Quotes about crime
page 11

““This is today’s puzzle,” he said. “If the act of denial can be taken as proof of the crime, how can an innocent man defend himself?”
The tithingmen caught him by the arms. “Come along now, Mr. Emerson, and don’t go trying any philosophy on us.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Waldo. “Philosophy would be wasted against such sturdy-headed men as you.”
“Glad you know it,” said the tithingman proudly. “Wouldn’t want you thinking we weren’t true Christians.””

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 9.

Men, Dreams, Thinking

“France isn't France anymore. We're not going. And so many people are saying that. Look at what's going on with Germany. Look at what's happening with Germany. Look at the crime; look at the problems. We have enough problems in our country right now. We don't need additional problems, folks. We don't need additional problems. And for all we know, this could be the great Trojan Horse. This could be. We don't know who these people are. … We have to get smart, folks. We don't need the problems — and we've already got those problems, just so you understand. Because they're coming into the country, they're being put where nobody even knows where they are. It's like, if I were the enemy, I would say, I can't believe they're that stupid. They're taking my people and they're putting them all over the place, because you have great military right here.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, August, Speech at rally in Wilmington, North Carolina (August 9, 2016)

People, Stupidity, Understanding, Problem

“[H]e was now a cold observer, looking on mankind as the subject of his experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be his puppets, and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of crime as were demanded by his study.
Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He began to be so from the moment that his moral nature had ceased to keep the pace of improvement with his intellect.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

p, 125
"Ethan Brand" (1850)

Nature, Study

“Pat Buchanan is a walking, living, breathing hate crime waiting to happen.”

Jeffrey Montgomery (1953–2016) American LGBT rights activist and public relations executive

Commenting on candidate for President of the United States, Pat Buchanan, Detroit Free Press, March 16, 1996 July 20, 2016, Jennifer Juarez Robles, Gay vote turns to Clinton, DetroitFree Press, 3A, Newspapers.com, March 16, 1996 https://www.newspapers.com/clip/5946459/detroit_free_press/,

Hate, Waiting

“If kids were allowed to get married as soon as God made them physically able to get married & have children, they would be so busy working so hard taking care of kids, house & mate they wouldn't have time to even think about crime or all the other hanky-panky they get into!
Of course they wouldn't have time for a big education either. But who the hell needs it! See, that's another reason why they don't let them get married: "Oh, you haven't finished your education yet! It's so sad! You're just going to have to take some menial job, some dumb thing & you can't make a huge salary like you could in some big highly technical job!"”

David Berg (1919–1994) Children of God founder

All of that is not of God anyhow!-Technology is destroying the Earth!
Child Brides!

God, Children, Education, Sadness

“The thought that merely thinking could be a crime does seem absurd. Absurd, that is, until you realize that if you are caught thinking about killing the president of the United States, you will find yourself in serious violation of civil law. You don't have to do the act. You simply have to be thinking about it.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

Law, Thinking

“The well understood equity as well as interest of society demand that we work on much more to prevent crime and offenses than to punish them.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 52.

“He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime — 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)

Flying, Despair

“The tragic destruction of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen reaches into the very roots of humanity and touches not only every human being alive today, but the generations yet to be born. The Gana and Gwi call themselves ’first people of the Kalahari', they might as well say, ’first people of the world'. They have been here longer than any of us. They are the last survivors of the world's first modern humans. It is not up to the Botswana government to wipe them out of history, with nothing more than an arbitrary and cruel presidential directive in favour of just more wealth for the country's elite – and of course the fantastically rich owners of De Beers. We will fight for the Bushmen's right to survive however long it takes. If they lose, then we will make certain that the crimes which brought their end are not expunged, but written large into history. Twenty-first century governments can no longer destroy indigenous tribes with impunity.”

Stephen Corry (1951) British anthropologist and activist

Massive assault on Bushman rights http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/1161, Survival International 12 September 2005

People, World, History, Beer

“The whole system of the Foreign Enlistment Act is, I may add, only 200 years old. The ancients did not know the meaning of the word "neutrality" as we know it at the present day. In the Middle Ages people were hardly aware of such a thing as neutrality; the first Foreign Enlistment Act is hardly 200 years old, and since that time that system of legislation has grown up. It has been a code of legislation that has gradually grown up, and is now looked to by the nations to assist in keeping the peace and preventing the catastrophe of a general war. Shall we be the first to roll back the tide of civilization, and thus practically go back to barbarism and the Middle Ages, by virtually repealing this international code by which we preserve the rights and interests of neutrality? I cannot but think that this House and the country, when they reflect on the facts of the case, will consider that if they in any way lend their sanction to such a retrograde policy, they would be unworthy of themselves, and would be guilty of a great crime against humanity.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1863/apr/24/observations in the House of Commons (24 April 1863). 1860s

War, People, Age, Peace

“There is a deep impression of awe produced by such a vast but silent crowd; we are at once conscious that the cause is terrible which can induce the unusual stillness. The issue of a trial on which hangs life or death, is indeed an appalling thing. We know that men are about to take away that which they cannot give—that a few words of human breath will deprive of breath one of the number for ever; and though we acknowledge that in this evil world punishment is the only security against crime, and that blood for blood has been a necessity from the beginning of time; still, we feel that the necessity is a dreadful one.”

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

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Life, Death, Men, World

“[T]he greatest efforts made by the defeated insurgents since the close of the war have been to promulgate the idea that the cause of liberty, justice, humanity, equality, and all the calendar of the virtues of freedom, suffered violence and wrong when the effort for southern independence failed. This is, of course, intended as a species of political cant, whereby the crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of the rebellion might go down in history hand in hand with the defenders of the government, thus wiping out with their own hands their own stains; a species of self-forgiveness amazing in its effrontery, when it is considered that life and property—justly forfeited by the laws of the country, of war, and of nations, through the magnanimity of the government and people—was not exacted from them.”

George Henry Thomas (1816–1870) United States Army general

Report to General Ulysses S. Grant (17 November 1868)

Life, War, People, Justice

“Even after the part with the Ten Commandments, we still have God's self-appointed prophet ordering his army of barbaric thieves to pillage villages, killing every man, woman and child, but ironically some predominantly atheist countries in the modern world have finally achieved that sort of peaceful society [purported to be the product of a land governed under Mosaic law], with high education [and] very low crime, and the greatest threat to that comes from religious fundamentalists.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, The Damn Commandments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u3z69YpLx0 (January 7, 2015)

God, World, Education, Peace

““It's been such a short visit, I haven't had time to make sense of why you have become so intense about the animal business.”
She watches the wipers wagging back and forth. “A better explanation,” she says, “is that I have not told you why, or dare not tell you. When I think of the words, they seem so outrageous that they are best spoken into a pillow or into a hole in the ground, like King Midas.”
“What is it you can't say?”
“It's that I no longer know where I am. I seem to move around perfectly easily among people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! Yet every day I see the evidences. The very people I suspect produce the evidence, exhibit it, offer it to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses that they have bought for money. It is as if I were to visit friends, and to make some polite remark about the lamp in their living room, and they were to say, ‘Yes, it's nice, isn't it? Polish-Jewish skin it's made of, we find that's best, the skins of young Polish-Jewish virgins.’ And then I go to the bathroom and the soap-wrapper says, ‘Treblinka— 100% human stearate.’ Am I dreaming, I say to myself?””

