“
Don't mistake my kindness for weakness. I am kind to everyone, but when someone is unkind to me, weak is not what you are going to remember about me.
”
”
Al Capone
“
You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun.
”
”
Al Capone
“
Nobody knows how things will turn out, that's why they go ahead and play the game...You give it your all and sometimes amazing things happen, but it's hardly ever what you expect.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts (Tales from Alcatraz, #1))
“
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
”
”
Smedley D. Butler (War Is a Racket)
“
Be careful who you call your friends. I’d rather have four quarters than one hundred pennies.
”
”
Al Capone
“
He pulls a knife, you pull a gun, he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue . . .” ~ Al Capone
”
”
J.J. McAvoy (Ruthless People (Ruthless People, #1))
“
Now I understand. When you love someone, you have to try things even if they don't make sense to anyone else.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts (Tales from Alcatraz, #1))
“
You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.
”
”
Al Capone
“
Life is amazing, isn't it? You can't ever tell what will happen. Nobody knows until they go ahead and play the game.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts (Tales from Alcatraz, #1))
“
When I sell liquor, it's bootlegging. When my patrons serve it on a silver tray on Lakeshore Drive, it's hospitality.
”
”
Al Capone
“
I don't even know what street Canada is on.
”
”
Al Capone
“
I want you to stop being subhuman and become 'yourself'. 'Yourself,' I say. Not the newspaper you read, not your vicious neighbor's opinion, but 'yourself.' I know, and you don't, what you really are deep down. Deep down, you are what a deer, your God, your poet, or your philosopher is. But you think you're a member of the VFW, your bowling club, or the Ku Klux Klan, and because you think so, you behave as you do. This too was told you long ago, by Heinrich Mann in Germany, by Upton Sinclair and John Dos Passos in the United States. But you recognized neither Mann nor Sinclair. You recognize only the heavyweight champion and Al Capone. If given your choice between a library and a fight, you'll undoubtedly go to the fight.
”
”
Wilhelm Reich (Listen, Little Man!)
“
People worship power in the form in which they are able to understand it. A twelve-year-old boy worships Jack Dempsey. An adolescent in a Glasgow slum worships Al Capone. An aspiring pupil at a business college worships Lord Nuffield. A New Statesman reader worships Stalin. There is a difference in intellectual maturity, but none in moral outlook.
”
”
George Orwell (All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays)
“
You get to Alcatraz by being the worst of the worst. Unless you're me. I came here because my mother said I had to.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts (Tales from Alcatraz, #1))
“
You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.
”
”
Al Capone
“
An island, on the other hand, is small. There are fewer species, and the competition for survival has never reached anything like the pitch that it does on the mainland. Species are only as tough as they need to be, life is much quieter and more settled [..] So you can imagine what happens when a mainland species gets introduced to an island. It would be like introducing Al Capone, Genghis Khan and Rupert Murdoch into the Isle of Wight - the locals wouldn't stand a chance.
”
”
Douglas Adams (Last Chance to See)
“
So you can imagine what happens when a mainland species gets introduced to an island. It would be like introducing Al Capone, Genghis Khan, and Rupert Murdoch into the Isle of Wight—the locals wouldn’t stand a chance.
”
”
Douglas Adams (Last Chance to See)
“
You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.
”
”
Al Capone
“
Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness. I am kind to everyone, but when someone is unkind to me, weak is not what you are going to remember about me. —Al Capone CHAPTER
”
”
Lisa Renee Jones (Hard Rules (Dirty Money #1))
“
People are responsible for themselves. All you can do is try to inspire each person to be his best self.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Homework (Tales from Alcatraz, #3))
“
Not even much survives as memory. Many of the most notable names of the summer—Richard Byrd, Sacco and Vanzetti, Gene Tunney, even Charles Lindbergh—are rarely encountered now, and most of the others are never heard at all. So it is perhaps worth pausing for a moment to remember just some of the things that happened that summer: Babe Ruth hit sixty home runs. The Federal Reserve made the mistake that precipitated the stock market crash. Al Capone enjoyed his last summer of eminence. The Jazz Singer was filmed. Television was created. Radio came of age. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed. President Coolidge chose not to run. Work began on Mount Rushmore. The Mississippi flooded as it never had before. A madman in Michigan blew up a school and killed forty-four people in the worst slaughter of children in American history. Henry Ford stopped making the Model T and promised to stop insulting Jews. And a kid from Minnesota flew across an ocean and captivated the planet in a way it had never been captivated before. Whatever else it was, it was one hell of a summer.
