#crime

The criminalization of debt, then, was the criminalization of the very basis of human society. It cannot be overemphasized that in a small community, everyone normally was both a lender and borrower. One can only imagine the tensions and temptations that must have existed in a community—and communities, much though they are based on love, in fact because they are based on love, will always also be full of hatred, rivalry and passion—when it became clear that with sufficiently clever scheming, manipulation, and perhaps a bit of strategic bribery, they could arrange to have almost anyone they hated imprisoned or even hanged. ↗

— David Graeber

#debt #hate #love #society #temptation

From time to time I once wondered how one wanders from time to time And think up the paradox line Speak of Epoch's crime Oh I lied, it hasn't happened yet But bet you better believe it's such a habit that I just said that in a past mindset ↗

— Criss Jami

#curiosity #epoch #fantasy #imagination #lies

Perhaps the world's second-worst crime is boredom; the first is being a bore. ↗

— Cecil Beaton

#bore #boredom #crime #first #perhaps

A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime. ↗

— Mark Twain

#intelligence

It's not like they can take anything from me,' he says later, back with his homeboys in Juvenile Hall. 'Ain't got nothing to give. Nothin' but time, that is. And I been doin' time my whole life, one way or the other. ↗

— Edward Humes

#prison #life

It is the bungled crime that brings remorse. ↗

— P.G. Wodehouse

#principles #regret #remorse #love

Captain Crawford didn't like the idea of any kind of murder, but he went at it patiently and honestly and with none of the stupidity and bombast and rubber-hose techniques that Los Angeles crime fiction writers had led me to expect. I'd gotten the impression that unless a gifted amateur in love with the lady got himself almost beaten to a pulp and practically inside the lethal gas chamber before he unmasked the venal and brutalized constabulary, any innocent bystander they could get their hands on was a gone duck. ↗

— Leslie Ford

#detectives #policemen #love

In Chestnut Hill money didn't talk, but it drank, and played a lot of golf. ↗

— Alistair McHarg

#dark-comedy #great-dialogue #humor #quirky-characters #social-satire

The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#mystery #motivational

The truth is, I hoped the cure would dislike me. I tried to think of disagreeable things to say to him -- I could hit on nothing that wasn't charming. It's wonderful how hard I find it not to be fascinating. ↗

— André Gide

#motivational