Positive quotations or aphorisms about crime and/or criminals?

November 11, 2008 1:03 PM

Positive quotations or aphorisms about crime and/or criminals?

I'm looking for quotations or aphorisms which show respect, admiration, or approval of crime (particularly non-violent crime), and criminals. I am -not- looking for quotations concerning specific criminals, but rather the practice and the people in general. "The wise thief always prospers," though probably terribly misquoted is a good example of what I mean.

posted by paradoxflow to Society & Culture (23 answers total)

"Opportunity makes the thief" said to point out that the thief is not a bad person and that anyone would have done the same thing if given the opportunity.
posted by FastGorilla at 1:13 PM on November 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

Not an aphorism, but thieves are said to hold a kind of honor among themselves. It's perhaps too ironic in tone, though if you're looking for positivity.
posted by cmiller at 1:14 PM on November 11, 2008

"Honor among thieves" said to illustrate that thieves are not bad people. They are just as honorable as you or me but they have a different definition of who should have property rights.
posted by FastGorilla at 1:16 PM on November 11, 2008

"But to live outside the law, you must be honest
[I know you always say that you agree
But where are you tonight, sweet Marie?"]

from the tune: Absolutely Sweet Marie
by Bob Dylan
posted by The_Auditor at 1:32 PM on November 11, 2008

It takes a thief to catch a thief.
posted by pracowity at 1:32 PM on November 11, 2008

Stolen sugar is sweetest.
posted by pracowity at 1:36 PM on November 11, 2008

Bank robbers acquire a lot of money through their crime. Individuals with money tend to spend it, thereby putting money back into circulation. When money is put back into circulation, small businesses prosper and the economy is stimulated. Ergo, bank robbery supports small business and stimulates the economy.

People have a natural interest in exciting news stories. A bank robbery is an exciting news story. Ergo, people have a natural interest in bank robberies.

The occurrence of crimes allows the police to hone their investigative skills and improve the quality of the police force. Ergo, bank robbery improves the quality of the police force.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 1:55 PM on November 11, 2008

Making out like a bandit?
posted by yellowbinder at 2:05 PM on November 11, 2008

Best answer: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
-- Anatole France
posted by orthogonality at 2:17 PM on November 11, 2008 [3 favorites]

Well, there's Robin Hood, of course.
posted by footnote at 2:22 PM on November 11, 2008

"When a felon's not engaged in his employment' / Or maturing his felonious little plans, / His capacity for innocent enjoyment / Is just as great as any honest man's.... / When the enterprising burglar isn't burgling, / When the cut-throat isn't occupied in crime, / He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling, / And listen to the merry village chime."
-- WS Gilbert, in Pirates of Penzance
posted by orthogonality at 2:23 PM on November 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

I didn't have much luck on a quick cursory search, but you might want to try looking up heist movies on IMDB and checking the memorable quotes sections. Seems to me that these sorts of movies should have thieves pithily justifying their way of life to one another....
posted by painquale at 2:41 PM on November 11, 2008

The gentleman thief genre (Lupin, Raffles) is probably also rife with good quotes. Here's Raffles: "Why should I work when I could steal? Why settle down to some humdrum uncongenial billet, when excitement, romance, danger, and a decent living were all going begging together. Of course, it's very wrong, but we can't all be moralists, and the distribution of wealth is very wrong to begin with."
posted by painquale at 2:52 PM on November 11, 2008

Best answer: "Getting a living under capitalism ... is so precarious, so uncertain, fraught with such pain and struggle that the wonder is not that so many people become vicious and criminal, but that so many remain in docile submission to such a tyrannous and debasing condition."
—Eugene Debs

"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

Both these quotes come from The Heretic's Handbook of Quotations, a book you will want to acquire if you think you will continue to be interested in such quotes. You might also find this page of quotes on crime useful.
posted by languagehat at 2:54 PM on November 11, 2008 [2 favorites]

A philosopher produces ideas, a poet poems, a clergyman sermons, a professor compendia and so on. A criminal produces crimes. If we look a little closer at the connection between this latter branch of production and society as a whole, we shall rid ourselves of many prejudices. The criminal produces not only crimes but also criminal law, and with this also the professor who gives lectures on criminal law and in addition to this the inevitable compendium in which this same professor throws his lectures onto the general market as “commodities. This brings with it augmentation of national wealth, quite apart from the personal enjoyment which—as a competent Witness, Herr Professor Roscher, [tells] us—the manuscript of the compendium brings to its originator himself.

