Quentin Crisp Quotes

Nothing corrupts a man so much as being an arm of the law and making men suffer.

Given free play, the best policemen act badly more often than not, which is why they are given free play on any large scale only when their employers discern some social utility in their acting badly.

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man.

America is like a melting pot. The people at the bottom get burned, and the scum floats to the top.

There will always be authorities who try to make their own lives more comfortable by suppressing critical comment.

Who will protect the public when the police violate the law?

Twenty years on, the books are still fun to write and I've still got lots of stories I want to tell, mainly about social injustice and people chewed up by the system.

I'm in prison. But my heart and mind is free. Gangsta haters on the streets are doing more time than me. They need 30 police escorts with them every time they walk down the street.

The world is not fair, and often fools, cowards, liars and the selfish hide in high places.

Look at the forces against me. They don't want me out. They're afraid I'll cause trouble if I get out.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

As there is oppression of the majority such oppression will be fought with increasing hatred.

Minorities…are almost always in the right.

Police have been given the very confusing and unpleasant task of being society's char cleaners ... so they lie and stick together.

We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.

Power corrupts; but absolute power is really neat.

Power and privilege constantly corrupt the soul. I have to remind myself of this every day.

By us, and not for us

If there is a class war—and there is—it is important that it should be handled with subtlety and skill. ... it is not freedom that Conservatives want; what they want is the sort of freedom that will maintain existing inequalities or restore lost ones.

Were it not for the corruption and viciousness of degenerate men, there would be no ... necessity that men should separate from this great and natural community, and by positive agreements combine into smaller and divided associations.

People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws

The orgy of thieving in Iraq has more to do with the character of the people than the absence of restraining troops. And to think that good, decent, law-abiding young British and American men and women laid down their lives to liberate this thieving mob.

the plain fact that throughout the world today organized groups of men by monopoly of economic and physical power, legal enactment and intellectual training are limiting with determination and unflagging zeal the development of other groups; and that the concentration of particularly economic power today puts the majority of mankind into slavery to the rest. But one thing is sure and that is that these ancestors of mine and their descendants have had a common history; have suffered a common disaster and have one long memory.

The law, unfortunately, has always been retained on the side of power; laws have uniformly been enacted for the protection and perpetuation of power.

Oppression is but another name for irresponsible power, if history is to be trusted.