J.M. Coetzee book The Lives of Animals

Source: The Lives of Animals (1999), p. 69

Money, People, Dreams, Business

“There's only one remedy for crime — get rid of the psychs! They are causing it!”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

"The Cause of Crime" (6 May 1982).
Scientology Bulletins

“Things will be restored to their proper order. The guilty will not triumph; will not escape the general opprobrium, nor the punishment which is due to their crimes: and an ample recompense will be given to the just man, in the clear and distinct view of an astonished and admiring universe.”

Jean Baptiste Massillon (1663–1742) French Catholic bishop and famous preacher

On the Last Day

Universe

“(1) If a convicted man has the money to pay the docket fee and for a transcript of the proceedings at his trial, the upper federal court, by at least reading the transcript, will ascertain whether or not there was reversible error at the trial, or whether or not there was such a lack of evidence that the defendant is entitled to a new trial or a dismissal of the indictment.
(2) If, however, the defendant is so destitute that he cannot pay the docket fee, and if the trial judge has signed a certificate of 'bad faith,' then although a reading of the transcript shows clear reversible errors, the federal appellate court is powerless to hear the appeal and thus to rectify the errors; and even if the defendant has money enough to pay the docket fee but not enough for a transcript, the upper court usually has no way of determining whether there were such errors, must therefore assume there were none, and must accordingly refuse to consider his appeal. As a consequence, a poor man erroneously convicted-- e. g., where there was insufficient proof of his guilt--must go to prison and stay there. In such a situation-- i. e., where the upper court, if it had the transcript before it, would surely reverse for insufficiency of the evidence or on some other ground, but cannot do so solely because the defendant cannot pay for a transcript-- the result is this: He is punished because he is guilty of the crime of being poor”

Jerome Frank (1889–1957) American jurist

more or less on the principle, openly avowed in Erewhon only, that one who suffers misfortunes deserves criminal punishment
United States v. Johnson, 238 F.2d 565, 568 (1956) (dissenting).

Money, Faith, Way, Error

“Out on the street I was talkin' to a man.
He said "there's so much of this life of mine that I don't understand."
You shouldn't worry I said, that ain't no crime.
'Cause if you get it wrong you'll get it right next time, next time.”

Gerry Rafferty (1947–2011) Scottish singer and songwriter

Get It Right Next Time.
Song lyrics, Night Owl (1979)

Life, Understanding, Time

“…in order to palliate to his Mahomedan subjects, the crimes by which he had become their sovereign, he determined to enforce the conversion of the Hindoos throughout his empire by the severest penalties, and even threatened the sword.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Historical fragments of the Mogul empire, of the Morattoes, and of the English concerns in Indostan, from the year M.DC.LIX. https://books.google.com/books?id=71UOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA73 by Robert Orme, p. 73; Annals and Antiquities of Rajast'han, Or the Central and Western Rajpoot State of India https://books.google.com/books?id=P0gOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA319 by James Tod, p. 319; The Rajpoot Tribes: Vol. 2 by Charles Theophilius Metacalfe; Asiatic papers: Papers read before the Bombay branch of the royal Asiatic Society, Part 4, p. 163 by Jivanji Jamshedji Modi Quotes from late medieval histories

Penalty

“March 20th marks the 15th anniversary of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq which plunged the country into a brutal occupation leading to sectarian civil war, terrorism and a death toll of hundreds of thousands. Yet in Britain the anniversary marks another year of impunity for the ministers who authorised the invasion. This lack of accountability for crimes committed abroad is a British disease with a very long history.”

Mark Curtis (British author) British journalist and historian

For the British political elite, the invasion of Iraq never happened http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/british-political-elite-invasion-iraq-never-happened-435103022 (19 March 2018), Middle East Eye.

Death, War, Disease, History

“In spite of the potential risk of misinformation and disinformation, anonymous social apps can be powerful tools for citizen journalists, whistleblowers, political activists, crime tippers, and other cybercitizens whose online privacy is a matter of the utmost importance.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2014

“Mostel: If I appeared there, what if I did an imitation of a butterfly at rest? There is no crime in making anybody laugh. I don't care if you laugh at me.
Congressman Jackson: If your interpretation of a butterfly at rest brought any money into the coffers of the Communist Party, you contributed directly to the propaganda effort of the Communist Party.
Mostel: Suppose I had the urge to do the butterfly at rest somewhere?
Congressman Doyle: Yes, but please, when you have the urge, don't have such an urge to put the butterfly at rest by putting some money in the Communist Party coffers as a result of that urge to put a butterfly at rest.”

Zero Mostel (1915–1977) American actor

Testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), October 14, 1955, regarding Mostel's appearance at a Communist Party fundraiser.

Money, Effort, Appearance

“Hoda Abdel Hamid (Interviewer for Al Jazeera): Mr. President, I'd like to move onto to the war crimes probe. This is a bit of a sore point, and sometimes it's seems that Sri Lanka is at odd with the international community over this point. Yet, your government, and your country did co-sponser resolution 30, of the UN Human Rights Council which clearly calls for a judicial mechanism where international experts would have a role. Then there was talk about a hybrid court and just recently, you said that there was no need for any international involvement in the probe. It's a bit confusing, so what is going on exactly?”

Maithripala Sirisena (1951) Sri Lankan politician, 7th President of Sri Lanka

Talk to Al Jazeera - Sri Lankan president: No allegations of war crimes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udGmG-eqJ6o

War, Communication, Country

“To my horror I began to cry…a great cloud of black guilt, knowledge of my atrocious selfishness, settled on me. One day she had said “when you love me (and she had not meant ‘make love to me’) it’s as if God forgave me for being the mess I am”; and I took it as chicanery, another emotional blackmail, to make me feel essential and give me a sense of responsibility towards her…My monstrous crime was Adam’s, the oldest and most vicious of all – male selfishness…Something far worse than lèse majesté. Lèse-humanité.”

John Fowles book Daniel Martin

Daniel Martin (1977)

Love, God, Making love, Feeling

“When it comes to critical questions of religion, freedom of conscience, belief and speech is a paper tiger in Nigeria. In fact, religion is presented as inadmissible of criticism, of opposing views and opinions whether it is the status of women, of children, gay, or of non-believers. Religious positions are cast on stones. Views that are critical of religion easily get framed as blasphemy, which is a crime under Sharia law and is punishable by death or imprisonment.”

