Crime - Quotes

A crime arising from a sudden passion is not so great as when the same ariseth from long meditation. For in the former case, there is a place for extenuation, in the common infirmity of human nature, but he that doth it with premeditation, has used circumspection and cast his eye on the law, on the punishment, and on the consequence thereof to human society. - Thomas Hobbes

Actions punishable by jail sentences are not the only crimes. - Osamu Dazai

All men have crimes, and most of them are hidden. - Maxwell Anderson

Before crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this. - Henri Frederic Amiel

Commit a crime and the world is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Crime and punishment generally grow out of each other. Punishment is the bitter fruit that, unsuspected, ripens within the flower of the pleasure that concealed it. - Eliza Cook

Crime has always been a regrettably consistent element of the human experience. - Mark Frost

Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime. - Emma Goldman 

Disgrace does not consist in the punishment, but in the crime. - Vittorio Alfieri

Few criminals die sensible of their crimes. - Norman MacDonald

He confesses his crime who flees the tribunal. - Publilius Syrus

If poverty is the mother of all crimes, lack of intelligence is their father. - Jean de La Bruyere

Many writers claim that nearly all crime is caused by economic conditions, or in other words that poverty is practically the whole cause of crime. Endless statistics have been gathered on this subject which seem to show conclusively that property crimes are largely the result of the unequal distribution of wealth. But crime of any class cannot be safely ascribed to a single cause. Life is too complex, heredity is too variant and imperfect, too many separate things contribute to human behaviour, to make it possible to trace all actions to a single cause. - Clarence Darrow

Pardon one offence and you encourage the commission of many. - Publilius Syrus

The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. - Howard Zinn

The man that does not fear punishment, little regards crime. - Norman MacDonald

The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation. - Emma Goldman

The sole means of ridding man of crime is to rid him of freedom. - Yevgeny Zamyatin

There are crimes that, like frost on flowers, in one single night destroy character and reputation. - Henry Ward Beecher

We easily forget crimes that are known to none but ourselves. - Francois de La Rochefoucauld