”
”
Bill Bryson (One Summer: America, 1927)
“
You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot further with a smile and a gun. A smile, a gun, and a Brute get you the key to the city. —Al “Scarface” Capone, Interview, 1930
”
”
Larry Correia (Hard Magic (Grimnoir Chronicles, #1))
“
Oh, we have everyone who is bad. Except Bonnie and Clyde on account of their being dead,” she says.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
“
Capitalists believe they can take everything at the table as belonging to them. Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class.
”
”
Al Capone
“
Tommy to Zack- "Aw, come on. Just a little slow torture, then? Can't I make him scream like a girl, just once?"
"I can make the worm disappear for you," Joaquin offered with a dangerous smile. "Permanently."
Zack rolled his eyes. "Ignore Al Capone. Murdering the competition is never a good plan.
”
”
Jo Davis (Line of Fire (Firefighters of Station Five, #4))
“
Hell must be a pretty swell spot, because the guys that invented religion have sure been trying hard to keep everybody else out.
”
”
Al Capone
“
Find the toughest guy in the room. Embrace him like a brother. And then slam his head against the wall.
”
”
Al Capone
“
So, whenever the subject of Iraq came up, as it did keep on doing through the Clinton years, I had no excuse for not knowing the following things: I knew that its one-party, one-leader state machine was modeled on the precedents of both National Socialism and Stalinism, to say nothing of Al Capone. I knew that its police force was searching for psychopathic killers and sadistic serial murderers, not in order to arrest them but to employ them. I knew that its vast patrimony of oil wealth, far from being 'nationalized,' had been privatized for the use of one family, and was being squandered on hideous ostentation at home and militarism abroad. (Post-Kuwait inspections by the United Nations had uncovered a huge nuclear-reactor site that had not even been known about by the international community.) I had seen with my own eyes the evidence of a serious breach of the Genocide Convention on Iraqi soil, and I had also seen with my own eyes the evidence that it had been carried out in part with the use of weapons of mass destruction. I was, if you like, the prisoner of this knowledge. I certainly did not have the option of un-knowing it.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
A couple of weeks later Russell told me that Joey Glimco was Giuseppe Primavera. He had been with Al Capone and was very big with the Chicago outfit. He had a big record, a couple of murder arrests. He took the Fifth on every question during the McClellan Committee hearings, including whether he knew Jimmy Hoffa.
”
”
Charles Brandt ("I Heard You Paint Houses", Updated Edition: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa)
“
Now I understood why Russell would ask me to drive him to different places and wait for him in the car while he did a little business in somebody’s house or in a bar or a restaurant. They did all their business in person and in cash, not over the phone or with banks. Russell Bufalino was as big as Al Capone had been, maybe bigger. I couldn’t get over it. I
”
”
Charles Brandt ("I Heard You Paint Houses", Updated Edition: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa)
“
you'll accomlish more with a kind word and a gun, than you will with a kind word alone.
”
”
Al Capone
“
What they say about females being the weaker sex is the biggest lie in the world.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
“
Ал Капоне- Пази се от хората, които нямат нищо за губене.....
”
”
Al Capone
“
Pete were here, he’d whistle.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
“
I’m big as a linebacker, and a seven-year-old girl treats me like her errand boy. Does she smell weakness on me?
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
“
Costello must have been the guiding genius behind the 1929 Atlantic City gathering when Al Capone came to confer with the bootleggers of the East Coast.
”
”
Robert Lacey (Meyer Lansky: The Thinking Man’s Gangster)
“
It ain’t a lie that’s gonna put me in the pit with Al Capone, but it’s one step on a slippery slope I been down before.
”
”
Dean Koontz (Brother Odd (Odd Thomas, #3))
“
It did not require a great deal of imagination to picture a world in which power had passed into the hands of Al Capones with their private bombing squadrons.