Leo Igwe (1970) Nigerian human rights activist

An Interview with Dr. Leo Igwe — Founder, Nigerian Humanist Movement (2017)

Death, Women, Children, Religion

“I give you joy of having left Winchester. Now you may own how miserable you were there; now it will gradually all come out, your crimes and your miseries — how often you went up by the Mail to London and threw away fifty guineas at a tavern, and how often you were on the point of hanging yourself, restrained only, as some ill-natured aspersion upon poor old Winton has it, by the want of a tree within some miles of the city.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to J. Edward Austen (1816-12-16) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Nature, Tree, Joy

“My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time—
To let the punishment fit the crime,
The punishment fit the crime.”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

The Mikado (1885)

Time

“When Wadewitz showed Wikipedia's main page to her class one day, she found that the women featured were largely sexualised or portrayed as victims of a crime, while people of colour were represented as perpetrators of a crime.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Garrison, Lynsea. (April 7, 2014). "How can Wikipedia woo women editors?" http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26828726. BBC News Magazine. BBC News. About

Women, People

“This law, by and large, extends the same kind of crime-fighting tools we apply to gangs and mobsters to terrorists. That's not something that is an infringement of our civil liberties.”

Paul Ryan (1970) American politician

2004-01-20
State delegation split on speech
Craig
Gilbert
Journal Sentinel
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=201475
2012-09-30
http://web.archive.org/web/20080116205008/http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=201475
2008-01-16
discussing the USA PATRIOT Act

Law, Fight

“I was talking to a friend about it recently and I told him that the thing about making that film that upset me most was how cruel Lars is to the woman he is working with. Not that I can't take it, because I'm pretty tough and completely capable of defending myself, but because my ideals of the ultimate creator were shattered. And my friend said "What did you expect? All major directors are "sexist", a maker is not necessarily an expert in human rights or female/male equality!
My answer was that you can take quite sexist film directors like Woody Allen or Stanley Kubrick and still they are the one that provide the soul to their movies. In Lars von Trier's case it is not so and he knows it. He needs a female to provide his work soul. And he envies them and hates them for it. So he has to destroy them during the filming. And hide the evidence. What saves him as an artist, though, is that he is so painfully honest that even though he will manage to cover up his crime in the "real" world (he is a genius to set things up that everybody thinks it is just his female-actress-at-the-moment imagination, that she is just hysterical or pre-menstrual), his films become a documentation of this "soul-robbery.”

Björk (1965) Icelandic singer-songwriter

Breaking the Waves is the clearest example of that. bjork." From the www.bjork.com http://www.bjork.com 4um, posted by Björk in response to a question about her conflict with director Lars von Trier during the production of Dancer in the Dark. Other quotes

Hate, World, Soul, Imagination

“The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.”

John Ashcroft (1942) American politician

Resignation letter to President George W. Bush, dated (2 November 2004)

“Nothing can justify crimes such as those of September 11, but we can think of the United States as an "innocent victim" only if we adopt the convenient path of ignoring the record of its actions and those of its allies, which are, after all, hardly a secret.”

Noam Chomsky book 9-11

9-11, 2001 https://web.archive.org/web/20061015103427/http://indymedia.org.nz/usermedia/application/2/9-11.pdf. Quotes 2000s, 2001

Secret, Thinking

“Homosexual conduct is, and has been, considered abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature, and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature’s God upon which this nation and our laws are predicated.”

Roy Moore (1947) American former judge

D.H. v. H.H. http://caselaw.findlaw.com/al-supreme-court/1303306.html (February 15, 2002), quoted in [2017-09-29, Michelle Goldberg, How Donald Trump Opened the Door to Roy Moore, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/opinion/donald-trump-roy-moore.html]

God, Law, Nature

“What is needed then? Destroy poverty, that source of crime, by assuring to each the satisfaction of all needs! And how difficult is this to achieve? It would suffice to establish society on new bases where everything would be in common and each, producing according to their aptitudes and strengths, could consume according to their needs. Then we would no longer see people like the hermit of Notre-Dame-de-Grace and others crave a metal of which they become the slaves and the victims! We would no longer see women flaunt their charms, like a vulgar merchandise, in exchange for this same metal that so often prevents us from recognising if the affection is truly sincere.”

Ravachol (1859–1892) French anarchist

Que faut-il alors ? Détruire la misère, ce germe de crime, en assurant à chacun la satisfaction de tous les besoins ! Et combien cela est difficile à réaliser ! Il suffirait d'établir la société sur de nouvelles bases où tout serait en commun, et où chacun, produisant selon ses aptitudes et ses forces, pourrait consommer selon ses besoins. Alors on ne verra plus des gens comme l'ermite de Notre-Dame-de-Grâce et autres mendier un métal dont ils deviennent les esclaves et les victimes ! On ne verra plus les femmes céder leurs appâts, comme une vulgaire marchandise, en échange de ce même métal qui nous empêche bien souvent de reconnaître si l'affection est vraiment sincère.
Trial statement

Women, People, Sincerity

“On the whole, the Old Testament cannot be considered a moral guide. Jehovah was not a moral God. He had all the vices, and he lacked all the virtues. He generally carried out his threats, but he never faithfully kept a promise. At the same time, we must remember that the Old Testament is a natural production, that it was written by savages who were slowly crawling toward the light. We must give them credit for the noble things they said, and we must be charitable enough to excuse their faults and even their crimes.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

What Would You Substitute for the Bible as a Moral Guide? (1900)

God, Nature, Light, Time

“We would no doubt end up understanding quicker that the anarchists are right when they say that in order to have moral and physical tranquillity, we must destroy the causes that create crimes and criminals : it is not by suppressing he who, rather than die a slow death by the deprivations that he has had to and will have to undergo, with no hope of seeing them end, prefers, if he has a bit of energy, take by force that which can assure him well-being, even at the risk of his own death which can only be an end to his sufferings.”

Ravachol (1859–1892) French anarchist

On finira sans doute plus vite par comprendre que les anarchistes ont raison lorsqu'ils disent que pour avoir la tranquillité morale et physique, il faut détruire les causes qui engendrent les crimes et les criminels : ce n'est pas en supprimant celui qui, plutôt que de mourir d'une mort lente par suite de privation qu'il a eues et aurait à supporter, sans espoir de les voir finir, préfère, s'il a un peu d'énergie, prendre violemment ce qui peut lui assurer le bien-être, même au risque de sa mort qui ne peut être qu'un terme à ses souffrances.
Trial statement

Death, Hope, Understanding, Suffering

“It is cowardise and lack of hartes and corage that kepeth the Frenchmen from rysyng, and not povertye; which corage no Frenche man hath like to the English man. It hath ben often seen in Englond that iij or iv thefes, for povertie, hath set upon vij or viij true men, at robbyd them al. But it had not been seen in Fraunce, that vij or viij thefes have ben hardy to robbe iij or iv true men. Wherefor it is right seid that few Frenchmen be hanged for robbery, for that they have no hertys to do so terryble an acte. There be therefor mo men hangyd in Eglnd, in a yere, for robberye and manslaughter, than ther be hangid in Fraunce for such cause of crime in vij yers.”

