Quotes on Criminals

As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.

The prospect of a government that treats all its citizens as criminal suspects is more terrifying than any terrorist. And even more frightening is a citizenry that can accept the surrender of its freedoms as the price of "freedom".

From the standpoint of any sane person, the present problem of capitalist concentration is not only a question of law, but of criminal law, not to mention criminal lunacy.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else.

What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering

What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.

Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold onto something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you because you think that your feelings were wrong and it makes you feel so small because it’s so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn’t come back. You’re left so alone that you can’t explain.

In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.

Maybe it's true that we are all descended from the restless, the nervous, the criminals, the arguers and brawlers, but also the brave and independent and generous. If our ancestors had not been that, they would have stayed in their home plots in the other world and starved over the squeezed-out soil.

A weak man has doubts before a decision; a strong man has them afterwards.

It drains the bars and cafes after hours, concentrates the wicked and the guilty along its chipped Formica counter, and thrums with the gossip of criminals, policemen, shtarkers,and schlemiels, whores and night owls ... three or four floaters, solitaries, and drunks between benders lean against the sparkly resin counter, sucking the tea from their shtekelehs and working the calulations of their next big mistake.

The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.