To punish a man because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.

None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours.

Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.

And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.

The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves?

American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society.

The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.

Persecution produced its natural effect on them. It found them a sect; it made them a faction.

There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or to superintend our private habits.

To punish a man because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.

What becomes a crime deserving capital punishment when the tables are turned is a matter of small moment when the negro woman is the accusing party.

The seasons come up undisturbed by crime and war.

Examples one finds in the philosophical literature are somebody who's seen the trial of a child of theirs, where they're being proved guilty of some crime that would drive the parent into a depression, maybe a suicidal depression.

He has committed the crime who profits by it.

Dullness is the only crime for which an editor ought to be hung.

Success in crime always invites to worse deeds.

Crime, to the man of the forties, was an alien monstrous terror.

Rather let the crime of the guilty go unpunished than condemn the innocent.

I will never have a drink and get behind the wheel of a car. It's not illegal to drink and drive, but there becomes a certain point where it does become a crime.

I think there's a lot of naivete and hubris within our mix of personalities. That's probably our worst crime. I keep wondering what a "mature" record means.

The world of crime is a last refuge of the authentic, uncorrupted, spontaneous event.

A shocking crime was committed on the unscrupulous initiative of few individuals, with the blessing of more, and amid the passive acquiescence of all.

The infectiousness of crime is like that of the plague.

I didn't break into comics to write fairytales or crime comics.

Powerful states can maintain themselves only by crime, little states are virtuous only by weakness.

One crime has to be concealed by another.

We got into all the trouble you could ever imagine. We figured that if the Jones boys and all the gangsters ran Chicago, we had our own territory now. All the stores, all the crime, we were in charge of everything, my stepbrother and my brother.

Next to the love of God, the love of country is the best preventive of crime.

The fact that a player is very short of time is, to my mind, as little to be considered an excuse as, for instance, the statement of the law-breaker that he was drunk at the time he committed the crime.

We are not supposed to go out and kill all those we suspect to have committed a crime.

The worst crime is faking it.

The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another thing to open the box.

It means working harder to do the research but I don't really mind - I don't think I have what it takes to chase criminals through back alleys and wade through blood at crime scenes.

Since 1994, unemployment rates are lower. Median household income is higher. A greater percentage of Americans are graduating from college. Home ownership rates are higher. And the violent crime rate has decreased.

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

If movies are causing moral decay, then crime ought to be going up, but crime is going down.

We are the safest large city in America, but any crime rate is too high.

I finally figured out what my crime was. I lived. Big mistake.

First of all, do any of you here think it's a crime to help a suffering human end his agony? Any of you think it is? Say so right now. Well, then, what are we doing here?

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

In a colony constituted like that of New South Wales, the proportion of crime must of course be great.

Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.

If we believe in our current penal process, then the penalties imposed by judges and juries should be the only sanctions for one's crime, not the invisible sanctions of the legislature.

Violent crime rates fell steadily from 1993 to 2002, and this nearly coincides with the establishment of the community policing program known as the COPS program under the Clinton administration.

Cops and robbers resemble each other, so there's not a lot to learn in terms of learning the logistics of committing the crime or investigating the crime.

There are certain things that they say you can't do, there are all these secret people behind the scenes who make things available for you to do. That's why you have so much crime and violence.