John Fortescue (1394–1476) Chief Justice of the King's Bench of England

History of the English Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill at p.377 vol I

Men

“Wall Street's crime, in the eyes of its classical enemies, was less its power than its morals.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Chapter VIII https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929, Aftermath II, Section IV, p 155 The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)

“If the Europeans are telling the truth in their claim that they have killed six million Jews in the Holocaust during the World War II - which seems they are right in their claim because they insist on it and arrest and imprison those who oppose it, why should the Palestinian nation pay for the crime. Why have they come to the very heart of the Islamic world and are committing crimes against the dear Palestine using their bombs, rockets, missiles and sanctions. […] The same European countries have imposed the illegally-established Zionist regime on the oppressed nation of Palestine. If you have committed the crimes so give a piece of your land somewhere in Europe or America and Canada or Alaska to them to set up their own state there. Then the Iranian nation will have no objections, will stage no rallies on the Qods Day and will support your decision.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Translation by Islamic Republic News Agency, Dec 2005
2005, The World without Zionism, 2005

War, Truth, World, Support

“I have tried to lead my life by following a belief that has guided my passage. This I sincerely recommend for all to follow: to witness an injustice and do nothing--that is the biggest crime.”

Bill Bailey (Spanish Civil War veteran) (1910–1995) American labor activist

The Kid from Hoboken: An Autobiography by Bill Bailey http://www.larkspring.com/Kid/Contents.html (1993). The Kid from Hoboken: An Autobiography by Bill Bailey (1993)

Life, Sincerity

“I picked up a newspaper today and I couldn't believe it. I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest. And it just was Henny Penny -- "The sky is falling." I've never seen anything like it! And here is a country that's being liberated, here are people who are going from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and they're free. And all this newspaper could do, with eight or 10 headlines, they showed a man bleeding, a civilian, who they claimed we had shot —one thing after another.
From the very beginning, we were convinced that we would succeed, and that means that that regime would end. And we were convinced that as we went from the end of that regime to something other than that regime, there would be a period of transition. And, you cannot do everything instantaneously; it's never been done, everything instantaneously. We did, however, recognize that there was at least a chance of catastrophic success, if you will, to reverse the phrase, that you could in a given place or places have a victory that occurred well before reasonable people might have expected it, and that we needed to be ready for that; we needed to be ready with medicine, with food, with water. And, we have been.
Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here.”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

DOD news briefing following the fall of Baghdad (11 April 2003) http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030411-secdef0090.html

People, Food, Freedom, Water

“Cusins: Call you poverty a crime?
Undershaft: The worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it: all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then: what do they matter? they are only the accidents and illnesses of life: there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

Life, Happiness, People, Fear

“Methinks God has punish'd the Avaritious as he often punishes sinners, in their own way, in the ver sin itself: the thrist of gain was their crime, that thrist continued became their punishment and ruin. As for the few who have the good fortune to remain with half of what they imagined they had (among whom is your humble servantl, I would have them sensible of their felicity, and convinced of the truth of old Hesiod's maxim, who, after half his estate was swallowed by the Directors of those days, resolv'd, that half to be more than the whole.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

In his letter to Atterbury Bishop of Rochester. Sept. 23. 1720.

God, Truth, Way, Imagination

“There is not in this country one rule by which the rich are governed, and another for the poor. No man has justice meted out to him by a different measure on account of his rank or fortune, from what would be done if he were destitute of both. Every invasion of property is judged of by the same rule; every injury is compensated in the same way; and every crime is restrained by the same punishment, be the condition of the offender what it may. It is in this alone that true equality can exist in society.”

Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet (1746–1800) British judge

Trial of O'Coigly and others (1798), 26 How. St. Tr. 1193.

Justice, Way, Country

““And when there is peace at last, and when men are no longer distracted by the ravages of war and crime, then the real work begins. Mankind has grasped at science and invention to improve his lot; when he truly understands that he can wield those tools to improve himself, he will lay the cornerstone of the earthly paradise,” Edward said. “What might not science achieve, in a world where a nation’s resources weren’t continually drained by strife?”

Kage Baker book Mendoza in Hollywood

Part 3 “The Island Out There” Chapter 3 (pp. 308-309)
Mendoza in Hollywood (2000)

Men, War, World, Peace

“Their deceitful role in Ayodhya – which in the end harmed their clients more than anyone else – was just symptomatic. For fifty years this bunch has been suppressing facts and inventing lies. How concerned they pretend to be today about that objective of the ICHR – to promote objective and rational research into events of our past! How does this concern square with the guidelines issued by their West Bengal government in 1989 which Outlook itself had quoted – ‘Muslim rule should never attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should not be mentioned?’ But incorporating their wholesale fabrications of the destruction of Buddhist viharas, about the non-existent ‘Aryan invasion’, that is mandatory – to question them is to be communal, chauvinist! The capture of institutions like the ICHR has been bad enough, but in the end it has been a device. The major crime of these ‘historians’ has been this partisanship: suppresso veri, suggesto falsi.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Quotes, Communication, Question, Past

“I shook my head ruefully. Police departments all over the world were identical in two respects: they all have a fondness for breaking your head open for little or no provocation, and they can’t see the simple truth if it’s lying in front of them naked with its legs spread. The police don’t enforce laws; they don’t even get busy until after the laws are broken. They solve crimes at a pitifully low rate of success. What the police are, to be honest, is a kind of secretarial pool that records the names of the victims and the statements of the witnesses. After enough time passes, they can safely shove this information to the back of the filing system to make room for more.”

George Alec Effinger book When Gravity Fails

Source: When Gravity Fails (1986), Chapter 17 (pp. 235-236).

Truth, World, Law, Lying

“Just out report: "United Kingdom crime rises 13% annually amid spread of Radical Islamic terror." Not good, we must keep America safe!”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Tweet by @realDonaldTrump https://www.snopes.com/trump-uk-terrorism/ (20 October 2017) 2010s, 2017, October

“According to our investigation, this emphasis on revenue generation through policing has fostered unconstitutional practices – or practices that contribute to constitutional violations – at nearly every level of Ferguson’s law enforcement system. Ferguson police officers issued nearly 50 percent more citations in the last year than they did in 2010 – an increase that has not been driven, or even accompanied, by a rise in crime.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

2010s, Update on Investigations in Ferguson (2015)

Law

“My object in all my proceeding has been simply to establish the independence of Ireland for the benefit of all the people of Ireland - noblemen, clergymen, judges, professional men - in fact, all Irishmen. I sought that object first, because I thought it was our right; because I thought, and think still, national independence was the right of the people of this country. And secondly, I admit, that being a man who loves retirement, I never would have engaged in politics did I not think it necessary to do all in my power to make an end of the horrible scenes the country presents - the pauperism, and starvation, and crime, and vice, and the hatred of all classes against each other. I thought there should be an end to that horrible system, which while it lasted, gave me no peace of mind, for I could not enjoy anything in my country, so long as I saw my countrymen forced to be vicious, forced to hate each other, and degraded to the level of paupers and brutes. This is the reason I engaged in politics.”

John Martin (1812–1875) (1812-1875) Irish nationalist activist

Love, Men, Hate, People

“I worked to live and to make a living for my own; as long as neither myself nor my own suffered too much, I remained that which you call honest. Then work got scarce and with unemployment came hunger. It was then that that great law of nature, that imperious voice that allows no retort: the instinct of survival, pushed me to commit some of the crimes and offences that you accuse me of and that I recognise being the author of.”

