Quotes about crime
page 10

“You all should feel angry tonight, very angry, because yet again the legal system in this country has let you down. A court has ruled that a man who committed a ghastly crime against a little girl should walk free and unsupervised. The details are distasteful, but you should know. Hans Lester Watt abducted and raped a three-year-old girl. The 42-year-old was drunk when he took the toddler, and assulted her so badly, she needed medical attention. He said it was revenge, to get back at the innocent little girl's grandmother, whom he claimed had insulted his dead mother. Watt was jailed for 11 years. When due for release last year, the Queensland Attorney-General, understandably, applied to have him classified as a dangerous sexual offender. That meant his jail term could be extended, or at least he'd be released with a supervision order. Remember, this was a three-year-old girl. The court refused the request. The judge found the circumstances were "unique" — that Watt was not an unacceptable risk. Well, I agree it was unique — thank God the rape of a three-year-old doesn't happen often in this country. A psychiatrist said the chances of Watt re-offending were low if he did not drink alcohol, moderate if he did drink, and said the best chance of rehabilitation was if he lived in a dry Aboriginal community. The Attorney-General appealed the judge's decision. Well, yesterday, the Supreme Court turned him down, upheld the earlier ruling that let the child rapist walk free — unsupervised. My mantra for years has been "Who's looking after the children?" In my opinion, the Queensland Supreme Court certainly is not — this decision was a travesty.”

Derryn Hinch (1944) New Zealand–Australian media personality

Today Tonight, 24 April 2013.

God, Children, Alcohol, Feeling

“To kill someone for committing murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Idiot

The Idiot (1868–9)

“Guide the people by law, subdue them by punishment; they may shun crime, but will be void of shame. Guide them by example, subdue them by courtesy; they will learn shame, and come to be good.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Analects, Other chapters

People, Law, Learning

“The Holocaust was a horrific crime against humanity and frankly, I would never want to see that repeated, maybe the IRS is not quite as bad — yet. … They're headed in that direction.”

Paul LePage (1948) American businessman, Republican Party politician, and the 74th Governor of Maine

As quoted by Seven Days. http://7d.blogs.com/blurt/2012/07/maine-gov-paul-lepage-doubles-down-on-gestapo-comment-after-brock-fundraiser.html (July 12, 2012)

“The supreme crime of the church to-day is that everywhere and in all its operations and influences it is on the side of sloth of mind; that it banishes brains, it sanctifies stupidity, it canonizes incompetence.”

Upton Sinclair book The Profits of Religion

Book Two : The Church of Good Society, "The Canonization of Incompetence"
The Profits of Religion (1918)

Stupidity

“We're still in a state of shock … We have our "Dump Bush and Cheney" sign in the window, which Lawrence [Ferlinghetti] painted himself. We're looking forward to impeachment or perhaps, indictments for war crimes.”

Nancy Peters (1936) American writer and publisher

"Angry, resigned and motivated -- artists reflect on next four years", http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/09/DDG2R9N52H1.DTL San Francisco Chronicle, 2004-11-09. 2000s

War, Painting

“As you know, very recently the secretary of state proclaimed his loyalty to a man guilty of what has always been considered as the most abominable of all crimes — of being a traitor to the people who gave him a position of great trust. The secretary of state, in attempting to justify his continued devotion to the man who sold out the Christian world to the atheistic world, referred to Christ's Sermon on the Mount as a justification and reason therefore, and the reaction of the American people to this would have made the heart of Abraham Lincoln happy. When this pompous diplomat in striped pants, with a phony British accent, proclaimed to the American people that Christ on the Mount endorsed communism, high treason, and betrayal of a sacred trust, the blasphemy was so great that it awakened the dormant indignation of the American people.
He has lighted the spark which is resulting in a moral uprising and will end only when the whole sorry mess of twisted warped thinkers are swept from the national scene so that we may have a new birth of national honesty and decency in government.”

Joseph McCarthy (1908–1957) Wisconsin politician

Speech in Wheeling, West Virginia (9 February 1950), as quoted at Civics Online http://www.civics-online.org/library/formatted/texts/mccarthy.html

Happiness, People, World, Communication

“Violent crime is a solved problem - all they have to do is repeal the laws that keep those intelligent, capable, and responsible men and women from arming themselves, and violent crime evaporates like dry ice on a hot summer day.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Merchants of Fear".

Women, Men, Law, Intelligence

“We believe that personal independence and equal human rights can never be forfeited, except for crime; that marriage should be an equal and permanent partnership, and so recognized by law; that until it is so recognized, married partners should provide against the radical injustice of present laws, by every means in their power…”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

Marriage protest (1855)

Marriage, Law, Personality, Partnership

“Blind counsels of the wicked! Crime cowardly ever!”
O caeca nocentum consilia! o semper timidum scelus!

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book II, Line 489

“…I have received your weighty letter…
According to whatever this recluse (meaning himself) has learnt (from the occult world), Ahmad Shah Abdali will come again for putting down the enemies. When this sacred promise is fulfilled, he will most probably stay here, and dedicate his life to the last to (the welfare of) this land. In spite of the crimes that abound and the evils that have multiplied, the work is proceeding according to plan. The reason for this most probably is that Allah wants to destroy the power of his enemies.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

To Shykh Muhammad Ashiq Translated from the Urdu version of K.A. Nizami, Shãh Walîullah Dehlvî ke Siyãsî Maktûbãt, Second Edition, Delhi, 1969, pp. 116-17.
From his letters

Life, World, Evil

““I feel no moral compunction in the slightest at my so-called crime. If a man cannot retain control of his own body, then he deserves to lose it. I have observed, during a long and varied lifetime, that men will give their bodies to any rogue who asks, and will enslave their minds to the first voice that commands them to obey. This is why the vast majority of men cannot keep even their natural birthright of a mind and body, but choose instead to rid themselves of those embarrassing emblems of freedom.”
“That,” Detective Urdorf said, “is the classic apologia of the criminal.”
“That which you call a crime when one man does it,” Kraggash said, “you call government when many men do it. Personally, I fail to see the distinction; and failing to see it, I refuse to live by it.””