”
”
James Hilton (The Definitive James Hilton Collection)
“
You’re either at the table, or on the menu. - Al Capone
”
”
Sapphire Knight (Gangster (Chicago Crew))
“
Avi grinned. “Yes. We haven’t had a good slaughter in a long time. It’s time to remind these motherfuckers who they’re messing with.” Jericho rolled his eyes. “Calm down, Al Capone,” he said, pointing at Asa.
”
”
Onley James (Paladin (Jericho's Boys, #1))
“
On the other hand, in his book, The Enemy Within, Bobby Kennedy wrote about his experiences and observations as chief counsel for the McClellan Committee hearings on organized crime and labor unions, saying: “We saw and questioned some of the nation’s most notorious gangsters and racketeers. But there was no group that better fits the prototype of the old Al Capone syndicate than Jimmy Hoffa and some of his chief lieutenants in and out of the union.” Twentieth
”
”
Charles Brandt ("I Heard You Paint Houses", Updated Edition: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa)
“
Nothing sets a person up more than having something turn out just the way it’s supposed to be, like falling into a Swiss snowdrift and seeing a big dog come up with a little cask of brandy round its neck.
The first time I traveled on the Orient Express I was accosted by a woman who was later arrested and turned out to be a quite well-known international spy. When I talked with Al Capone there was a submachine gun poking through the transom of the door behind him. Ernest Hemingway spoke out of the corner of his mouth. In an Irish castle a sow ran right across the baronial hall. The first Minister of Government I met told me a most horrible lie almost immediately.
These things were delightful, and so was my first view of the Times office in London. In the Foreign Editorial Room a subeditor was translating a passage of Plato’s Phaedo into Chinese, for a bet. Another subeditor had declared it could not be done without losing a certain nuance of the original. He was dictating the Greek passage aloud from memory.
”
”
Claud Cockburn (Cockburn sums up: An autobiography)
“
I haven’t seen you for three whole months,” I say. “Two months, twenty-two days, twenty-two days,” Natalie calls out.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
“
My face turns red just seeing her. She’s a looker. If Pete were here, he’d whistle.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
“
Do not mistake my kindness for weakness, my calmness for ignorance or acceptance!
”
”
Al Capone
“
What followed was the largest and most rapid privatisation ever seen in any country in the world (except perhaps in the Soviet Union under Yeltsin). Never in the history of civilisation has a state's total assets and infrastructure been disposed of so rapidly and in such a criminal fashion. Its machinations make Al Capone look like a paragon of capitalist virtue.
”
”
Bruni de la Motte (Stasi State or Socialist Paradise?: The German Democratic Republic and What Became of It)
“
It seems to be little noticed that this yearning to dragoon and terrify all persons who happen to be lucky is at the bottom of the puerile radicalism now prevailing among us, just as it is at the bottom of Ku Kluxery. The average American radical today likes to think of himself as a profound and somber fellow, privy to arcana not open to the general; he is actually only a poor fish, with distinct overtones of the jackass. What ails him, first and last, is simply envy of his betters. Unable to make any progress against them under the rules in vogue, he proposes to fetch them below the belt by making the rules over. He is no more an altruist than J. Pierpont Morgan is an altruist, or Jim Farley, or, indeed, Al Capone. Every such rescuer of the downtrodden entertains himself with gaudy dreams of power, far beyond his natural fortunes and capacities. He sees himself at the head of an overwhelming legion of morons, marching upon the fellows he envies and hates. He thinks of himself in his private reflections (and gives it away every time he makes a speech or prints an article) as a gorgeous amalgam of Lenin, Mussolini and Genghis Khan, with the Republic under his thumb, his check for any amount good at any bank, and ten million heels clicking every time he winks his eye.
”
”
H.L. Mencken (A Second Mencken Chrestomathy)
“
Deep down, Story Easton knew what would happen if she attempted to off herself—she would fail It was a matter of probability. This was not a new thing, failure. She was, had always been, a failure of fairy-tale proportion. Quitting wasn’t Story’s problem. She had tried, really tried, lots of things during different stages of her life—Girl Scours, the viola, gardening, Tommy Andres from senior year American Lit—but zero cookie sales, four broken strings, two withered azalea bushes, and one uniquely humiliating breakup later, Story still had not tasted success, and with a shriveled-up writing career as her latest disappointment, she realized no magic slippers or fairy dust was going to rescue her from her Anti-Midas Touch. No Happily Ever After was coming.