Ravachol (1859–1892) French anarchist

J'ai travaillé pour vivre et faire vivre les miens ; tant que ni moi ni les miens n'avons trop souffert, je suis resté ce que vous appelez honnête. Puis le travail a manqué, et avec le chômage est venue la faim. C'est alors que cette grande loi de la nature, cette voix impérieuse qui n'admet pas de réplique : l'instinct de la conservation, me poussa à commettre certains des crimes et délits que vous me reprochez et dont je reconnais être l'auteur.
Trial statement

Hunger, Law, Nature, Suffering

“The negro. These developments have brought about a very remarkable improvement in the condition of the negro race. Gradually, but surely, with the almost universal sympathy of those among whom they live, the colored people are working out their own destiny. I firmly believe that it is better for all concerned that they should be cheerfully accorded their full constitutional rights, that they should be protected from all of those impositions to which, from their position, they naturally fall a prey, especially from the crime of lynching and that they should receive every encouragement to become full partakers in all the blessings of our common American citizenship.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

People, Color, Nature, Universe

“This is the correct procedure: Spot who is attacking us. Start investigating them promptly for felonies or worse using our own professionals, not outside agencies. Double curve our reply by saying we welcome an investigation of them. Start feeding lurid, blood sex crime actual evidence on the attackers to the press. Don't ever tamely submit to an investigation of us. Make it rough, rough on attackers all the way.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

"Attacks on Scientology" (25 February 1966).
Scientology Policy Letters

Sex, Way

“Antoninus diffused order and tranquility over the greatest part of the earth. His reign is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history; which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.”

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English historian and Member of Parliament

Vol. 1, Ch. 3 "Of the Constitution of the Roman Empire, in the Age of the Antonines" http://www.ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/volume1/chap3.htm This has often been paraphrased: History is indeed little more than the register of crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire: Volume 1 (1776)

History, Parting

“Let the Turks now carry away their abuses, in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and Yuzbashis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province that they have desolated and profaned. This thorough riddance, this most blessed deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to those heaps and heaps of dead, the violated purity alike of matron and of maiden and of child; to the civilization which has been affronted and shamed; to the laws of God, or, if you like, of Allah; to the moral sense of mankind at large. There is not a criminal in a European jail, there is not a criminal in the South Sea Islands, whose indignation would not rise and over-boil at the recital of that which has been done, which has too late been examined, but which remains unavenged, which has left behind all the foul and all the fierce passions which produced it and which may again spring up in another murderous harvest from the soil soaked and reeking with blood and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame. That such things should be done once is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race which did them; that the door should be left open to their ever so barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the world!”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

1870s

God, World, Law, Hope

“The collective fascination of the entire planet with action movies where the protagonists are the players in organized crime cannot be explained just by the repressed urge for violence in out psychological make up. It may well indicate the cultural breakdown of traditional moral order, and the implicit recognition of a new society, made up of communal identity and unruly competition, of which global crime is a condensed expression.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: The Rise of the Network Society, 1996, p. 211 as cited in: Jari Peltola (2006) " The Place of Politics in Manuel Castells’s Network Society http://www.edemocracy.uta.fi/eng/haefile.php?f=115"

Communication

“Segregating science and spirituality has been the greatest crime against humanity in the past century. These two main branches of knowledge that should have gone hand in hand were divided and practitioners were either labeled as modern scientists or representatives of religious faiths. “Only scientific discoveries apply to logic and intelligence. They are the only truth. Religious faith is blind and misguided.” This was the ideology that was popularized. All the recent natural disasters and the alarming changes in the global climate are challenging the further survival of this beautiful earth we live in. Now, many people cannot help thinking that all this may be the result of weighing science and spirituality on opposite sides of a scale and deeming that one is much greater than the other.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

From Amritanandamayi's Address at the United Nations Academic Impact Conference on Technology for Sustainable Development (2015)

People, Truth, Faith, Beauty

“Citizens who take it upon themselves to do unusual actions which attract the attention of the police should be careful to bring these actions into one of the recognized categories of crimes and offences, for it is intolerable that the police should be put to the pains of inventing reasons for finding them undesirable.”

A. P. Herbert book Uncommon Law

"Is It a Free Country?"
Uncommon Law (1935)

Pain

“Now, get this as a technical fact, not a hopeful idea. Every time we have investigated the background of a critic of Scientology, we have found crimes for which that person or group could be imprisoned under existing law. We do not find critics of Scientology who do not have criminal pasts.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

"Critics of Scientology" (5 November 1967).
Scientology Bulletins

Law, Hope, Idea, Time

“I have pleaded for the rights of woman, for the rights of wives, and what is more, for the rights of little children. I have said that they could be governed by affection, by love, and that my heart went out to all the children of poverty and of crime; to the children that live in the narrow streets and in the sub-cellars; to the children that run and hide when they hear the footsteps of a brutal father, the children that grow pale when they hear their names pronounced even by a mother; to all the little children, the flotsam and jetsam upon the wide, rude sea of life. I have said that my heart goes out to them one and all; I have asked fathers and mothers to cease beating their own flesh and blood. I have said to them, When your child does wrong, put your arms around him; let him feel your heart beat against his. It is easier to control your child with a kiss than with a club.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

Love, Life, Children, Feeling

“Over the last decade, media were taken over by people who think that their ideals, opinions and way of life are superior to others and so they have the mission to tell others how to live, what to think and what to do. Those people have learned that there is a very easy way of manipulating others with guilt and fake goodwill. They will tell you that you should be ashamed, because you are privileged. You are white, you are healthy, you are rich and it's your fault that there are others who are not as lucky as you. So you must redeem those crimes by doing what those social justice warriors think will please those who are not privileged enough. And if you don't, they will jump on you and give you a hard time. Nobody wants to be called sexist, misogynistic, rape culture supporter, and everybody kind of agrees that it's great to help people who were not as lucky as them, so for some time this works. The problem is that this is not enough. At the same time, these people persuade those that are not so lucky that they are victims. They make enemies out of people. They ostracize different opinions.”

Daniel Vávra (1975) Czech entrepreneur

Daniel Vavra GamerGate Interview http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/gamergate-interviews/12400-Daniel-Vavra-GamerGate-Interview (October 10, 2014)

Life, People, Justice, Way

“The condemned man found himself transformed into a hero by the sheer extend of his widely advertised crimes, and sometimes the affirmation of his belated repentance. Against the law, against the rich, the powerful, the magistrates, the constabulary or the watch, against taxes and their collectors, he appeared to have waged a struggle with which one all too easily identified. The proclamation of these crimes blew up to epic proportions the tiny struggle that passed unperceived in everyday life. If the condemned man was shown to be repentant, accepting the verdict, asking both God and man for forgiveness for his crimes, it was as if he had come through some process of purification: he died, in his own way, like a saint.”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Source: Discipline and Punish (1977), Chapter One: The Spectacle of the scaffold, pp. 67

