Homicide
From Wikiquote
Homicide refers to the act of killing another human being. Although homicide does not define an illegal act necessarily, sometimes it is used synonymously with "murder."
- For the 1990s police television series, see Homicide: Life on the Street
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- Thou shalt not kill.
- The Bible (King James Version), Deuteronomy 5:17. Alternatively translated as "You shall not murder" (New International Version); "Do not murder" (Contemporary English Version); "Thou dost not murder" (Young's Literal Translation); "Do not kill another person" (New Life Version); "Do not commit murder" (New International Reader's Version).
- Of crimes injurious to the persons of private subjects, the most principal and important is the offense of taking away that life, which is the immediate gift of the great creator; and which therefore no man can be entitled to deprive himself or another of, but in some manner either expressly commanded in, or evidently deducible from, those laws which the creator has given us; the divine laws, I mean, of either nature or revelation.
- William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769), Book IV, ch. 14: Of Homicide.
- Murder most foul, as in the best it is, But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, (Ghost, Act I, scene v).
- For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak With most miraculous organ.
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, (Hamlet, Act II, scene ii).
- Hell of a thing killing a man... you take away all he has and all he's gonna have.
- Will Munny (Clint Eastwood), Unforgiven (1992).
- I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.
- Jean-Paul Sartre, Dirty Hands (1948), Act 5, sc. 2.
- One murder made a villain,
Millions a hero. Princes were privileged
To kill, and numbers sanctified the crime.- Beilby Porteus, Death: A Poetical Essay (1759), line 154.
- One to destroy is murder by the law,
And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe;
To murder thousands takes a specious name,
War's glorious art, and gives immortal fame.- Edward Young, "Love of Fame", Satire vii, line 55.
- Mordre wol out, that see we day by day.
- Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, The Nun's Priest's Tale
- We are concerned here only with the imposition of capital punishment for the crime of murder, and when a life has been taken deliberately by the offender, we cannot say that the punishment is invariably disproportionate to the crime. It is an extreme sanction suitable to the most extreme of crimes.
- Potter Stewart, Majority opinion in 7-2 ruling that the death penalty is a constitutionally acceptable form of punishment for premeditated murder (July 2, 1976).
- One of television’s great contributions is that it brought murder back into the home, where it belongs.
- Alfred Hitchcock, National Observer, 15 Aug. 1966.
- A man lusts to become a god...and there is murder. Murder upon murder upon murder. Why is the world of men nothing but murder?
- David Zindell, The Broken God (1992), p. 278.
- For instance, if you have by a lie hindered a man who is even now planning a murder, you are legally responsible for all the consequences. But if you have strictly adhered to the truth, public justice can find no fault with you, be the unforeseen consequence what it may. It is possible that whilst you have honestly answered Yes to the murderer’s question, whether his intended victim is in the house, the latter may have gone out unobserved, and so not have come in the way of the murderer, and the deed therefore have not been done; whereas, if you lied and said he was not in the house, and he had really gone out (though unknown to you) so that the murderer met him as he went, and executed his purpose on him, then you might with justice be accused as the cause of his death. For, if you had spoken the truth as well as you knew it, perhaps the murderer while seeking for his enemy in the house might have been caught by neighbours coming up and the deed been prevented.
- Immanuel Kant , On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies from Benevolent Motives (1797).
- Through violence you may murder a liar but you can't establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., "Where Do We Go From Here?" (Address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1967-08-16).
- To kill someone for committing murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (1868).
- Murder, like talent, seems occasionally to run in families.
- George Henry Lewes, Physiology of Common Life (ch. XII).
- This is my costume. I'm a homicidal maniac. They look just like everyone else.
- Wednesday Addams (Christina Ricci) in The Addams Family.
- Oh dear, I never realized what a terrible lot of explaining one has to do in a murder!
- Agatha Christie, Spider's Web (by the character Clarissa) (1956).
- Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.
- Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (by Hercule Poirot) (1920).
- It must be true that whenever a sensational murder is committed there are people who--though they are, quite properly, of no interest to law enforcers, attorneys, or newspaper reporters--weep, lie sleepless, and realize at last that their lives have been changed by a crime in which they played no part.
- Viña Delmar, The Becker Scandal, a Time Remembered (1968).
[edit] Attributed
- There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
- Every unpunished murder takes away something from the security of every man's life.
- Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything one cannot talk about after dinner.
- To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
- Murder is not the crime of criminals, but that of law-abiding citizens.
- The very emphasis of the Commandment: Thou shalt not kill, makes it certain that we are descended from an endlessly long chain of generations of murderers, whose love of murder was in their blood as it is perhaps also in ours.
- Murder is terribly exhausting.