So she had learned to find a certain comfort in failure. In addition to her own screw-ups, others’ mistakes became cozy blankets to cuddle, and she snuggled up to famous failures like most people embrace triumph.
The Battle of Little Bighorn—a thing of beauty.
The Bay of Pigs—delicious debacle.
The Y2K Bug—gorgeously disappointing fuck-up.
Geraldo’s anti-climactic Al Capone exhumation—oops!
Jaws III—heaven on film.
Tattooed eyeliner—eyelids everywhere, revolting. Really revolting.
Fat-free potato chips—good Lord, makes anyone feel successful.
”
”
Elizabeth Leiknes (The Understory)
“
I had left Florida in the nick of time, it turned out. The business decline that began when the real estate boom collapsed caught up with the nightclubs soon after I left. The Silent Night closed its gates for good. Palm Island popped into the news once in a while as time went by. Al Capone built a home there. Then Lou Walters, father of TV’s Barbara Walters, opened the Latin Quarter. But it was to be a long time before I saw Florida again.
”
”
Ray Kroc (Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's)
“
But I’m curious. Why didn’t you change Capone’s name?” “Because I love him for who he is, the good parts and the not so good parts. I don’t want to change a thing about him. Not even his name. That’s how it is when you truly love someone. You accept them, faults and all.
”
”
Abigail Drake (Love, Chocolate, and a Dog Named Al Capone (A Dog Named Al Capone, #1))
“
Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler, often regarded as the most famous decorated US army officer of the early twentieth century, wrote a book after World War I aptly called War Is a Racket. Upon retirement in the 1930s, he gave speeches around the country to spread his message—a message that sheds light upon the hidden internal dialogue underlying US military history. In 1935, Butler boldly stated: I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
”
”
Peter Joseph (The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression)
“
On August 21, 1931, invited to address an American Legion convention in Connecticut, he made the first no-holds-barred antiwar speech of his career. It stunned all who heard it or read it in the few papers that dared report it in part: I spent 33 years . . . being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. . . . I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. . . . In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. . . . I had . . . a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions. . . . I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents. . . . We don’t want any more wars, but a man is a damn fool to think there won’t be any more of them. I am a peace-loving Quaker, but when war breaks out every damn man in my family goes. If we’re ready, nobody will tackle us. Give us a club and we will face them all. . . . There is no use talking about abolishing war; that’s damn foolishness. Take the guns away from men and they will fight just the same. . . . In the Spanish-American War we didn’t have any bullets to shoot, and if we had not had a war with a nation that was already licked and looking for an excuse to quit, we would have had hell licked out of us. . . . No pacifists or Communists are going to govern this country. If they try it there will be seven million men like you rise up and strangle them. Pacifists? Hell, I’m a pacifist, but I always have a club behind my back!
”
”
Jules Archer (The Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking True Story of the Conspiracy to Overthrow FDR)
“
Everywhere you turn you see signs of its place at the top of the Italian food chain: fresh-pasta shops vending every possible iteration of egg and flour; buzzing bars pairing Spritz and Lambrusco with generous spreads of free meat, cheese, and vegetable snacks; and, above all, osteria after osteria, cozy wine-soaked eating establishments from whose ancient kitchens emanates a moist fragrance of simmered pork and local grapes.
Osteria al 15 is a beloved dinner den just inside the centro storico known for its crispy flatbreads puffed up in hot lard, and its classic beef-heavy ragù tossed with corkscrew pasta or spooned on top of béchamel and layered between sheets of lasagne. It's far from refined, but the bargain prices and the boisterous staff make it all go down easily.
Trattoria Gianni, down a hairpin alleyway a few blocks from Piazza Maggiore, was once my lunch haunt in Bologna, by virtue of its position next to my Italian-language school. I dream regularly of its bollito misto, a heroic mix of braised brisket, capon, and tongue served with salsa verde, but the dish I'm looking for this time, a thick beef-and-pork joint with plenty of jammy tomato, is a solid middle-of-the-road ragù.
”
”
Matt Goulding (Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents))
“
Analysing humour is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies.