Life, God, Law, Way

“Aaron Russo: Do you think America is going deeper and deeper into becoming a police state?
Ron Paul: Yeah, I think we're moving in that direction, because there's not much we can do without permission. The absence of a police state is that people are free, and if you don't commit crimes you can do what you want. But today, you can't open up a business, you can't develop land, you can't go to the bank, you can't go to the doctor without the government knowing what you're doing. They talk about medical privacy, that's gone. Financial privacy, that's gone. The right to own property, that's essentially gone. So you have to get permission from the government for almost everything. And if that is the definition of a police state, that you can't do anything unless the government gives you permission, we're well on our way. This is something that people eventually, I hope, will get sick and tired of, and say enough is enough.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

America: Freedom to Fascism, 2006 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5355374476580235299&hl=en 2000s, 2006-2009

People, Hope, Way, Business

“If you go down a road that satisfies your personal predilections and relationships and sacrifices the common good of the country, including the elementary institution by which its civilization is sustained, then you're not only derelict in your public duty, you are abandoning your obligation as a human being. And frankly, people throw around words like "crime against humanity", I think that kind of disregard for the God-endowed natural rights of human being is the archetype of all crimes against humanity, and I think we have an entire elite faction that is now committed to committing such a crime against the American people.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

2013-04-02
The Talk to Solomon Show Live, quoted in * 2013-04-02
Keyes: Marriage Equality is the 'Archetype of all Crimes Against Humanity'
Brian
Tashman
Right Wing Watch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/keyes-marriage-equality-archetype-all-crimes-against-humanity
regarding Senator Rob Portman's support of same-sex marriage after learning that his son is gay.
2009

God, People, Nature, Thinking

“Our police, in many cases, are afraid to do anything. We have to protect our inner cities, because African-American communities are being decimated by crime, decimated.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, September, First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Communication

“Recently, I was evicted of contempt of court over my online editorial about (bleep). I was sentenced to pay a $100,000 fine, or go to jail for 50 days. I believe this was the highest personal fine ever issued in Australia. Other websites, newspapers, and radio stations were not charged for similar or even more controversial material. Yet the judge attacked me for portraying myself as a scapegoat — a whipping boy — and he punished me accordingly. Now it is true, I have prior convictions. In 1987, I was fined $15,000 and jailed for exposing a paedophile priest Michael Glennon. Glennon had already been to jail for raping a 10-year-old girl, but was still running a camp for kids in country Victoria. And he was still a Catholic priest. He eventually went to jail, and he died behind bars several weeks ago. And to be honest, I feel good about that — he was an evil, evil man. I also spent five months under house arrest in 2011 for breaching court suppression orders, revealing the names of two serial sex offenders at a rally outside Victoria's Parliament House. About 4000 other people also shouted their names. That one cost me my radio job at 3AW. And I was fined and did 250 hours of community service for naming a judge who ruled that a man could not be charged for raping his wife under a 300-year-old British law. In Victoria, that law has since been changed. Now, here we go again. I have made a decision not taken lightly. On principle, I will not pay the $100,000 fine, which was due today. Instead, I'll go to jail. I'll go to jail for 50 days; to draw attention to all the suspended sentences for crimes of violence and child pornography; for the obscenely short sentences given to king hit killers; to draw attention to my campaign for a national register of convicted sex offenders. Already, 30,000 of you have signed up. I'm happy to serve just 50 days of the many years that the convicted paedophile ex-magistrate should be serving. That pervert, Simon Cooper, wasn't even put on the sex offenders register. If my going to jail draws attention to the judges and magistrates, out of touch with community expectations and your safety, then every one of my 50 days behind bars will be worth it. And so I'll go to jail.”

Derryn Hinch (1944) New Zealand–Australian media personality

Today Tonight, 16 January 2014.

Happiness, People, Law, Sex

“Many families could not and should not have been expected to abandon hope that their sons, husbands, and brothers who had disappeared in the jungles of Vietnam might yet be returned to them. And many good people, who shared their hope and had come to their assistance, were motivated by the most admirable of intentions, to keep faith with Americans who had done all that duty asked of them. But these good intentions and understandable emotions also drew the attention of people with less honorable purposes. There came to exist in America, and elsewhere in the years that followed the Vietnam War, a small cottage industry made up of swindlers, dime-store Rambos, and just plain old conspiracy nuts who preyed on the emotions of the families and on the attention of ofﬁcials who were dedicated to the search for our missing. They had helped convince many of the families and a few members of Congress that the US. government had knowingly abandoned American servicemen in Vietnam and that ﬁve successive presidential administrations had covered up the crime. It was among the most damaging and most hurtful of all the lies about the Vietnam War that I ever encountered.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Source: 2000s, 2002, Worth the Fighting For (2002), pp. 235 - 236

War, People, Family, Faith

“There was this one crime I read about that was so heinous, I didn't have any words for it. This guy had killed a girl, her mother, and her grandmother. I mean, I am so pissed off reading this, steam's coming out of my ears. This guy was put on trial and was found guilty and sentenced to death by a jury of his peers. Then, about a week before the execution, a group of people stood up on his behalf, ON HIS BEHALF, to say, "We can't kill him. He's too crazy to know we're killing him!"…So what are we arguing about? If he doesn't know the difference and it makes me sleep better at night…”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

They Call Me Tater Salad

Death, People, Guy, Girl

“Blind commitment to a theory is not an intellectual virtue: it is an intellectual crime.
:”

Imre Lakatos (1921–1974) Hungarian mathematician, philosopher

“[Q: do you believe that a nation should suffer a detrimental cost in order to compensate for wrongs committed by the governors of that nations, or by segments of that nation in the past? ] Suppose you're living under a dictatorship, and the dictators carry out some horrendous acts. So you're living in Stalinist Russia, let's say, and Stalin carries out horrible crimes. Are the people of Russia responsible for those crimes? Well, to only a very limited extent, because living under a brutal, harsh, terrorist regime, there isn't very much they can do about it. There's something they can do, and to the extent that you can do something, you're responsible for what happens. Suppose you're living in a free, democratic society, with lots of privilege, enormous, incomparable freedoms, and the government carries out violent, brutal acts. Are you responsible for it? Yeah, a lot more responsible, because there's a lot that you can do about it. If you share responsibility in criminal acts, you are liable for the consequences.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Interview by Brian Lamb on C-SPAN, June 1, 2003 https://www.c-span.org/video/?176809-1/depth-noam-chomsky Quotes 2000s, 2003

People, Freedom, Suffering, Past

“What had become of his dream of idylls, his gentle bookish romance? Vanished before a reality which smacked horribly of crude melodrama and possibly of sordid crime. His gorge rose at the picture, but a thought troubled him. Perhaps all romance in its hour of happening was rough and ugly like this, and only shone rosy in the retrospect. Was he being false to his deepest faith?”

