Nat Turner Quotes

I wasn't stealing cars at like, six. But I've always been bad.

Anyone who is interested in the psychology of children will have observed that whereas one child will resist temptation or seduction, another will easily yield to it. There are children who will hardly oppose any resistance to the invitation of an unknown person to follow him; others who react in an opposite way in the same circumstances.

At school I was easily misled, but that's childhood. I remember I used to shoplift tins of Airfix paint and football badges.

Paradoxically, since gay men rarely have gay parents, cultural transmission must come from friends or strangers (a problem since the generations so seldom mix in gay life).

I got caught stealing when I was a kid from the local bodega right across the street from where we lived. I tried to steal a big bag of Red Hot Dollars. And I swear, I was about 7 years old and the bag was bigger'n me.

I was safe, due to my parents, but the Boys' Club was a massive influence.

If I were to give advice, I would say to parents that they ought to be very careful whom they allow to mix with their children when young; for much mischief thence ensues, and our natural inclinations are unto evil rather than unto good.

I did not, like my children and people today, grow up with television as part of my life.

If I'm in an unusual or extreme social environment, I always want to know what it's like to grow up there and experience it as normal, everyday life. And I want to know what sort of adults these children are going to turn into.

I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.

A lot of the friends I had went on to become criminals.

Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience.

Self-discovery is so important in identity processing: who you hang out with, what clothes you wear, what shows you see. As a kid, I found out about things through friends. I would go to hardcore shows with 50 people.

Obviously, all of us have been influenced by those around us.

Kids are wandering around the streets today that will become tomorrow's criminals that were yesterday's heroes.

So to make those checks better, I used to steal lollipops and sell them at school - but I got caught.

So as my kids will tell you, they had a pretty normal life.

The years from about eight to twelve constitute a unique period of human life.

The three-year-old who lies about taking a cookie isn't really a liar after all. He simply can't control his impulses. He then convinces himself of a new truth and, eager for your approval, reports the version that he knows will make you happy.

I was only allowed only to watch public television until I was 12 years old. I would come home from friends's houses with a list of demands. 'OK, We have all the wrong cereals. You guys are asleep on the job.'

Call me an over anxious, middle-class mum, but my eight-and-a-half-year old son looks very much, to me, like he's headed for a life of crime.

Crime is contagious.

Peers often matter more than parents.

If you allow young folk to be abominably brought up and their characters corrupted little by little, from childhood; and if then you punish them as grown-ups for committing the crimes to which their training has consistently inclined them, what else is this, I ask, but first making thieves and then punishing them for it?

It is not always easy to draw the line between a hero and a lunatic. Practically we dub him sane if he succeeds and the reverse if he fails. Seriously, what a mockery the whole prison system is. We must not only allow our convict population to be bred, but we must pamper and pet them, send them to prison to recruit their health, let them out at intervals to propagate their kind and commit the same crimes, then lock them up again, and continue the same weary round ad infinitum. The imitative instinct is no where more developed than in the tendency to crime. Hundreds of cases of juvenile depravity have been traced to the poisonous influence of penny novelties and sensational serials, bristling with deeds of burglary and blood