”
”
Alan Ford (Al Capone's Ghost)
“
You get to Alcatraz by being the worst of the worst. Unless you’re me. I came here because my mother said I had to.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
“
My dad’s an electrician, for Pete’s sake.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
“
They darn socks too?” “Yes, as a matter of fact. Do a better job than your mom too. Though don’t you dare tell her I said that.” “Murderers outsew my mother?” “Apparently so.” My dad laughs.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
“
Sometimes it seems easier to be Natalie. People force her to do stuff. I have to force myself.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
“
It’s like a prison. Okay, it is a prison. There’s the problem right there.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
“
I’m not the only kid who lives here. There’s my sister, Natalie, except she doesn’t count.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
“
Now I’m five foot eleven and a half inches—as tall as my mom and a good two inches taller than my dad. My father tells people I’ve grown so much, he’s going to put my supper into pickle jars and sell it under the name Incredible Growth Formula.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
“
Okay, that’s it. I’m sleeping with my clothes on. Who wants to face a convicted felon in your pajamas?
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
“
It doesn’t matter that I weigh more than both of them put together. I know when I’m beat. I let Natalie open the door.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
“
What else can she do?” she asks. “She’s not a trick monkey.” “She’d never make it as a trick monkey. She only has one trick,” Piper says. “487 times 6,421 is 3,127,027,” Nat says.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
“
When’s your birthday, Piper?” I ask. “November sixteenth.” “1922?” “Yep.” “Natalie, what day of the week was Piper born?” “Thursday,” Nat says without looking up. “That right?” I ask Piper. Piper doesn’t answer, but her eyes open wider.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
“
He’s the one ought to have his head examined.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
“
The USDA has been in cahoots with these guys since its inception in 1862, because it has always had the dual mandate of protecting American agricultural interests and advising the public about food choices. In plain speak, this is called “the fox guarding the henhouse.” Or as my father likes to say, “This would be like having Al Capone do your taxes.
”
”
Rip Esselstyn (My Beef with Meat: The Healthiest Argument for Eating a Plant-Strong Diet--Plus 140 New Engine 2 Recipes)
“
You can get much farther with a smile, a kind word, and a gun than you can with a smile and a kind word. -Al Capone
”
”
Karen Abbott (Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul)
“
That rare combination of "friendly" persuasion, extortion, blackmail and murder always worked for the KGB at home. Why would we expect it to fail abroad? As Al Capone famously said, "You can get much farther with a smile, a kind word and a gun than you can with a smile and a kind word." So the legislative reality, under the corrupt pedestrian surface, is something most people haven't fully grasped. It is not only the legislatures of the former Warsaw Pact countries that face hidden Soviet-era structures, amplified by the usual tendencies to corruption. The United States Congress was targeted by Russia a long time ago, and the level of KGB success may be measured by the total and absolute failure to detect activity that could not have failed to take place.
J.R.Nyquist
”
”
J.R. Nyquist
“
Now I understand. When you love someone, you have to try things even if they don’t make sense to anyone else.
”
”
Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
“
Dexter’s ultimate job being the protection of his boss’s gargantuan illegal earnings from the arachnid appetite of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. No man had the power to intimidate Mr. Q., but the mechanistic forces of taxation and audit were another story. Even the great Al Capone had succumbed. It was the syndicate no syndicate could beat
”
”
Jennifer Egan (Manhattan Beach)
“
Thunder Road” became a codename for particular routes everyone knew through the main thoroughfares. Numerous drivers ended up risking their lives for a truckload of whiskey. Ike Costner, one of the original mobsters alongside Al Capone, became one of the biggest moonshine distributors in Tennessee, having perfected his moonshining skills in a government-run distillery before Prohibition started. Criminal
”
”
Charles River Editors (The Prohibition Era in the United States: The History and Legacy of America’s Ban on Alcohol and Its Repeal)
“
You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.’ Al Capone.
”
”
Ashwin Sanghi (Chanakya's Chant)
“
When he met with the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, I accompanied him as his note taker. I will never forget Brzezinski introducing me to Sadat not as his aide or staff assistant but as his “colleague.” It was a tiny gesture of respect, but one I remember vividly nearly forty years later. Zbig was a demanding boss but unfailingly polite to those who worked for him. I was lucky to work for several such bosses, including the national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and the DCI William Webster. The gangster Al Capone allegedly once said, “You can get a lot more done with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.” Still, never underestimate the power of a kind word.