John Buchan book Huntingtower

Source: Huntingtower (1922), Ch. 4

Faith, Dreams, Reality, Falseness

“May I make one point absolutely clear; the time we went there was a hunger strike on in the Maze, no-one has asked me, no-one in official authority or in high places has ever asked me to give political status to people who've been convicted of terrible crimes like murder, wounding, maming, causing explosions. That used to be asked. I think one of the reasons why we're not asked now is because we have got over our viewpoint and because everyone knows that this government will not budge on things which it regards as vital. There is no such thing as political murder. There is murder. There is no such things as causing explosions for political purposes and risking the lives of innocent men women and children. It is causing explosion, it is a crime, and they know that neither I, nor any member of my government will be moved on this. And we won through on that. And everyone knows it.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Radio Interview for BBC Radio 4 The World this Weekend (4 January 1981) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104477 First term as Prime Minister

Women, Men, Hunger, Children

“Too late I stayed,—forgive the crime!
Unheeded flew the hours;
How noiseless falls the foot of time
That only treads on flowers.”

William Robert Spencer (1770–1834) British poet

Lines to Lady A. Hamilton, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "The inaudible and noiseless foot of Time", William Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well, Act v. Scene 3.

Flowers, Forgiveness, Time

“The United States government does not authorise or condone torture of detainees. Torture, and conspiracy to commit torture, are crimes under US law, wherever they may occur in the world.”

Condoleezza Rice (1954) American Republican politician; U.S. Secretary of State; political scientist

In response to the allegation that the U.S. has operated secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4500630.stm, December 5, 2005.

World, Law

“An easy way for the government to create criminality where there is none is to make it a crime to lie to its agents, in this case the FBI, which is Deep State Central.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

" The Non-Crime of Lying To The FBI, https://mises.org/wire/non-crime-lying-fbi" Mises.org, December 11, 2017 2010s, 2017

Lie, Way

“For those of us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection which bears witness, throughout the centuries, to the greatness of humanity.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

The Rebel (1951)

Beauty, Hell

“By Numbers here from Shame or Censure free,
All Crimes are safe, but hated Poverty.
This, only this, the rigid Law persues,
This, only this, provokes the snarling Muse.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

London: A Poem (1738) http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/london2.html, lines 158–161

Hate, Law

“Jeff Gannon: Since there have been so many questions about what the President was doing over 30 years ago, what is it that he did after his honorable discharge from the National Guard? Did he make speeches alongside Jane Fonda, denouncing America's racist war in Vietnam? Did he testify before Congress that American troops committed war crimes in Vietnam? And did he throw somebody else's medals at the White House to protest a war America was still fighting? What was he doing after he was honorably discharged?
Scott McClellan: We've already commented on some of his views relating back to that period the other day.”

Scott McClellan (1968) Former White House press secretary

Source: Press briefing http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/02/20040210-3.html, February 10, 2004

War, Question, Fight, Housing

“Those who follow orders to commit such crimes will be found and they will be punished. War crimes will be prosecuted. And it will be no excuse to say, 'I was just following orders.' Any official involved in such crimes will forfeit hope of amnesty or leniency with respect to past action.”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

Pentagon briefing, March 20, 2003 http://www.defenselink.mil/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=2072 2000s

War, Hope, Past

“I think murdering Iraqi union leaders is criminal, for example. And a lot of what the insurgents have done is criminal. But, you know, you rank the priorities. Our priority is to stop major war crimes, like Fallujah for example. So yeah, what the resistance is doing, one can also criticize, harshly in fact. But in any kind of ranking, even if we're on Mars, and certainly if we're in the United States, what is vastly more important is our own crimes, which are much worse, and they're ours.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 2000s, 2005, Interview by Doug Henwood, 2004

War, Thinking

“Let us be clear. Prison works. It ensures that we are protected from murderers, muggers and rapists, and it makes many who are tempted to commit crime think twice.”

Michael Howard (1941) British politician

Colin Brown, "Howard seeks to placate 'angry majority'", The Independent, October 7, 1993
Speech to the Conservative Party conference, October 6, 1993

Thinking

“Political equality is not merely a folly – it is a chimera. It is idle to discuss whether it ought to exist; for, as a matter of fact, it never does. Whatever may be the written text of a Constitution, the multitude always will have leaders among them, and those leaders not selected by themselves. They may set up the pretence of political equality, if they will, and delude themselves with a belief of its existence. But the only consequences will be, that they will have bad leaders instead of good. Every community has natural leaders, to whom, if they are not misled by the insane passion for equality, they will instinctively defer. Always wealth, in some countries by birth, in all intellectual power and culture, mark out the men whom, in a healthy state of feeling, a community looks to undertake its government. They have the leisure for the task, and can give it the close attention and the preparatory study which it needs. Fortune enables them to do it for the most part gratuitously, so that the struggles of ambition are not defiled by the taint of sordid greed. They occupy a position of sufficient prominence among their neighbours to feel that their course is closely watched, and they belong to a class brought up apart from temptations to the meaner kinds of crime, and therefore it is no praise to them if, in such matters, their moral code stands high. But even if they be at bottom no better than others who have passed though greater vicissitudes of fortune, they have at least this inestimable advantage – that, when higher motives fail, their virtue has all the support which human respect can give. They are the aristocracy of a country in the original and best sense of the word. Whether a few of them are decorated by honorary titles or enjoy hereditary privileges, is a matter of secondary moment. The important point is, that the rulers of the country should be taken from among them, and that with them should be the political preponderance to which they have every right that superior fitness can confer. Unlimited power would be as ill-bestowed upon them as upon any other set of men. They must be checked by constitutional forms and watched by an active public opinion, lest their rightful pre-eminence should degenerate into the domination of a class. But woe to the community that deposes them altogether!”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Quarterly Review, 112, 1862, pp. 547-548
1860s

Men, Feeling, Communication, Motivation

“I find wholly baffling the widespread belief today that the dropping of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was an immoral act, even possibly a war crime to rank with Nazi genocide.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

"The End of My War", originally printed in the [London] Sunday Times (1995)
A User's Guide to the Millennium (1996)

War

“To maintain this state of things we make all our achievements in science and technology serve organised mass murder; we educate our youth into uniformed killers, deliver the people to the soulless tyranny of a bureaucracy, put men from the cradle to the grave under police supervision, erect everywhere jails and penitentiaries, and fill every land with whole armies of informers and spies. Should not such "order," from whose infected womb are born eternally brutal power, injustice, lies, crime and moral rottennesslike poisonous germs of destructive plagues gradually convince even conservative minds that it is order too dearly bought?”

Rudolf Rocker book Nationalism and Culture

Source: Nationalism and Culture (1937), Ch. 15 "Nationalism — A Political Religion"

Men, People, Youth, Education

“The Revolution is frozen; all its principles are weakened; there remains only red caps worn by intriguers. The exercise of terror has made crime blasé, as strong liquors made the palace blasé.”

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) military and political leader

Fragment 3 (1794). [Source: Saint-Just, Fragments sur les institutions républicaines]

Exercises, Strong

“Authoritarian Communism is, and should be, forever tainted by those real-world laboratories. But what of the contemporary crusade to liberate world markets? The coups, wars and slaughters to instill and maintain pro-corporate regimes have never been treated as capitalist crimes but have instead been written off as the excess of overzealous dictators, as hot fronts in the Cold War, and now of the War on Terror. If the most committed opponents of the corporatist economic model are systematically eliminated, whether in Argentina in the seventies or in Iraq today, that suppression is explained as part of the dirty fight against Communism or terrorism - almost never as the fight for the advancement of pure capitalism.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007)

War, World, Communication, Fight

“Celtic civilization was tribal, but by no means savage or uncultivated. People who regarded the theft of a harp from a bard as a crime second only to an attack on the tribal chieftain cannot be regarded as wanting in cultivated feeling.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Scottish Folklore and Opera (1992).

