Thomas de Quincey Quotes

No one ever reached the worst of a vice at one leap.

We live in a society where it's cool to be criminal.

These are not ordinary human beings. They are criminals. As a matter of fact, they are criminals, both by nature and by training. By nature, because they are not decent. They are criminals.

Little rogues easily become great ones.

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

Everybody's always going to have some self-interest. When it passes a certain point, that's when it become corruption.

Anyone in a position of power is either corrupt or assumed to be corrupt, and the assumption of corruption is as bad as the reality of it.

The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.

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

Criminals gravitate into government positions like natural law.

I think we live in a quite an immoral society with quite an amoral government and they're going to have to grow up in that and negotiate their own way in it.

When you're surrounded by a world of constant lies, manipulation, and deceit, that dark energy is bound to seep into you eventually.

Once a country descends into evil, it doesn't emerge.

Christianity, alcohol the two great means of corruption.

Become corrupt, corrupt, and you will cease to suffer!" This has been the cry of all cities to man.

Before crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this.

Our criminal institutions are full of creeps like you who do wrong things, and many of them were driven to these crimes by the horrible force called music.

One rogue leads another.

Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other.

In adultery, there is usually tenderness and self-sacrifice; in murder, courage; in profanation and blasphemy, a certain satanic splendour. Judas elected those offences unvisited by any virtues: abuse of confidence and informing.

Thieves for their robbery have authority When judges steal themselves.

No man will revel long in the indulgence of crime.

No one every suddenly became depraved.

The life even of a just man is a round of petty frauds; that of a knave a series of greater. We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is inherent in the constitution of things.

When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to [profess] things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.