Steal a little and they throw you in jail. Steal a lot and they make you king.

A thief was a thief, whether he stole a little or a lot.

He who steals a belt buckle pays with his life; he who steals a state gets to be a feudal lord.

They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings steal a little and they throw you in jail. Steal a lot and then they make you king.

He who steals a belt buckle is executed, but he who steals a state becomes a feudal lord.

So the difference between a criminal and a hero is the <i>order</i> in which their vile crimes are committed. And justice comes with a sell-by date. In that case, you’d better hurry. You wouldn't want your heroism to spoil.

Stealing, of course, is a crime, and a very impolite thing to do. But like most impolite things, it is excusable under certain circumstances. Stealing is not excusable if, for instance, you are in a museum and you decide that a certain painting would look better in your house, and you simply grab the painting and take it there. But if you were very, very hungry, and you had no way of obtaining money, it would be excusable to grab the painting, take it to your house, and eat it.

"This is what is called "honor among thieves," for the really dangerous people are those who do not recognize that they are thieves — the unfortunates who play the role of the "good guys" with such blind zeal that they are unconscious of any indebtedness to the "bad guys" who support their status."

For it is too extreme and cruel a punishment for theft, and yet not sufficient to restrain men from theft. For simple theft is not so great an offense that it ought to be punished with death. Neither is there any punishment that is so horrible that it can keep men from stealing who have no other craft whereby to get their living.

The petty thief is imprisoned but the big thief becomes a feudal lord.

If he's honest, he'll steal; if he's human, he'll murder; if he's faithful, he'll deceive.

But when James Goodfellow hands over a hundred sous to a government official to receive no service for it or even to be subjected to inconveniences, it is as if he were to give his money to a thief.

The average man, whatever his errors otherwise, at least sees clearly that government is something lying outside him and outside the generality of his fellow men — that it is a separate, independent, and hostile power, only partly under his control, and capable of doing him great harm. Is it a fact of no significance that robbing the government is everywhere regarded as a crime of less magnitude than robbing an individual, or even a corporation? . . . What lies behind all this, I believe, is a deep sense of the fundamental antagonism between the government and the people it governs. It is apprehended, not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of the whole population, but as a separate and autonomous corporation, mainly devoted to exploiting the population for the benefit of its own members. . . . When a private citizen is robbed, a worthy man is deprived of the fruits of his industry and thrift; when the government is robbed, the worst that happens is that certain rogues and loafers have less money to play with than they had before. The notion that they have earned that money is never entertained; to most sensible men it would seem ludicrous.19

Property is theft.