People, Feeling

“The war was a “tragic error,” but not “fundamentally wrong or immoral” (as the overwhelming majority of the American people continue to believe), and surely not criminal aggression - the judgment that would be reached at once on similar evidence if the responsible agent were not the USA, or an ally or client. Our point is not that the retrospectives fail to draw what seem to us, as to much of the population, the obvious conclusions; the more significant and instructive point is that principled objection to the war as “fundamentally wrong and immoral,” or as an outright criminal aggression - a war crime - is inexpressible. It is not part of the spectrum of discussion. The background for such a principled critique cannot be developed in the media, and the conclusions cannot be drawn. It is not present even to be refuted. Rather, the idea is unthinkable. All of this reveals with great clarity how foreign to the mobilized media is a conception of the media as a free system of information and discussion, independent of state authority and elite interests.”

Edward S. Herman book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Source: Manufacturing Consent, with Noam Chomsky, 1988, p. 252.

War, People, Error, Idea

“I want to assure the people that Gujarat shall not tolerate any such accident. The culprits will get full punishment for their sins. Not only this, we will set an example, that nobody not even in his dream, thinks of committing a heinous crime like this.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

Cited in: Caroline Sweetman (2005) Gender, Peacebuilding, and Reconstruction. p. 94
2002, "When select phrases are lifted and distorted out of context", 2002

People, Dreams, Thinking

“But the most lasting agony of this war was suffered, not by the defeated, but by the victors. For when their passion had cooled the Americans could not easily disguise from themselves that they had committed murder. They were not at heart a brutal folk, but rather a kindly. They liked to think of the world as a place of innocent pleasure-seeking, and of themselves as the main purveyors of delight. Yet they had been somehow drawn into this fantastic crime; and henceforth an all-pervading sense of collective guilt warped the American mind. They had ever been vainglorious and intolerant; but now these qualities in them became extravagant even to insanity. Both as individuals and collectively, they became increasingly frightened of criticism, increasingly prone to blame and hate, increasingly self-righteous, increasingly hostile to the critical intelligence, increasingly superstitious.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter II: Europe’s Downfall; Section 3, “Europe Murdered” (p. 41)

Hate, Hostility, War, Pleasure

“When once you have plunged into the strife for power, it is the fear of those who are seeking for power over you that so easily persuades to all the great crimes.”

Auberon Herbert (1838–1906) British politician

Westminster Gazette (1893)

Fear

“If there has been any crime, it must be prosecuted. If there has been any property of the United States illegally transferred or leased, it must be recovered…. I propose to employ special counsel of high rank drawn from both political parties to bring such actions for the enforcement of the law. Counsel will be instructed to prosecute these cases in the courts so that if there is any guilt it will be punished; if there is any civil liability it will be enforced; if there is any fraud it will be revealed; and if there are any contracts which are illegal they will be canceled. Every law will be enforced. And every right of the people and the Government will be protected.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

Calvin Coolidge, statement on the Teapot Dome scandal, The New York Times (January 27, 1924), p. 1. Quoted by Senator Edward Martin, address to the Mifflin County Republican Committee, Lewistown, Pennsylvania (January 25, 1952), Congressional Record (January 28, 1952), vol. 98, Appendix, p. A400.
1920s

People, Law, Fraud

“Likewise, police officers on patrol in our nation’s cities often work in environments where a hugely disproportionate percentage of street crime is committed by young men of color. Something happens to people of good will working in that environment. After years of police work, officers often can’t help but be influenced by the cynicism they feel.”

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

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Men, People, Color, Feeling

“It's natural for a man to defend what’s dear to him: his own life, his home, his family. But in order to make him fight on behalf of his rulers, the rich and powerful who are too cunning to fight their own battles—in short to defend not himself but people whom he’s never met and moreover would not care to be in the same room with him—you have to condition him into loving violence not for the benefits it bestows on him but for its own sake. Result: the society has to defend itself from its defenders, because what’s admirable in wartime is termed psychopathic in peace. It’s easier to wreck a man than to repair him. Ask any psychotherapist. And take a look at the crime figures among veterans.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

September “MINE ENEMIES ARE DELIVERED INTO MY HAND”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Love, Life, People, Family

“Amanpour: Secretary of State Colin Powell has spoken to you, I understand. He has also spoken publicly. He called on you to rein in the violence. What do you make of that statement, and can you and will you rein in that violence?
Arafat: Are you asking me while I am under complete siege? You are a wonderful journalist. You have to respect your profession.… No, you have to be accurately when you are speaking with General Yasser Arafat. Be quiet! … You are covering, with such questions, the terrorist activities of the Israeli occupation and the Israeli crimes. Take care not to make these fatal mistakes. Thank you. Bye, bye!”

Yasser Arafat (1929–2004) former Palestinian President, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

Exchange http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0203/29/bn.26.html with CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour (29 March 2002) during Operation Defensive Shield New millennium

Understanding, Question

“Well, I have been a strong supporter of ending discrimination, and particularly focusing on hate crimes and workplace bias and the like. And in our country, the issue of same-sex marriage, which is a -- is a matter left to each state, each state sets the rules -- is proceeding on a state-by-state basis. I think that is the best way for it to proceed. I have not supported same-sex marriage. I have supported civil partnerships and contractual relationships”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Speech and Townterview with Australian Broadcasting Company http://www.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2010/11/150516.htm (7 November 2010) Secretary of State (2009–2013)

Hate, Marriage, Sex, Way

“I do not know, my listener, what your crime, your guilt, your sins are, but surely we are all more or less of the guilt of loving only little. Take comfort, then, in these words just as I take comfort in them. P. 173-174”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

1850s, Two Discourses at Friday Communion (August 1851)

Love

“Actually the crimes of the Maoists against human rights have gone much too far, and the Chinese people are now in much greater need of help from the world's democratic forces to defend their rights than in need of the unity of the world's Communist forces, in the Maoist sense, for the purpose of combating the so-called imperialist peril somewhere in Africa or in Latin America or in the Middle East.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, Police Dictatorships

People, World, Sense, Help

“The biggest crime of a dictatorship is to eradicate human feelings from people.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

“ China Artist Ai Weiwei Says He Regrets Designing Beijing Olympics Bird’s Nest http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2012/apr/16/china-censorship-internet-freedom.” Telegraph, March 5, 2012. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/9123705/China-artist-Ai-Weiwei-says-he-regrets-designing-Beijing-Olympics-Birds-Nest.html 2010-, 2012

People, Feeling

“The progress of the nation in wealth and refinement, however, naturally brought with it an increase in the number of crimes, as the old definition of offences became inadequate.”

Edward Jenks (1861–1939) British legal scholar

Source: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter XI, Criminal Law And Procedure, p. 149

Nature, Wealth

Quotes about crime page 11

Quotes about crime
page 11