”
”
Robert M. Gates (A Passion for Leadership: Lessons on Change and Reform from Fifty Years of Public Service)
“
Since Americans embraced manifest destiny, it has fought wars both great and small. In each one the nation’s leaders have invoked God’s blessing. Sometimes the United States stood for righteous causes, especially in World War II. However, many were no less than the criminal exploitation of weak nations. Marine general Smedley Butler, a veteran of many small wars, spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. . . . In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
”
”
Steven Dundas
“
but Shanghai made “the Chicago of Al Capone appear a staid, almost pious, provincial town,
”
”
Peter Harmsen (Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze)
“
Katherine sits at a table of four. She's a defensive diner, with her back to the wall like Al Capone. James asks for her order. Tea. Spicy tofu. Does she want it with, or without pork? She wants the pork. Would she like brown rice? No, she says, brown rice is an affectation of Dagou's, not authentic. White rice is fine. Whatever her complications, James thinks, they're played out in the real world, not in her palate.
But Katherine's appetite for Chinese food is hard-won. She's learned to love it, after an initial aversion, followed by disinclination, and finally, exploration. Everyone knows she grew up in Sioux City eating peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, carrot sticks, and "ants on a log" (celery sticks smeared with peanut butter, then dotted with raisins). Guzzling orange juice for breakfast, learning to make omelets, pancakes, waffles, and French toast. On holidays, family dinners of an enormous standing rib roast served with cheesy potatoes, mashed potatoes, and sweet potatoes with marshmallows, Brussels sprouts with pecans, creamed spinach, corn casserole, and homemade cranberry sauce. Baking, with her mother, Margaret Corcoran, Christmas cookies in the shapes of music notes, jingle bells, and double basses. Learning to roll piecrust. Yet her immersion in these skills, taught by her devoted mother, have over time created a hunger for another culture. James can see it in the focused way she examines the shabby restaurant. He can see it in the way she looks at him. It's a clinical look, a look of data collection, but also of loss. Why doesn't she do her research in China, where her biological mother lived and died? Because she works so hard at her demanding job in Chicago. In the meantime, the Fine Chao will have to do.
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Lan Samantha Chang (The Family Chao)
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Not many kids can say that when their toilet is stopped up, they get Seven Fingers, the ax murderer, to help them out, either.
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Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Shines My Shoes)
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You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.” —Al Capone
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Buck Wyndham (Hogs in the Sand: A Gulf War A-10 Pilot's Combat Journal)
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But we must remember that Al Capone made Chicago a similar capital in his day and Chicago didn’t suffer more than three or four decades. Neither will Miami.
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James A. Michener (Caribbean)
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Papa always says, “Don’t break the law while you’re breaking the law.” What he means by that is you should only commit one crime at a time. Otherwise you draw attention to yourself. After all, Al Capone never would have gotten caught for bootlegging if the feds couldn’t prosecute him for tax evasion.
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Sophie Lark (Savage Lover (Brutal Birthright, #3))
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Christians commit crimes with their hands, the Jews use their reason.’ A typical Jewish big-time criminal was Jacob ‘Greasy Thumb’ Guzik (1887-1956), who was Al Capone’s bookkeeper and treasurer. Another was Arnold Rothstein (1882-1928), the pioneer of big business crime, who is portrayed as ‘The Brain’ in Damon Runyon’s stories, and by Scott Fitzgerald as Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby. Then there was Meyer Lansky, who created and lost a gambling empire and had his application for Israeli citizenship turned down in 1971.
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Paul Johnson (History of the Jews)
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Now my face is flushed too. And then out of nowhere, I’m leaning toward Annie. I’m not thinking. I’m too tired and worn out to think. I’m inches away from her now. She smells like baby powder and mint. She freezes. Her face is stiff, her eyes too large. And then the tiny Annie smile flashes across her lips and I know she wants to kiss me too. Her lips feel springy, her breath smells like spearmint, her hair is as soft as puppy fur. Who knew kissing Annie Bomini would feel so nice? We sit there for a minute, my arm warm against hers. The sun is down now, but it isn’t night yet. One time is gone and the other has not yet begun. We get up and start walking back to 64. “Forget we did that,” I say. “I’ve already forgotten,” she says. But I’m still holding her hand and I won’t let go.
