life in a way that I don't need cops or baby-sitters to keep me from infringing on others. But I don't feel we have evolved far enough as a species to make anarchy work in society itself.”

Jello Biafra (1958) singer and activist

Address to the US Green Party
Context: I am an anarchist in my personal life. I try to live my life in a way that I don't need cops or baby-sitters to keep me from infringing on others. But I don't feel we have evolved far enough as a species to make anarchy work in society itself. We still need government to transfer the wealth from those who have too much to those who have too little, to make sure important projects get done, and keep territorial humans from screwing over and killing each other.

Life , Way , Feeling , Baby

“No sane person with a life really wants to be a political activist. When activism is exciting, it tends to involve the risk of bodily harm or incarceration, and when it's safe, it is often tedious, dry, and boring. Activism tends to put one into contact with extremely unpleasant people, whether they are media interviewers, riot cops, or at times, your fellow activists.”

Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan

Toward an Activist Spirituality (2003)
Context: No sane person with a life really wants to be a political activist. When activism is exciting, it tends to involve the risk of bodily harm or incarceration, and when it's safe, it is often tedious, dry, and boring. Activism tends to put one into contact with extremely unpleasant people, whether they are media interviewers, riot cops, or at times, your fellow activists. Not only that, it generates enormous feelings of frustration and rage, makes your throat sore from shouting, and hurts your feet.
Nonetheless, at this moment in history, we are called to act as if we truly believe that the Earth is a living, conscious being that we're part of, that human beings are interconnected and precious, and that liberty and justice for all is a desirable thing.

Life , People , Time , Personality

“It’s the first principle, isn’t it? Whoever’s arguing fiercest for violence is the cop.”

China Miéville (1972) English writer

’Tis the Season (p. 195)
Short Fiction, Looking for Jake (2005)

“The problems with framing it in terms of race is not that it is inaccurate, it absolutely is effective…but the minute you raise race, you derail the conversation and it becomes possible to dismiss this whole story as a story about a racist cop. Now he may be a racist cop, but that is not the issue, the issue is that the system with the best intentions set him up in a certain way.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

On the Sandra Bland case in “Malcolm Gladwell: ‘I’m just trying to get people to take psychology seriously’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/01/malcolm-gladwell-interview-talking-to-strangers-apolitical in The Guardian (2019 Sep 1)

Way , Problem

“This is my life, I thought, these are the people among whom I have spent it, prostitutes, tattooed boys with dead eyes, and horny cops.”

Michael Nava (1954) American writer

Source: Henry Rios series of novels, Rag and Bone (2001), p.153

Dead , People , Boy , Tattoo

“You want me to stipulate that the cops violated her constitutional rights?”

Michael Nava (1954) American writer

"This is the LAPD we're talking about, Kim. It would be shocking if they hadn't violated her rights."
Source: Henry Rios series of novels, Rag and Bone (2001), p.225

“If we make any kind of decent, useful life for ourselves we have less need to run from it to those diminishing pleasures of the movies. When we go to the movies we want something good, something sustained, we don’t want to settle for just a bit of something, because we have other things to do. If life at home is more interesting, why go to the movies? And the theatres frequented by true moviegoers — those perennial displaced persons in each city, the loners and the losers — depress us. Listening to them — and they are often more audible than the sound track — as they cheer the cons and jeer the cops, we may still share their disaffection, but it’s not enough to keep us interested in cops and robbers. A little nose-thumbing isn’t enough. If we’ve grown up at the movies we know that good work is continuous not with the academic, respectable tradition but with the glimpses of something good in trash, but we want the subversive gesture carried to the domain of discovery. Trash has given us an appetite for art.”

Pauline Kael book Going Steady

Going Steady (1969), Trash, Art and the Movies (February 1969)

Home , Personality , Art , Pleasure

“When I was a kid, my mother told me about the time my sister got lost at the circus in New York in Madison Square Garden. ... She said out of the throng of people, suddenly after looking for a long time, she said a cop just appeared and he was holding my sister's hand — she was a little girl. My mother never forgot that picture in her mind. We never see those stories about each other. And I think the writer who wants us to have a better life must take on the responsibility of showing us those kinds of stories.”

James McBride (writer) (1957) American journalist

On writing stories that are considered unseen in "James McBride's Advice For New Writers: 'A Simple Story Is The Best Story'" https://www.npr.org/2020/02/29/810052791/james-mcbrides-advice-for-new-writers-a-simple-story-is-the-best-story in NPR (2020 Feb 29)

Time , Girl , People , Thinking

““Violence” was a euphemism for a threat to the ruling order and its illusion of social peace, with which the class struggle, the brutality of patriarchy, and the murderousness of colonialism are hidden. The newspapers did not talk about violence when cops killed strikers, when landlords evicted families, or when poor people died of hunger. They talked about violence when workers went on strike, when tenants stopped paying rent, when street vendors refused to surrender their wares to the cops.”

Peter Gelderloos (1982) American anarchist

Source: "The Failure of Nonviolence" (2013) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-the-failure-of-nonviolence, Chapter 1. Violence Doesn't Exist

Hunger , Peace , People , Family

“I went to an acting school while I was a cop still…The moment I was involved in that world, it electrified me and I realized that it was something that I wanted to do”

David Zayas (1962) Puerto Rican actor

On attending acting school while serving as a police officer in “‘For 'Dexter' Star David Zayas, Acting Was A Long Shot Away” https://www.npr.org/2015/03/29/395982990/for-dexter-star-david-zayas-acting-was-a-long-shot-away in NPR (2015 Mar 29)

World , School

“I think even if I did try to write something that had nothing to do with women or race, which are two pretty broad topics, I don’t know how I would do that. I don’t think there’s a way that I could write a buddy cop drama, or something really far from anything I’ve written, that didn’t have pieces of race and gender. Those are parts of the world we live in, and they are things I think about. It all comes into the voice of your writing, and you can’t write about someone else’s voice. You can only write in your own.”

Celeste Ng (1980) American novelist

On why she revisits certain themes in “AN INTERVIEW WITH CELESTE NG, THE 2018 INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE DAY AMBASSADOR” https://bookriot.com/2018/04/27/celeste-ng-interview/ in BookRiot (2018 Apr 27)

Women , Thinking , Way , World

“We've all grown up with the idea that gunning a man down is just fun and games. All of us, as kids, played cops and robbers, with toy pistols or pointing a finger at somebody and saying, "Bang, Bang. You're dead!"”

Sam Peckinpah (1925–1984) American film director and screenwriter

Both the movies and television have perpetuated the idea that shooting a man is clean and quick and simple, and when he falls down there is only a small hole, or a blood-stain, to show how he died. Well, killing a man isn't clean and quick and simple. It's bloody and awful. And maybe if enough people come to realize that shooting somebody isn't just fun and games maybe we'll get somewhere about violence on the screen in the first place. [...] No, I don't like violence. In fact, when I look at the film myself, I find it unbearable. I don't think I'll be able to see it again for five years.
Responding, circa July 1969, to the question, "Why did you make this film?", posed by a film critic for Reader's Digest; as quoted in "Looking Sideways: Photographic Violence Won't Stop Violence" https://www.newspapers.com/image/?clipping_id=78219633 by Whitney Bolton, Fort-Myers News-Press (July 23, 1969), p. 4

Idea , Game , Dead