Police quotes
869 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside police — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"I'm putting my life at risk, literally! And if I slipped... You never know. And I think about it. I think about my family and I'm like, wow, this is like being a police officer or something, in war or something."
"And it is not difficult to show, by abundant instances, that to extend the bounds of what may be called moral police, until it encroaches on the most unquestionably legitimate liberty of the individual, is one of the most universal of all human propensities."
"It used to be that a fellow went on the police force when everything else failed, but today he goes in the advertising game."
"Eyes - the head's chief of police. They watch and make mental notes."
"And it is crucial of course that chief constables are able to make decisions within their budgets about how they deploy their police officers to the greatest effect to ensure that they're able to do the job that the public want them to do."
"I am willing to consider powers which would ban known hooligans from rallies and marches and I will look into the powers the police already have to force the removal of face coverings and balaclavas."
"What we're also doing is helping police forces in terms of issues like procurement and IT, so that savings can be made in those areas which I think is the sort of thing that everybody is going to want us to be doing."
"We are mandating forces to hold regular neighbourhood beat meetings. These meetings will give local people the chance to scrutinise the work of their local police."
"Must you write complete sentences each time, every time? Perish the thought. If your work consists only of fragments and floating clauses, the Grammar Police aren't going to come and take you away. Even William Strunk, that Mussolini of rhetoric, recognized the delicious pliability of language. "It is an old observation," he writes, "that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric." Yet he goes on to add this thought, which I urge you to consider: "Unless he is certain of doing well, [the writer] will probably do best to follow the rules.""
"I don't own a camera, so I travel with a police sketch artist."
"Police are inevitably corrupted. ... Police always observe that criminals prosper. It takes a pretty dull policeman to miss the fact that the position of authority is the most prosperous criminal position available."
"If you are a police dog, where's your badge?"
"They [police] do me like that all the time! "What you work for?"."
"Police do get obsessed with solving crimes. You know, particularly if there's been a murder, it becomes personal for the police officer very quickly, and it gets to the family. Even after they've retired, they carry on, not letting go."
"The duties which a police officer owes to the state are of a most exacting nature. No one is compelled to choose the profession ofa police officer, but having chosen it, everyone is obliged to live up to the standard of its requirements. To join in that high enterprise means the surrender of much individual freedom."
"It's very difficult to speak to a large group of people these days and not offend someone. I know people walk around with their feelings on their shoulders waiting for you to say something - ahh - did you hear that? And they can't hear anything else you say. The PC police are out in force at all times."
"The whole drug war is nothing but a pretext to increase police power and personnel, and that, of course, is dead wrong. So many created imagined drug offenses."
"What I want to know, though, is why all of a sudden is everybody acting like gangs are some new phenomenon in this country? Almost everyone in America is affiliated with some kind of gang. We got the FBI, the ATF, the police departments, the religious groups, the Democrats and the Republicans. Everybody's got their own little clique and they're all out there gangbanging in their own little way."
"Diplomacy is the police in grand costume."
"I would make myself head of the style police and we would fight fiercely against sloppiness."