Robert Sheckley book Mindswap

Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 30 (pp. 141-142)

Men, Feeling, Nature, Freedom

“When we start fighting crime by any means necessary we become guilty of the same hypocrisy as law enforcement agencies throughout history that break the rules to get the villains, and so become villains themselves.”

Barrett Brown (1981) American journalist, essayist and satirist

The Guardian, "Barrett Brown statement: 'This is not the rule of law, it is the rule of law enforcement'" http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/22/barrett-brown-hacking-sentencing-full-statement-text, 22 January 2015.

Law, History, Fight

“Success makes some crimes honorable.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 326
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

Success

“Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square —
But when a crime's discovered, then Macavity's not there!”

T.S. Eliot book Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

Macavity: The Mystery Cat
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)

“The Indians and Pakistanis exchange insults and beat their chests in order to inflame a 60 year old rivalry, and claim that their respective countries can offer the people they have occupied—and make no mistake, it is an occupation, and an illegal one to boot—a better future than their enemy can. But far from wanting to offer, and indeed being able to offer the Kashmiri people economic security, all that they are supplying the ordinary people of Kashmir are untold war crimes and misery. It is a sickening example of murderous aggression against a whole peoples for the sake of pride, and one that was being largely overlooked by the world until the spectre of nuclear holocaust came over the continent.”

Munir Butt (1940–2015) British diplomat

Source: Speech to the American-Kashmiri Alliance, New York, 2002.[citation needed]

War, People, World, Future

“I feel, as time goes on, not that the war has produced fewer evils than I feared at the time, for the conviction grows on me that the evils are unmeasured. As year succeeds year we shall more and more see how great was the calamity, how inexplicable the crime which brought that war on humanity. There was one bright side to it. The horrors of that war did at least persuade mankind that some great effort must be made to prevent its repetition. Those who with the facile scepticism or easy cynicism of the arm-chair deride the efforts—humble, imperfect, but honest which are being made all the world over to render the repetition of those horrors impossible must be careful that they do not make themselves shares in the great crime from which we have already so bitterly suffered.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Speech (1921), quoted in Blanche E. C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, First Earl of Balfour, K.G., O.M., F.R.S., Etc. 1906–1930 (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, 1936), p. 230.

War, World, Fear, Feeling

“I have received feedback from friends who have witnessed kidnappings or relatives of victims who have been subjected to abduction and have paid ransom for their releases. There’s a segment of the community who is already in panic and there must be a concrete action to abate these crimes and prevent the spread of alarm among the public. These are crimes that do not even hide under the cloak of darkness anymore. It is very disturbing. These are the reported ones, but I am sure there are more which have remained unreported by the victims and their families out of fear of retaliation from their aggressors. I ask the PNP to intensify its campaign against criminals and beef up security to protect the public. The people need to be assured that they can walk our streets to and from their homes.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2014, September 2). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10152689785300610/ 2014, Facebook

People, Fear, Family, Home

“Obviously, crime pays, or there'd be no crime.”

G. Gordon Liddy (1930) American lawyer in Watergate scandal

As quoted in "Does Crime Pay" in The Scandal Annual (1987) by the Paragon Project, p. 7

“Until we in the community have made up our minds that what we really want is expiation, or removal, or reform, or or the discouragement of potential criminals, we shall get none of these, but only a confusion in which crime breeds more crime.”

Norbert Wiener book The Human Use of Human Beings

VI. Law and Communication. p. 110
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)

Communication

“The logical axioms are the principle of all truth. These posit an existence towards which all cognition serves. Logic is a law which must be obeyed, and man realises himself only in so far as he is logical. He finds himself in cognition. All error must be felt to be crime. And so man must not err. He must find the truth.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 158.

Truth, Law, Error

“On the 9/11 hijackers: "Now, I'm an atheist. I really don't believe for a moment that our moral sense comes from a God. … It's human, universal, [it's] being able to think our way into the minds of others. As I said at the time, what those holy fools clearly lacked, or clearly were able to deny themselves, was the ability to enter into the minds of the people they were being so cruel to. Amongst their crimes, is, was, a failure of the imagination, of the moral imagination."”

Ian McEwan (1948) British author

From "Faith and Doubt At Ground Zero," Frontline, February, 2002 Source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/interviews/mcewan.html

God, People, Faith, Fools

“Reporter: How many people who labor in the same musical vineyard in which you toil - how many are protest singers? That is, people who use their music, and use the songs to protest the, uh, social state in which we live today: the matter of war, the matter of crime, or whatever it might be.
Bob Dylan: Um…how many?
Reporter: Yes. How many?
Bob Dylan: Uh, I think there's about, uh…136.
Reporter: You say about 136, or you mean exactly 136?
Bob Dylan: Uh, it's either 136 or 142.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Press conference in Los Angeles, California (17 December 1965), as seen and heard in No Direction Home.

