John Dryden Quotes

Murder will out, this my conclusion.

The message has to be sent that if you commit a crime there has to be punishment.

We have crime without punishment.

There is no justice if wrongdoers go unpunished and victims do not feel avenged.

I love cops; I'm fascinated by the criminal justice system.

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem.

The purpose of the law is not to prevent a future offense, but to punish the one actually committed.

Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.

If you want to know what to do with a thief that you may find stealing, I say kill him on the spot, and never suffer him to commit another iniquity. That is what I expect I shall do, though never, in the days of my life, have I hurt a man with the palm of my hand. I never have hurt any person any other way except with this unruly member, my tongue. Notwithstanding this, if I caught a man stealing on my premises I should be very apt to send him straight home, and that is what I wish every man to do, to put a stop to that abominable practice in the midst of this people. I know this appears hard, and throws a cold chill over our revered traditions received by early education. I had a great many such feelings to contend with myself, and was as much of a sectarian in my notions as any other man, and as mild, perhaps, in my natural disposition, but I have trained myself to measure things by the line of justice, to estimate them by the rule of equity and truth, and not by the false tradition of the fathers, or the sympathies of the natural mind. If you will cause all those whom you know to be thieves, to be placed in a line before the mouth of one of our largest cannon, well loaded with chain shot, I will prove by my works whether I can mete out justice to such persons, or not. I would consider it just as much my duty to do that, as to baptize a man for the remission of his sins. That is a short discourse on thieves, I acknowledge, but I tell you the truth as it is in my heart.

You kill men for the wrongs they have done, not the wrongs that they may do someday.

Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.

The capture of Saddam Hussein has proven to the bad ones, to the guilty ones, to the sinful ones that they cannot run forever. Sooner or later, the other criminals will also be found from their hideouts.

Successful crimes alone are justified.

It is the crime not the scaffold which is the disgrace.

In the end, crime doesn't pay.

You can put handcuffs on people who push the envelope. When they break the law, they deserve to have handcuffs.

They got the judges / They got the lawyers / They got the jury rolls / They got the law / They don’t come by ones. / They got the sheriffs / They got the deputies / They don’t come by twos. / They got the shotguns / They got the rope / We git the justice / In the end / And they come by tens.

Criminals are not the victims of society; society is the victim of criminals.

If we started prosecuting people for sin, we’d all be in jail.

Capital punishment may not be much of a deterrent against murder, but the sight of a few corpses swinging from a scaffold might work with drug dealers.

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

Pardon one offence and you encourage the commission of many.

It took them 13 years to get O. J. Simpson, but they got him. What goes around comes around.

I want to tell the law and order machinery not to spare anyone who indulges in unlawful activities.