Mother Jones Quotes

The big thieves hang the little ones.

Impunity for the great thief, and jail for the thief who steals a loaf.

I see no reason why big-shot crooks should go free while the poor ones go to jail.

I don't know why we need so many more prisons when the crooks seem so happy in the Senate.

I'm Dan Gelber. As a federal prosecutor, I helped put away corporate criminals, corrupt politicians and violent gangs.

We've got to clear some of the room out of the prisons so we can put the bad guys in there, like the pedophiles and the politicians.

A crime is a crime, regardless of what collar you wear.

If forced to choose between the penitentiary and the White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.

It's interesting that these themes of crime and political corruption are always relevant.

How accurately can the law fix the crime? There has to be a mechanism for very fast action. The law is like this: catch them and punish them.

Crime is the number one problem in Russia.

In a country with glaring evidence of persuasive corruption and impunity at all tiers of government, it is morally unjustifiable to amputate the hands of these impoverished people for petty theft, in the name of Puritanism.

All riches come from iniquity, and unless one has lost, another cannot gain.

A person who steals a chicken might go to jail … but a person who steals millions is welcome to be a member of the Federation Council or the Duma.

If you steal from the American public, whether you use a gas pump or a gun, you ought to do hard time.

Never before has a supposedly free country denied basic liberty to so many of its citizens. In December 2006, some 2.25 million persons were being held in the nearly 5,000 prisons and jails that are scattered across America’s urban and rural landscapes…. On average, state inmates have fewer than 11 years of schooling. They are also vastly disproportionately black and brown.

The classical case is that of the starving man who steals a loaf of bread. That he should be allowed to go free is understandable enough; but it is less understandable that 'society's' obligation not to let him starve should devolve upon one baker chosen at random and not on society as a whole.

I know what it means to prosecute people.

What I see in Washington reminds me of what I saw in Montgomery when I was first elected Alabama's Attorney General. In Montgomery, corruption was the problem, so I assembled the finest public corruption prosecution team in the country. Their work wasn't always popular with the mainstream media or the local politicians. We didn't let that stop us.

Kid gets caught with marijuana, that kid has a police record. A Wall Street executive destroys the economy, $5 billion settlement with the government, no criminal record. That is what power is about. That is what corruption is about. And that is what has to change in the United States of America.

Steal a loaf of bread and they hang you, steal a land and they'll make you king.

Great thieves go Scott-free, as the Pope and his crew.

The knife of corruption endangered the life of New York City. The scalpel of the law is making us well again.

Everybody keeps saying that India's a poor country. Yes, we have poverty. But I blame the government of India, the political establishment, for their failure to educate and therefore their failure to control the poverty.