War, People, Music, Thinking

“While it is much preferable to anarchy, government cannot abolish the evils of the human condition. At any time the state is only one of the forces that shape human behaviour, and its power is never absolute. At present, fundamentalist religion and organized crime, ethnic-national allegiances and market forces all have the ability to elude the control of government, sometimes to overthrow or capture it. States are at the mercy of events as much as any other human institution, and over the longer course of history all of them fail. As Spinoza recognized, there is no reason to think the cycle of order and anarchy will ever end. Secular thinkers find this view of human affairs dispiriting, and most have retreated to some version of the Christian view in which history is a narrative of redemption. The most common of these narratives are theories of progress, in which the growth of knowledge enables humanity to advance and improve its condition. Actually, humanity cannot advance or retreat, for humanity cannot act: there is no collective entity with intentions or purposes, only ephemeral struggling animals each with its own passions and illusions. The growth of scientific knowledge cannot alter this fact. Believers in progress – whether social democrats or neo-conservatives, Marxists, anarchists or technocratic Positivists – think of ethics and politics as being like science, with each step forward enabling further advances in future. Improvement in society is cumulative, they believe, so that the elimination of one evil can be followed by the removal of others in an open-ended process. But human affairs show no sign of being additive in this way: what is gained can always be lost, sometimes –as with the return of torture as an accepted technique in war and government – in the blink of an eye. Human knowledge tends to increase, but humans do not become any more civilized as a result. They remain prone to every kind of barbarism, and while the growth of knowledge allows them to improve their material conditions, it also increases the savagery of their conflicts.”

John Gray book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia

Post-Apocalypse: After Secularism (pp. 264-5)
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007)

War, Religion, Way, History

“These conditions are simply these: viz., first, that each man shall do, towards every other, all that justice requires him to do; as, for example, that he shall pay his debts, that he shall return borrowed or stolen property to its owner, and that he shall make reparation for any injury he may have done to the person or property of another.

The second condition is, that each man shall abstain from doing to another, anything which justice forbids him to do; as, for example, that he shall abstain from committing theft, robbery, arson, murder, or any other crime against the person or property of another.

So long as these conditions are fulfilled, men are at peace, and ought to remain at peace, with each other.”

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist

Section I, p. 5–6
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter I. The Science of Justice.

Men, Peace, Justice, Personality

“I think we are moving closer and closer to the surveillance state where phone calls are tapped, where emails are secured without a real basis. Seeking wiretaps on lawyers’ offices and search warrants and subpoenas for lawyers, email files, unless they have very serious evidence of very serious crimes. Campaign contributions don’t qualify for the kind of crime that should justify the wiretapping of a lawyer.”

Alan M. Dershowitz (1938) American lawyer, author

Interview over Michael Cohen, MSNBC, May 3, 2018, hosted by Steve Kornacki. http://dailycaller.com/2018/05/03/dershowitz-i-dont-want-to-live-in-police-state/

Search, Thinking

“John Howard turned the prime ministership into something like a state police minister. He's at the scene of every crime, twice a day on radio, the guy did no thinking.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

Referring to former Prime Minister of Australia John Howard, 7.30 Report, August 6, 2008. 7.30 Report Interview http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2008/s2326431.htm

Guy, Thinking

“In the same way crimes have increased laws, errors have increased explanations.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Law, Way, Error

“As Dr. Sigmund Freud has observed, it can not even be said that the State has ever shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime. … Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

Source: Our Enemy, the State (1935), p. 50

Way, History

“Relations between the United States and the Third Reich opened in 1939 on a distinctly sour and strident note. It began when Harold L. Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior, speaking to a Zionist Society dinner in Cleveland at the end of 1938, declared Hitler had taken Germany back to "a period when man was unlettered, benighted, and brutal." The November pogrom demonstrated Hitler counted "the day lost when he can commit no crime against humanity." Ickes attacked Ford and Lindbergh for accepting decorations from the "same hand" that was "robbing and torturing thousands of fellow human beiongs."”

Harold L. Ickes (1874–1952) American politician

Zionist Society Dinner Speech, Cleveland, OH (Dec. 1938) as quoted by Michael Zalampas, Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich in American Magazines, 1923-1939 (1989) p.171

“My problem here is quite simple. Those who have plundered the national coffers in billions get to stay in Sta. Rosa or any hospital much to their comfort. Those whose crimes pale so much in comparison with Napoles – the cell phone snatchers and the street snatchers – languish in cramped and dingy jails. It’s like teaching our children that if they must steal, steal big so at least you get to be jailed in the comfort of those special cells.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

The Philippine Star http://www.philstar.com:8080/headlines/2014/03/08/1298283/doj-open-napoles-transfer-ordinary-jail 2014

Children, Problem

“A very interesting report on the London property market as a refuge for secret assets and dirty money – published in March 2015 by Transparency UK – spoke of money coming from corruption or corrupt individuals, without ever mentioning the word “”; nor did it ever mention “organised crime”. The reason is simple: with the exception of a few very rare cases, in the UK the mafia is not something that you can see or hear. There aren’t dead bodies on the streets, or shootings. In Mexico or in Italy, between corpses, blood and drug seizures it’s impossible to think that the Mafia doesn’t exist. In Italy and in Mexico Mafia is loud and it smells of blood. In London, as in Paris, it exists, but it’s quiet, it acts in the dark. And most of all it doesn’t have the pungent smell of blood, but the reassuring smell of money. It’s not true that money doesn’t smell, it does smell indeed, but you definitely can’t rely on your sense of smell to identify criminal money.”

Roberto Saviano (1979) Italian journalist, writer and essayist

Dirty Money in London event (2016)

Money, Secret, Thinking, Sense

“Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness!
Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all
The wanton horrors of her bloody play;
Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless,
Shunning the light, and owning not its name,
Compelled by its deformity to screen
With flimsy veil of justice and of right
Its unattractive lineaments that scare
All save the brood of ignorance; at once
The cause and the effect of tyranny;
Unblushing, hardened, sensual and vile;
Dead to all love but of its abjectness;
With heart impassive by more noble powers
Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame;
Despising its own miserable being,
Which still it longs, yet fears, to disenthrall.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Queen Mab

Canto V
Queen Mab (1813)

Love, Pleasure, Fear, Religion

“The best part of Nintendo was the codes. We had codes that got us to the end of the game immediately. Why can’t we have that in real life? Just for once I’d like to be on a date with a chick and when she starts talking about her cats, and she’s like “And this cat likes corn, and this one has diarrhea, and this one can fight crime,” I can be like, “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, select start, and I’m in bed with her, and no more cats.””