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Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Homework)
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voice comes out high like a girl’s. I never know whether I’m going to sound like Mickey Mouse or the giant on top of the beanstalk.
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Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
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An attorney named Albert Fink, who years later would defend Al Capone, would tip his hat whenever he passed a husky he particularly respected, and
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Gay Salisbury (The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic)
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For Hillary, gangsterism is not merely a matter of means; it is also her end. Hillary wants to be the crime boss of America. That is the only way to satisfy her unquenchable desire for money, power, and social control. As we will see in this book, Hillary is a criminal who found the criminal practices of Saul Alinsky to be too weak-kneed for her taste, and Alinsky was a gangster who found the criminal practices of the Al Capone gang to be a tad sentimental. In short, Hillary is the true Democrat, the gangster par excellence. I suspect this is why the Democratic establishment lined up so quickly behind her. While the Republicans had a real primary, hotly contested, the Democrats had a primary in which Bernie seemed to win again and again but never seemed to make a dent in Hillary’s lead. That’s because the Democratic super-delegates were uniformly in her camp, even though there was throughout the campaign the risk that she would be indicted.
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Dinesh D'Souza (Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party)
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You can do more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word.
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Al Capone
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Neither, it turned out, was politics. His views on government were strong, if a trifle simplistic. The cause of the Depression, he felt, was Al Capone. “The trouble with the nation’s economy,” he declared, was simply Prohibition, which “makes it possible for large-scale dealers in illicit liquor to amass tremendous amounts of currency”; the “present economic crisis,” he explained, was due to the “withdrawal of billions of dollars from the channels of legitimate trade” by these bootleggers.
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Robert A. Caro (The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson #1))
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We are all born with the ability to make our own choices. But once you make the wrong choice, other people make your decisions for you. 18.
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Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts)
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Hell must be a pretty swell spot, because theguys that invented religion have sure beentrying hard to keep everybody else out.— Al Capone
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Anonymous
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It's different when you kiss someone you really care about. It's like when you're there in person at a baseball game instead of just hearing it on the radio.
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Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Homework (Tales from Alcatraz, #3))
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How much of a smell can you smell, until you can't smell it anymore?
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Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Homework (Tales from Alcatraz, #3))
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Babe got his five minutes of fame—he was an extra in the Holland episode, a scene in Eindhoven. He's sitting at a table with a hat on, watching the action. He thinks he's a big shot now. I want to get in one of those Al Capone movies. Or be in Godfather Ten.
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William Guarnere (Brothers In Battle, Best of Friends)
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Sometimes bad reputations can overshadow good people. Pablo Escobar, Al Capone, Ted Bundy etc. Everyone knows these people, but we don't even know the names of the police who caught them.
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Pablito Fernando Emre Polat
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And you know how no prohibition in history has ever worked out? Not in the twenties with Al Capone, not the war on drugs. It makes it worse. You can't stop people doing what they want to do. They'll find a way.
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Lauren Beukes, Afterland
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The owner, Al Capon, a small-time egg baron whose fortunes rose and fell with every new study on cholesterol, offered his pudgy hand and blew a gust of smoke my way from a panatela
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Woody Allen (Zero Gravity)
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Suppose you had inherited the same body and temperament and mind that Al Capone had. Suppose you had had his environment and experiences. You would then be precisely what he was—and where he was. For it is those things— and only those things—that made him what he was. The only
reason, for example, that you are not a rattlesnake is that your mother and father weren’t rattlesnakes.
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Dale Carnegie (How To Win Frieds & Influence People)
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Tuesday Man by Stewart Stafford
He was only a superhero on Tuesdays,
And the rest of the time was his own,
Tuesday was the villains' day of rest,
Then crime sprees just like Al Capone.
He tried to make his Tuesdays longer,
By pulling some gruelling all-nighters,
But he knew that to be more effective,
He'd have to be a 7-day crime-fighter.
So, he rearranged his calendar totally,
To take the fight to all the baddies,
He was on-call from then on, 24/7,
Or relaxed playing golf with his caddy.
© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.
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Stewart Stafford