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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"But even if we take matrimony at its lowest, even if we regard it as no more than a sort of friendship recognised by the police, there must be degrees in the freedom and sympathy realised, and some principle to guide simple folk in their selection."
"The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom. That's a personal evaluation, of course."
"The art of the police is not to see what it is useless that it should see."
"If something is stolen from you, don't go to the police. They're not interested. Don't go to a psychologist either, because he's interested in only one thing: that it was really you who did the stealing."
"Scandal begins when the police put a stop to it."
"A police state finds that it cannot command the grain to grow."
"Police do not belong in war zones."
"We need nearly every department, with the exception of police, fire and rescue, to look at what they can cut. Maybe there are some projects we need to put on hold."
""Subterranean Homesick Blues" [of Bob Dylan] captures, in word-salad format, life in an encroaching police state."
"To insure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough, a police force is needed as well."
"The police need to come down to street level."
"I detest limitations of any kind, and intend to establish my ass some place where I am a virgin on the police blotter."
"There is, and always has been, one tremendous ruler of the human race - and that ruler is that combination of the opinions of all, the leveling up of universal sense which is called public sentiment. That is the ever-present regulator and police of humanity."
"Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy."
"As a child, I've always been in trouble with men and the police have always had to get involved, through no fault of my own."
"Prisons are needed only to provide the illusion that courts and police are effective. They're a kind of job insurance."
"I think the police are a major part of the glue that holds civilised life together. They're not highly paid."
"I was getting money for showing one man killing another. Two lives were destroyed and I was getting paid for it. (On his 1968 photograph of the summary street corner execution of prisoner Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnam's police chief, Lt. Col. Nguyen Ngoc Loan.)"
"Truths begin by a conflict with the police - and end by calling them in."
"The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. Not for nothing was the revolver called an "equalizer.""