Kyle Cease (1977) American actor

citation needed

Life, Game, Cats, Fight

“You talk like a fellow with some education, like someone who knows how to use his head. If you wanted to lead a decent and proper life, there are all sorts of things you could do. Why do you choose to steal?"
"Sir, I know this is a perilous occupation, and I am familiar with many a way to earn an honest bit of money. But the world wouldn't let me live in peace, so that's why I naturally turned to crime."
"What a strange way to talk!"
"That is so, sir, but it's true. I went to live with people, but they didn't take care of me. I learned to do things, and people gave me no chance to do them. Every family I met treated me badly. People weren't nice to me, so I became an enemy of the people. Now I force people to give me what I need in my life.”

Nguyễn Công Hoan (1903–1977)

Abandonment (1937), as quoted in Understanding Vietnam by Neil L. Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), ISBN 978-0520916586, pp. 158–159

Life, Money, People, World

“Bob: Adolph Hitler was never excommunicated as a Catholic for his crimes against the Jews. Instead, the Vatican considered him to be a hero.”

Jack T. Chick (1924–2016) Christian comics writer

Chick tracts, " Holocaust http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0054/0054_01.asp" (1984)

“My position on pornography is quite simple. You can argue about Penthouse or Playboy or things of that ilk. But child pornography, a picture of a child engaged in a sexual act, is a photograph of a crime and you cannot argue about that. It is, per se, illegal, illicit and immoral. It is unfortunate that my work is taken up by people with whom I am not allied.”

Andrew Vachss (1942) American writer and lawyer

1988 interview with Andrew Vachss, published in the January '89 issue of The Face

People

“Every transgression is a game, every grief easy to bear compared with having discovered beauty; it was at once the crime that could never be atoned and the hurt that could never be assuaged, the tear that could never be dried.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

Beauty, Game, Tear, Hurt

“The sudden start, the rapid step once more,
As if it would annihilate the time:
But who may paint the solitude of crime?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Title poem, section IX.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Solitude, Time, Painting

“To think yourself incapable of crime is one failure of the imagination. To think yourself capable of all crimes is another.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#122
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Imagination, Failure, Thinking

“There's this old line the wise folks in Washington have that "it's not the crime, but the cover-up."But only fools believe that. It's always about the crime. The whole point of the cover-up is that a full revelation of the underlying crime is not survivable.”

Josh Marshall Talking Points Memo

Talking Points Memo (2007-03-26) http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/013271.php

Fools

“Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit.”

Freda Adler (1934) Criminologist, educator

Source: Sisters in Crime: The Rise of the New Female Criminal (1975), P. 155.

“There is usually no ressentiment just where a superficial view would look for it first: in the criminal. The criminal is essentially an active type. Instead of repressing hatred, revenge, envy, and greed, he releases them in crime. Ressentiment is a basic impulse only in the crimes of spite. These are crimes which require only a minimum of action and risk and from which the criminal draws no advantage, since they are inspired by nothing but the desire to do harm. The arsonist is the purest type in point, provided that he is not motivated by the pathological urge of watching fire (a rare case) or by the wish to collect insurance. Criminals of this type strangely resemble each other. Usually they are quiet, taciturn, shy, quite settled and hostile to all alcoholic or other excesses. Their criminal act is nearly always a sudden outburst of impulses of revenge or envy which have been repressed for years. A typical cause would be the continual deflation of one's ego by the constant sight of the neighbor's rich and beautiful farm. Certain expressions of class ressentiment, which have lately been on the increase, also fall under this heading. I mention a crime committed near Berlin in 1912: in the darkness, the criminal stretched a wire between two trees across the road, so that the heads of passing automobilists would be shorn off. This is a typical case of ressentiment, for any car driver or passenger at all could be the victim, and there is no interested motive. Also in cases of slander and defamation of character, ressentiment often plays a major role...”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Hostility, Alcohol, Beauty, Cars

“The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

"The Moon and the Yew Tree"
Ariel (1965)

Sea, Despair

“Whatever open-border libertarians think about immigration law, once the immigration scofflaw steals, trespasses, or vandalizes private property, said alien is guilty of crimes. To say, moreover, that the state’s laws made masses of men and women commit such crimes is to voice the philosophy of determinism, not individualism.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“That Spot of Bother on the Border,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=90 WorldNetDaily.com, May 4, 2007. 2000s, 2007

Women, Men, Law, Thinking

“Money-crimes have an abstract quality. History is laden with the victims of gold, but their remains are odourless.”

Georges Bernanos book Les grands cimetières sous la lune

Source: Les grands cimetieres sous la lune (A Diary of My Times) 1938, p.35

Money, History

“Muslims demand what they call "respect". And this is how we give them respect. Our elites are willing to give in. To give up. In my own country we have gone from calls by one cabinet member to turn Muslim holidays into official state holidays, to statements by another cabinet member, that Islam is part of Dutch culture, to an affirmation by the Christian-Democratic attorney general that he is willing to accept sharia in the Netherlands if there is a Muslim majority. We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey. Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behaviour, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs. … I call the perpetrators "settlers."”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies, they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam. Therefore, they are settlers.
2000s, Speech at the Four Seasons, New York (25 September 2008)

Support, Holiday, Parting, Country

“I hate you, Jacob Black."
"That's good. Hate is a passionate emotion."
"I'll give you passionate," I muttered under my breath. "Murder, the ultimate crime of passion.”

