Ernie Chambers Quotes

For most of the guys, killings got to be accepted. Murder was the only way that everybody stayed in line. You got out of line, you got whacked. Everybody knew the rules.

Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes.

The Chicago mobs... They practiced their own perverted form of "survival of the fittest." Where the strong clawed their way to the top of a criminal empire. And the weak died in a hail of machine gun bullets.

Bad guys turned informer. Good guys didn't - no matter when, no matter what.

It's been insane. From Whitey Bulger to the Mad Hatter, you can imagine the schizophrenia.

About 25 years ago, I started out as a reporter covering politics. And that sort of just evolved into organized crime, because organized crime and politics were the same thing in Boston.

People have told me about organized crime in the fashion industry, but I can't talk about that. I'm looking to stay alive.

Some of your worst gangsters are guys who were very low-key.

You look at the descriptions of Whitey by law enforcement during his early years, and they sum him up pretty well. He was the same guy 40 years later; he just had $40 million more, and had committed 40 more murders.

I think we have always had a fascination for gangs and gangsters, and I think we always will.

The mob is a monster, with the hands of Briareus, but the head of Polyphemus,--strong to execute, but blind to perceive.

And still she felt more confident at the prospect of taking on the Russian Mafia than she did attending a backyard barbecue.

We should not let this be like the history of the mafia which was allowed to grow into a nationwide organization which infiltrated and corrupted so many areas of society for such a long period of time.

In Paris there are two dens, one for thieves, the other for murderers. The den of thieves is the Stock Exchange; the den of murderers is the Courthouse.

The crime film is the most honest American film.

What I like about Layer Cake is its intelligent through-line. First of all, I think it's very close to the truth; I think this is what successful drug dealers are like. They don't drive around in flashy cars, they don't show off, they behave very quietly, they get on with their job and they earn lots of money. And it goes up and up and up and up the scale. Secondly - and selfishly - I like the moral aspect of the movie, which is that violence has consequences, and you feel emotionally involved with the violence.

Hell, I'm not saying I'm an angel, but when it came to dirty tricks I couldn't hold a candle to the Irish Mafia.

I am a writer, a professional journalist with serious credentials in Crime, Craziness, and Politics. I have mingled with dangerous criminals and attended many trials . . . from Hell's Angels, Black Panthers and Chicano street fighters to Roxanne Pulitzer and even Richard Nixon, back in the good old days before he was run out of the White House for fraud, perjury, graft, and criminal negligence.

The catholic church has a lot more money than any Colombian cartel and they leave a lot more bodies in their wake.

In fact rules are more important in our underworld than they are to the regular citizen who works within them.

I do not support child abuse. It's a disgusting crime of which I am a victim.

Every country has criminals who have to be fought. They can exist anywhere, including the government or the army - or outside the government and army.

Never piss off a gangster.

The criminal element now calculates that crime really does pay.

You can put a murderer in a suit, and hes still a murderer.