Wilson Mizner Quotes

I was mischievous. I wasn't bad. I stole food so we could eat. My mother didn't know. I used to tell her some man gave me $10 to sweep out the yard. I was like Robin Hood. I took from the rich and gave to the poor. Me.

My father names me Autolycus, who being, as I am, littered under Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.

Vanz can't dance, but he'll steal your money.

How'd you get in here?" She raised her eyebrows. “You pick pockets.” Kat watched his hand fly to his back pocket. “I can pick locks. Looking for this?” she asked, holding up his wallet. “Oops. Maybe I can pick pockets too.

I drive him to school, then I break back into Barron's house. I'm the best kind of thief, the kind that leaves behind items equal in value to those he's stolen. Then I go home and shave until my skin is as slick as any slickster's.

The Duke of Dunstable had one-way pockets. He would walk ten miles in the snow to chisel an orphan out of tuppence.

I didn't have money to eat when I was 21. When I was short on cash, I would sometimes scam food from fast food places. I'd go into fast food chains and pretend I was from a movie studio, tell them they didn't send us the right order and demand they fix it. I've tried to make that right whenever I could.

You have to steal a lot. You have to have a criminal mentality to be a film director.

A selfish man is a thief.

It's the word 'artful'; it's such a great word, with its dark and its light side, its art and its cunning, the craft and the crafty of it - I've been preoccupied with the word 'artful' and the twin notions of 'cornucopia' and 'pickpocket' it suggests for quite some time.

I'd sooner be called a successful crook than a destitute monarch.

I believe I could commit a crime. We all can. It depends on which situations we find ourselves in. In despair, I would steal food if my children were hungry.

A thief believes everybody steals.

My father used to be away for months at a time, and he'd never leave any money for food, so my brother and I had to go out and nick it.

My friends, my brothers! I know why you are coming to cross the river ... our land is hungry, and offers little food. But it will always be this way, unless you young men give your strength to the fields around your homes. The few cattle you bring home will be gone before you know it, and you will have to risk your lives again and again to steal more. And what is becoming of the small flocks you were given? They are starving, because you have been neglecting them. The Navajos have suffered drought before, and lived through it without making enemies on every side of their land. If you dig deep enough, you will find water. If your thoughts become harmonious, the rain will come. Give your hearts to your own land, not to the trails which lead to your neighbors' land.

Why should we put up with the present evils in our society? As opposed to the society we are visualizing, the present one can be described as a diseased one. …. Of course, the disease did not appear like a bolt from the blue, either yesterday, or last year. It is the result of factors that have deep roots and long lives. These consist of privations, discriminations oppressions, bigotries, hatreds, and hostilities; poverty, ignorance, hunger, and illiteracy. Each and all of these have been left to us as an evil heritage from the past. The fundamental difference between our situation today and that of our forefathers is that now knowledge has enabled us to realize that these evils are neither natural nor inevitable in the same way as we have found that cholera or the bubonic plague are not necessary calamities.

Wilde is an invaluable acquaintance. Often, in situations where I am required to appear witty, I simply steal large chunks from his works and attempt to pass them off as my own with minor modifications.

During recess at school, I'd slip back into the classroom and find something in some other kid's lunch bag that wouldn't be missed - a package of crackers, an apple - and I'd gulp it down so quickly I would barely be able to taste it.

My aunts lived on liquor and seldom felt like eating much. I don't know what's wrong about a kid stealing when he's hungry.

The reason we bitterly hate those who deceive us is because they think they are cleverer than we are.

An auctioneer is a man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.

...I just pulled a pretty big job and needed to hide out for awhile." "...Where's all the loot?" "That, as my cousin Nord would say, is where my improvised lie falls apart." Artemis put two and two together and arrived at a very unpleasant four. "You were here to rob me!" "No, I wasn't. How dare you?!

A crafty nightrunner died of late, And found himself at Bilairy’s Gate. He stood outside and refused to knock Because he meant to pick the lock.

The trick is to steal big.

Let us remember well, however, that whenever food is thrown out it is as if it were stolen from the table of the poor, from the hungry!