Stephenie Meyer (1973) American author

Bella Swan and Jacob Black, p. 332
Twilight series, Eclipse (2007)

Hate, Passion

“As Justice Stevens explains, “ ‘objective evidence, though of great importance, [does] not wholly determine the controversy, for the Constitution contemplates that in the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment.’ ” (quoting Atkins v. Virginia). “I have relied on my own experience in reaching the conclusion that the imposition of the death penalty” Purer expression cannot be found of the principle of rule by judicial fiat. In the face of Justice Stevens’ experience, the experience of all others is, it appears, of little consequence. The experience of the state legislatures and the Congress—who retain the death penalty as a form of punishment—is dismissed as “the product of habit and inattention rather than an acceptable deliberative process.” The experience of social scientists whose studies indicate that the death penalty deters crime is relegated to a footnote. The experience of fellow citizens who support the death penalty is described, with only the most thinly veiled condemnation, as stemming from a “thirst for vengeance.””

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

It is Justice Stevens’ experience that reigns over all.
Baze v. Rees (2008) (concurring).
2000s

Death, Justice, Penalty, Quotes

“Yet all this is not ressentiment. These are only stages in the development of its sources. Revenge, envy, the impulse to detract, spite, *Schadenfreude*, and malice lead to ressentiment only if there occurs neither a moral self-conquest (such as genuine forgiveness in the case of revenge) nor an act or some other adequate expression of emotion (such as verbal abuse or shaking one's fist), and if this restraint is caused by a pronounced awareness of impotence. There will be no ressentiment if he who thirsts for revenge really acts and avenges himself, if he who is consumed by hatred harms his enemy, gives him “a piece of his mind,” or even merely vents his spleen in the presence of others. Nor will the envious fall under the dominion of ressentiment if he seeks to acquire the envied possession by means of work, barter, crime, or violence. Ressentiment can only arise if these emotions are particularly powerful and yet must be suppressed because they are coupled with the feeling that one is unable to act them out—either because of weakness, physical or mental, or because of fear. Through its very origin, ressentiment is therefore chiefly confined to those who serve and are dominated at the moment, who fruitlessly resent the sting of authority. When it occurs elsewhere, it is either due to psychological contagion—and the spiritual venom of ressentiment is extremely contagious—or to the violent suppression of an impulse which subsequently revolts by “embittering” and “poisoning” the personality. If an ill-treated servant can vent his spleen in the antechamber, he will remain free from the inner venom of ressentiment, but it will engulf him if he must hide his feelings and keep his negative and hostile emotions to himself.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Hostility, Fear, Feeling, Forgiveness

“Does a population have informed consent when a ruling minority acts in secret to ignite a war, doing this to justify the existence of the minority's forces? […] failure to provide full information for informed consent on such an issue represents an ultimate crime.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

"From The Trial of Trials", p. 246
The Bureau of Sabotage series, The Dosadi Experiment (1977)

War, Secret, Failure

“No matter how liberal I am, I'm still outraged by crimes of violence. Regardless of whether I can sympathize with the causes that lead these individuals to do these crimes, the effects are outrageous.”

Sonia Sotomayor (1954) U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Reported in Sheryl Gay Stolberg, " Woman in the News: Sotomayor, a Trailblazer and a Dreamer http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/us/politics/27websotomayor.html?pagewanted=all", The New York Times (26 May 2009).

“Actually, none of this is fine. None of it! Trump should be directing all resources at his disposal to punish Russia for the attacks and prevent future ones. But he is not. America’s commander wants to be chummy with the enemy who committed the crime. Trump is more concerned with protecting his presidency and validating his election than he is in protecting this country. This is an incredible, unprecedented moment. America is being betrayed by its own president. America is under attack and its president absolutely refuses to defend it. Simply put, Trump is a traitor and may well be treasonous.”

Charles M. Blow (1970) American journalist

Trump, Treasonous Traitor https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/15/opinion/trump-russia-investigation-putin.html (July 15, 2018), The New York Times. Quote

Future, Country

“Captain Smith reached Virginia on April 26, 1607, with a number of English gentlemen and some people who were willing to work. Then they all held a meeting to discuss ways and means of civilizing everybody. They made a great many speeches and accused each other of various crimes and misdemeanors and arrested some of themselves as an object lesson, and American history was started at last.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part VI: Now We're Getting Somewhere, Captain John Smith

People, Way, History

“As scientific men we have all, no doubt, felt that our fellow men have become more and more satisfying as fish have taken up their work which has been put often to base uses, which must lead to disaster. But what sin is to the moralist and crime to the jurist so to the scientific man is ignorance. On our plane knowledge and ignorance are the immemorial adversaries.
Scientific men can hardly escape the charge of ignorance with regard to the precise effect of the impact of modern science upon the mode of living of the people and upon their civilisation. For them, such a charge is worse than that of crime.”

Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) chemist and physicist from England

Frederick Soddy's speech at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm (10 December 1922) http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1921/soddy-speech.html

Men, People, Knowledge, Fish

“The International Islamic Front for Jihad against the U. S. and Israel has, by the grace of God, issued a crystal-clear fatwah calling on the Islamic nation to carry on jihad aimed at liberating holy sites. The nation of Muhammad has responded to this appeal. If the instigation for jihad against the Jews and the Americans in order to liberate al-Aksa Mosque and the Holy Ka'aba is considered a crime, then let history be a witness that I am a criminal. Our job is to instigate and, by the grace of God, we did that, and certain people responded to this instigation.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

In response to the interviewer stating: 'Are you responsible for the bomb attacks on the two American embassies in Africa?'
1990s, Time magazine interview (1998)

God, People, History

“The crime is how we deliberately keep out of touch,
Pretending it has nothing to do with us…

How familiar the metaphors, we think, suspecting our
House servants of having killed & eaten our pet cats!

At the University, expatriate lecturers gesticulate,
Finger the leaves of Marx to a batch of yawning students,
Nervously trying to define something or other…

Colonies of storks in flamboyant trees look down on
The valley dust and the last of the sweet bananas.”

