Police quotes
869 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside police — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The most personal thing I've put in [Touch of Evil] is my hatred of the abuse of police power. It's better to see a murderer go free than for a policeman to abuse his power."
"I know the police cause you trouble They cause trouble everywhere But when you die and go to Heaven You'll find no policemen there."
"Avoid being seized by the police. The cops are not your friends. Don't tell them anything."
"I agree that one can't dispense with the reins and the whip altogether, for knaves find their way even into literature, but no thinking will discover a better police for literature than the critics and the author's own conscience."
"The progress of any writer is marked by those moments when he manages to outwit his own inner police system."
"There were sirens and the cops were there and they took me to the police station and I got arrested, it was really embarrassing. They actually just- they impeached me over the whole thing, they tried, well, they did impeach me, but I didn't have to actually stop being president, so it was okay. The police weren't actually that involved, it was mostly Congress."
"Did you know Richard Nixon is the only president whose formal portrait was painted by a police sketch artist?"
"Concentration camps were entirely a matter for the police and had nothing to do with the administration."
"Asking questions is an essential part of police investigation. In the ordinary sense a police officer is free to ask a person for identification without implicating the Fourth Amendment."
"I think perhaps of all the things a police state can do to its citizens, distorting history is possibly the most pernicious."
"I realize I will always be the poster child for police brutality, but I can try to use that as a positive force for healing and restraint."
"Where the stakes are the highest, in the war on terror, we cannot possibly succeed without extraordinary international cooperation. Effective international police actions require the highest degree of intelligence sharing, planning and collaborative enforcement."
"Our leaders were assassinated, one of the things I was reading today was - 28 Panthers were killed by the police but 300 Black Panthers were killed by other Panthers just within - internecine warfare. It just began to seem like we were in an impossible task given what we were facing."
"They [the police] learned something from them Harlem riots. They used to beat your head right in public, but now they only beat it after they get you down to the station house."
"A spectre is haunting Europe-the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered into holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies. Where is the Party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power? Where the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?"
"The violence of the Left is symbolic, the injuries are not intended. The violence of the Right is real - directed at people, designed to cause injuries. Vietnam, nuclear weapons, police out of control are intentional forms of violence. The violence from the Right is aimed directly at people and the violence from the Left is aimed at institutions and symbols."
"Saying that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic worth, is like saying that he had rheumatism or suffered from diabetes. Madness, in fact, is a medical term that can claim no more notice from the objective critic than he grants the charge of heresy raised by the theologian, or the charge of immorality raised by the police."
"To start with you had to keep from getting arrested by the police. Then, you had to keep from getting cheated in the games. You also had to worry about collecting the money if you won. Then finally, after all that was said and done - you had to keep from getting hijacked."
"Wrapped in a police blanket, I watched the rain and smoked one black cigarette after another."
"You are thought here to the most senseless and fit man for the job."