The criminal moreover produces the whole of the police and of criminal justice, constables, judges, hangmen, juries, etc.; and all these different lines of business, which form equally many categories of the social division of labour, develop different capacities of the human spirit, create new needs and new ways of satisfying them. Torture alone has given rise to the most ingenious mechanical inventions, and employed many honourable craftsmen in the production of its instruments.

The criminal produces an impression, partly moral and partly tragic, as the case may be, and in this way renders a “service” by arousing the moral and aesthetic feelings of the public. He produces not only compendia on Criminal Law, not only penal codes and along with them legislators in this field, but also art, belles-lettres, novels, and even tragedies, as not only Müllner’s Schuld and Schiller’s Räuber show, but also [Sophocles’] Oedipus and [Shakespeare’s] Richard the Third. The criminal breaks the monotony and everyday security of bourgeois life. In this way he keeps it from stagnation, and gives rise to that uneasy tension and agility without which even the spur of competition would get blunted. Thus he gives a stimulus to the productive forces. While crime takes a part of the superfluous population off the labour market and thus reduces competition among the labourers—up to a certain point preventing wages from falling below the minimum—the struggle against crime absorbs another part of this population. Thus the criminal comes in as one of those natural “counterweights” which bring about a correct balance and open up a whole perspective of “useful” occupations.

The effects of the criminal on the development of productive power can be shown in detail. Would locks ever have reached their present degree of excellence had there been no thieves? Would the making of bank-notes have reached its present perfection had there been no forgers? Would the microscope have found its way into the sphere of ordinary commerce (see Babbage) but for trading frauds? Doesn’t practical chemistry owe just as much to adulteration of commodities and the efforts to show it up as to the honest zeal for production? Crime, through its constantly new methods of attack on property, constantly calls into being new methods of defence, and so is as productive as strikes for the invention of machines. And if one leaves the sphere of private crime: would the world-market ever have come into being but for national crime? Indeed, would even the nations have arisen? And hasn’t the Tree of Sin been at the same time the Tree of Knowledge ever since the time of Adam?

From Marx's Das Kapital.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 3:08 PM on November 11, 2008

Are you interested in quotes about organized crime?

"I went to the police, like a good American. These two boys were brought to trial. The judge sentenced them to three years in prison - suspended sentence. Suspended sentence! They went free that very day! I stood in the courtroom like a fool. And those two bastards, they smiled at me. Then I said to my wife, for justice, we must go to Don Corleone." — The Godfather

"That's what the FBI can never understand - that what Paulie and the organization offer is protection for the kinds of guys who can't go to the cops. They're like the police department for wiseguys." — Goodfellas
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 3:30 PM on November 11, 2008

"Who is the bigger criminal: he who robs a bank or he who founds one?"

-- Die Dreigroschenoper, Bertolt Brecht
posted by I_pity_the_fool at 3:38 PM on November 11, 2008

In a less serious mood:

Murder is the most expedient form of criticism.

When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer to a definite problem. For better or worse you have acted decisively. In a way, the next move is up to him.
posted by exphysicist345 at 4:46 PM on November 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

"You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone." is attributed to Al Capone, but wikiquote doesn't have a source.
posted by borkencode at 5:02 PM on November 11, 2008

Hooker with a heart of gold?
posted by scheptech at 7:27 PM on November 11, 2008

Property is theft
—Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, French Politician and Journalist, 1809-1865
posted by furtive at 9:01 PM on November 11, 2008

When the Rolling Stones were busted for possession of cannabis the London Times famously asked "Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?".
posted by tiny crocodile at 5:25 AM on November 12, 2008

I think of the Quentin Crisp punchline "Crime is so rarely glamorous these days" from this exchange as found in the liner notes of Sting's album "Nothing Like The Sun:"

I wrote "Englishman In New York" for a friend of mine who moved from London to New York in his early seventies to a small rented apartment in the Bowery at a time in his life when most people have settled down forever. He once told me over dinner that he looked forward to receiving his naturalization papers so that he could commit a crime and not be deported. "What kind of crime?" I asked anxiously. "Oh, something glamorous, non-violent, with a dash of style" he replied. "Crime is so rarely glamorous these days."
posted by kuppajava at 9:06 PM on November 12, 2008