Jack Mapanje (1944) Malawian poet

"When the Shire Valley Dries Up Patiently"
The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison (1993)

Cats, Thinking, Tree, Universe

“Our only "crime" is that in Bucharest we did not agree that a fraternal communist party like the Chinese Communist Party should be unjustly condemned; our only "crime" is that we had the courage to oppose openly, at an international communist meeting (and not in the marketplace) the unjust action of Comrade Khrushchev, our only "crime" is that we are a small Party of a small and poor country which, according to Comrade Khrushchev, should merely applaud and approve but express no opinion of its own. But this is neither Marxist nor acceptable. Marxism-Leninism has granted us the right to have our say and we will not give up this right for any one, neither on account of political and economic pressure nor on account of the threats and epithets that they might hurl at us. On this occasion we would like to ask Comrade Khrushchev why he did not make such a statement to us instead of to a representative of a third party. Or does Comrade Khrushchev think that the Party of Labor of Albania has no views of its own but has made common cause with the Communist Party of China in an unprincipled manner, and therefore, on matters pertaining to our Party, one can talk with the Chinese comrades? No, Comrade Khrushchev, you continue to blunder and hold very wrong opinions about our Party. The Party of Labor of Albania has its own views and will answer for them both to its own people as well as to the international communist and workers' movement.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Speeches, Moscow Address

People, Courage, Thinking, Country

“This is the writing of Nagiko Kiyohara no Motosuke Sei Shonagon, and I know you to have blackmailed, violated and humiliated my father. I suspect you also of ruining my husband. You have now committed the greatest crime -- you have desecrated the body of my lover. You and I now know that you have lived long enough.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From the thirteenth book, "The Book of the Dead"
The Pillow Book

Lovers

“All the several pleas and excuses, which protect the committer of a forbidden act from the punishment which is otherwise annexed thereto, may be reduced to this single consideration, the want or defect of will. An involuntary act, as it has no claim to merit, so neither can it induce any guilt: the concurrence of the will, when it has its choice either to do or to avoid the fact in question, being the only thing that renders human actions either praiseworthy or culpable. Indeed, to make a complete crime, cognizable by human laws, there must be both a will and an act.”

William Blackstone book Commentaries on the Laws of England

Book IV, ch. 2 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk4ch2.asp: Of the Persons Capable of Committing Crimes. Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769)

Law, Question

““To be born,” they say, “is a felony--it is a capital crime, for which sentence may be executed at any moment after the commission of the offence. You may perhaps happen to live for some seventy or eighty years, but what is that, compared with the eternity you now enjoy? And even though the sentence were commuted, and you were allowed to live on for ever, you would in time become so terribly weary of life that execution would be the greatest mercy to you.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 19

Life, Time

“Now that the provost has instructed me on the criminal speech laws he apparently believes I have a proclivity (to break), despite knowing nothing about my speech, I see that he is guilty of promoting hatred against an identifiable group: conservatives. The provost simply believes and is publicizing his belief that conservatives are more likely to commit hate crimes in their speeches. Not only does this promote hatred against conservatives, but it promotes violence against conservatives.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Response to a letter from University of Ottawa provost Francois Houle to use "restraint, respect and consideration" in her planned address there (21 March 2010), as quoted in "Coulter: Canadian U Provost Guilty of Hate Crimes" at Newsmax (23 March 2010) http://newsmax.com/InsideCover/coulter-canada-provost-hate/2010/03/23/id/353652. 2010

Hate, Law

“The head never rules the heart, but just becomes its partner in crime.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Heart

“Universal was like a family. When I was having a terrible time during my pregnancy, they came to my home and built sets right in my bedroom so I could finish the few scenes I had left in ‘That’s the Spirit’. But Columbia—that was work! I did a lot of crime pictures and another horror called ‘The Creeper’. When it was time for those cats to be all over my dead body, I yelled for a stand in. I couldn’t stand having dozens of cats walking all over me. It gave me the shivers!”

June Vincent (1920–2008) actress

An Interview with June Vincent (1996)

Family, Home, Cats, Universe

“The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.”

Honoré de Balzac book Le Pere Goriot

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)

Secret

“The story of crimes, war criminals, search for the missing people and justice, have become the meaning of Edvin's actions.”

Edvin Kanka Cudic (1988) Human rights defender

Irena Antić, as quoted in May '92 (2012) p.16
About

War, People, Justice, Search

“The blessed gods have no love for crime.
They honor justice, honor the decent acts of men.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XIV. 83–84 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

Love, Men, God, Justice

“By the same principle, the government may not give special leniency to the perpetrator of a crime, on the grounds of the nature of his ideas.”

Ayn Rand book The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution

Source: The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971), p. 99

Idea, Nature

“When the people of one country understand how the people in another country are duped, like themselves, in war-time, they will be more disposed to sympathize with them as victims than condemn them as criminal, because they will understand that their crime only consisted in obedience to the dictates of authority and acceptance of what their Government and Press represented to them as the truth.”

Arthur Ponsonby (1871–1946) British Liberal and later Labour politician and pacifist

Falsehood in Wartime (1928), Introduction

War, People, Truth, Understanding

“What we all know is that Ireland is permeated with spies, ordinary and extraordinary, imported Englishmen and perverted Irishmen, in and out of uniform, in low places and high places…. punishing first and foremost the great national crime of Republicanism, and in the second place real crimes artificially promoted by the regime––symptoms of a disease invariably arising from the forcible suppression of a national ideal.”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

The Daily News, 19 April 1920.
Literary Years and War (1900-1918), Last Years: Ireland (1919-1922)

Disease

“This Bill is not about crime committed within one group of people but involves many races living in Fiji. Therefore we can not apply one law onto another. We need to protect the whole population; the different faiths; cultures and traditions.”

Frank Bainimarama (1954) Prime Minister of Fiji

2000, Excerpts from an address to Fiji's Great Council of Chiefs, 28 July 2005

People, Faith, Law

“(About Cesare Borgia) What cruelties were not the result of his? Who could count all his crimes? Such was the man that Machiavel prefers to all the great geniuses of his time, and to the heroes of antiquity, and of which he finds the life and action make a good example for those that fortune favors.”

Frederick II of Prussia book Anti-Machiavel

Source: Anti-Machiavel, Chapter VII

Life, Time

“I have loved my German people and my fatherland with a warm heart. I have done my duty by the laws of my people and I am sorry this time my people were led by men who were not soldiers and that crimes were committed of which I had no knowledge. Germany, good luck.”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

Last words, 10/16/46. Quoted in "The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness World War II" - Page 564 - by Jon E. Lewis - History - 2002

Love, Men, People, Law

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Moral Thoughts and Reflections

Men

“Oh, absolutely. No question about it. And the state of Texas, when I was governor, we built an awful lot of prisons. And to be frank with you, I made a deal, and the deal was that I would help pass the legislation and be for building a lot more prisons in Texas if I could get rehab programs for people who were alcoholics and drug abusers because I knew that over 80 percent of the crime committed in Texas was committed by people under the influence of alcohol or drugs.”

Ann Richards (1933–2006) American politician

Ann Richards Discusses Texas, Politics and Humor on Larry King Live http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0101/23/lkl.00.html, CNN, January 23 2001 2001

People, Alcohol, Question, Help

“When a juvenile offender commits a heinous crime, the State can exact forfeiture of some of the most basic liberties, but the State cannot extinguish his life and his potential to attain a mature understanding of his own humanity.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Roper v. Simmons

Life, Understanding

“The pro-feminist male is a wretched, guilt-ridden creature who must at every turn make certain he is not impeding the progress of women in any way. He willingly accepts guild for crime against women he never committed, perpetuated by men he has never met. He must question… admiration he might have for traditional role models- for fear that he is perpetuating cultures of honor or patriarchy that could somehow result in the oppression of or violence against women. He must be careful to include women in every activity, even if he would prefer not to… He is encouraged to work with women to support their interests with little or no regard for how those interests might have a negative impact of men… The only "freedom" that feminism offers men is the freedom to do exactly what women want men to do.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

"Mother May I" Masculinity
A Sky Without Eagles (2014)

Women, Men, Fear, Way

“His worst crime was that he gave no hope to the young.”

Pierre Stephen Robert Payne (1911–1983) British lecturer, novelist, historian, poet and biographer

The Corrupt Presidency, p. 273 (See also: Richard M. Nixon..)
The Corrupt Society - From Ancient Greece To Present-Day America (1975)

Hope

“Racism is a uniquely reactionary ideology, used to justify the greatest crimes in history — the slave trade, the extermination of all original inhabitants of the Caribbean, the elimination of every native inhabitant of Tasmania, apartheid. The Holocaust was the ultimate, "industrialised" expression of racist barbarity.
Racism serves as the cutting edge of the most reactionary movements. An ideology that starts by declaring one human being inferior to another is the slope whose end is at Auschwitz. That is why I detest racism.”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Commentary http://politics.guardian.co.uk/gla/comment/0,9236,1430185,00.html in The Guardian (4 March 2005)

History

“These days there's a million ways
To be pulled and torn, to be misdirected.
These times there are sins and crimes
On the morning shows for the disconnected.
I look and I write my book
And I walk away with the wrong impressions.
I don't care 'cause I've done my share. And I need some time for my own obsessions
It doesn't matter, I've let that life go by.
It's been forgotten 'cause all I wanted was you.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Blonde Over Blue.
Song lyrics, River of Dreams (1993)

Life, Books, Way, Time

“In the criminal code we find no feminine pronouns, as "He," "His," "Him," we are arrested, tried and hung, but singularly enough, we are denied the highest privileges of citizens, because the pronouns "She," "Hers" and "Her," are not found in the constitutions. It is a pertinent question, if women can pay the penalties of their crimes as "He," why may they not enjoy the privileges of citizens as "He?"”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton book The Woman's Bible

The Woman's Bible (1898)

Women, Penalty, Question

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist

Sections I–II, p. 11–12
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter II. The Science of Justice (Continued)

Men, Pleasure, World, Justice

“When the throne of God is overturned, the rebel realizes that it is now his own responsibility to create the justice, order, and unity that he sought in vain within his own condition, and in this way to justify the fall of God. Then begins the desperate effort to create, at the price of crime and murder if necessary, the dominion of man.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

The Rebel (1951)

God, Justice, Way, Effort

“Those who reveal information the law makes it a crime to reveal, when doing so is the only way to demonstrate to the public that powerful officials are acting wrongfully or deceitfully.”

Glenn Greenwald (1967) American journalist, lawyer and writer

" The Leakers Who Exposed Gen. Flynn’s Lie Committed Serious — and Wholly Justified — Felonies https://theintercept.com/2017/02/14/the-leakers-who-exposed-gen-flynns-lie-committed-serious-and-wholly-justified-felonies/," The Intecept, 14 February 2017.

Law, Way

“Their existence is sin, their existence is a crime against the holy laws of life.”

Houston Stewart Chamberlain book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century

about the Jews
The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts) (1899)

Life, Law

“You have only to cast your life-long guilt, your ungodliness, your evil thoughts and wicked words, your sinful soul itself, into this crime-canceling, sin-annihilating, soul-cleansing Fountain, in order to obliterate from God's creation your foul transgressions, and yet leave the Divine perfection fair as ever. The sin which a Saviour's blood dissolves is the only sin which, after being once committed, is totally extinguished.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 84.

Life, God, Soul, Evil

“In many of Albrecht Dürer’s engravings there are harrowing depictions of his own melancholia; the manic wheeling stars of Van Gogh are the precursors of the artist’s plunge into dementia and the extinction of self. It is a suffering that often tinges the music of Beethoven, of Schumann and Mahler, and permeates the darker cantatas of Bach. The vast metaphor which most faithfully represents this fathomless ordeal, however, is that of Dante, and his all-too-familiar lines still arrest the imagination with their augury of the unknowable, the black struggle to come:
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
Ché la diritta via era smarrita.
In the middle of the journey of our life
I found myself in a dark wood,
For I had lost the right path.
One can be sure that these words have been more than once employed to conjure the ravages of melancholia, but their somber foreboding has often overshadowed the last lines of the best-known part of that poem, with their evocation of hope. To most of those who have experienced it, the horror of depression is so overwhelming as to be quite beyond expression, hence the frustrated sense of inadequacy found in the work of even the greatest artists. But in science and art the search will doubtless go on for a clear representation of its meaning, which sometimes, for those who have known it, is a simulacrum of all the evil of our world: of our everyday discord and chaos, our irrationality, warfare and crime, torture and violence, our impulse toward death and our flight from it held in the intolerable equipoise of history. If our lives had no other configuration but this, we should want, and perhaps deserve, to perish; if depression had no termination, then suicide would, indeed, be the only remedy. But one need not sound the false or inspirational note to stress the truth that depression is not the soul’s annihilation; men and women who have recovered from the disease — and they are countless — bear witness to what is probably its only saving grace: it is conquerable.”

William Styron book Darkness Visible

Source: Darkness Visible (1990), X

Life, Death, Women, Men

“The left should carve out a new long-term narrative about British foreign policy: one that puts human rights and the protection of civilians centre stage again. And one that reasserts our commitment to the responsibility to protect those most at risk of mass atrocity crimes. This isn’t really about being pro or anti-military intervention. Rather it’s a call to redefine the principles that will guide the decisions we take, as well as a commitment to then honour them.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

A new progressive internationalism (17 June 2016)

Decision

“I'm just a dark guy from a den of iniquity. A dark shadowy figure from the bowels of iniquity. I wish I could be Mike who gets an endorsement deal. But you can't make a lie and a truth go together. This country wasn't built on moral fiber. This country was built on rape, slavery, murder, degradation and affiliation with crime.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

As quoted in Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2002/05/01/sotys02.xml (2002).

Truth, Lie, Guy, Country

“The founders of the English laws have with excellent forecast contrived, that no man should be called to answer to the king for any capital crime, unless upon the preparatory accusation of twelve or more of his fellow subjects, the grand jury: and that the truth of every accusation, whether preferred in the shape of indictment, information, or appeal, should afterwards be confirmed by the unanimous suffrage of twelve of his equals and neighbours, indifferently chosen, and superior to all suspicion. So that the liberties of England cannot but subsist, so long as this palladium remains sacred and inviolate, not only from all open attacks, (which none will be so hardy as to make) but also from all secret machinations, which may sap and undermine it; by introducing new and arbitrary methods of trial, by justices of the peace, commissioners of the revenue, and courts of conscience. And however convenient these may appear at first, (as doubtless all arbitrary powers, well executed, are the most convenient) yet let it be again remembered, that delays, and little inconveniences in the forms of justice, are the price that all free nations must pay for their liberty in more substantial matters; that these inroads upon this sacred bulwark of the nation are fundamentally opposite to the spirit of our constitution; and that, though begun in trifles, the precedent may gradually increase and spread, to the utter disuse of juries in questions of the most momentous concern.”

William Blackstone book Commentaries on the Laws of England

Book IV, ch. 27 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk4ch27.asp: Of Trial, And Conviction. Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769)

Truth, Secret, Peace, Justice

“There are still films about bank robberies, but let's be honest, the biggest financial crimes today aren't happening in banks, they're happening on Wall Street. This is happening in the completely abstract datasphere. Capitalism is dependent upon this commodity of speed. Making a film about a bank robbery is maybe funny, but it's completely anachronistic. We have to tell the stories of the 21st century, specifically in a way that people can relate to it.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

via Futurezone https://futurezone.at/english/sierra-zulu-draws-attention-to-soviet-austria/24.578.924

People, Way, Dependency, Speed

“Everything in German sounds like a war crime. And everything in Austrian German sounds like a war crime served with whipped cream.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

from documentary Traceroute

War

“Speer never made the mistake of saying there were no extermination camps. He said he didn't know about them. He impressed the gullible by declaring himself willing to accept responsibility for Nazi crimes even though he was not aware of their full scope. But as the man better informed about the Reich's industrial resources than anybody else including Hitler, Speer was in fact fully aware of the purpose and the extent of the Final Solution and by pretending he was not he did the opposite of accepting responsibility.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Speer Checks Out'
Essays and reviews, Glued to the Box (1983)

“If the allies had obliged me just one single time, I would have brought the German people behind me, yes; even today, I could still get them to support me. However, they (the allies) gave me nothing and the minor concessions they made, always came too late. Thus, nothing else remains for us but brutal force. The future lies in the hands of the new generation. Moreover, they, the German youth, who we could have won for peace and reconstruction, we have lost. Herein lies my tragedy and there, the allies' crime.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Stresemann to diplomat Sir Albert Bruce Lockhart in 1928
1920s

People, Youth, Peace, Support

“The real horror is mass production. Painting when there is no compulsion to do so… …Pictures like that are all unpunished crimes.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

short quotes, 3 April 1972; p. 86
1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

Painting

“Tax crimes should be investigated by the tax bureau, not through secret police detention.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

“ At home: Ai Weiwei http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/6fdcaae6-5959-11e1-abf1-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1nQPAYr26..” Financial Times, February 24, 2012. 2010-, 2012

Secret

“It would not be too much to say that if all drinking of fermented liquors could be done away, crime of every kind would fall to a fourth of its present amount, and the whole tone of moral feeling in the lower order might be indefinitely raised.”

Charles Buxton (1823–1871) English brewer, philanthropist, writer and politician

Reported to be in his pamphlet How to Stop Drunkenness in Grappling with the Monster http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13509/13509.txt by T. S. Arthur Attributed

Feeling, Drink