Gangster Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old gangster quotes, gangster sayings, and gangster proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

A true gangster can smell out a person's strenghts and weaknesses in a matter of minutes, but what they can sense most of all, what their bodies are most attuned to, is the scent of fear.     

Lorenzo Carcaterra


Armand Assante

Gangsters lived in the neighborhood. They weren't apart from it. Their relationships with people were both benevolent and scary.     

Ruby Dee

A gangster must always be prepared to kill a friend. It is one of the many open secrets of the business, since it is the truest test of his ability to rule and command the respect of his crew.     

Lorenzo Carcaterra


Quincy Jones

Gangsta rappers can't fight, so they rap about guns.     

Sean Price


Al Capone

Everybody's a gangster until a gangster walks in the room.     



Mickey Mantle


Herbert Gold

War is a thug's game. The thug strikes first and harder. He doesn't go by rules and he isn't afraid of hurting people.     

Anne Morrow Lindbergh


Terence Winter

Shoot first, ask questions last. That's how these so called gangsta's last.      

Waka Flocka Flame

It is a rule of law alone which hinders the rulers from turning themselves into the worst gangsters.     

Ludwig Von Mises

No gangster is ever happy when he's at peace. The main reason he's in the business is to eliminate his enemies.     

Lorenzo Carcaterra

The Mafia exists in the American imagination because we want it to exist.     

Pete Hamill

Everybody who comes from the gangster life - they want what that man in the suburbs wants. Nice family. Nice house. Nice cars. Bills paid. Kids in school. Food on the table. Nothing more.     

Ice Cube

The Mafia is a question every time an Italian raises his head.     

Mario Cuomo


Robert Warshow

The classy gangster is a Hollywood invention.     

Orson Welles

The only difference between the Government & the Mafia is that the Mafia actually turns a profit.     


Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots.     

Jonathan Nolan


Mario Puzo

Every human being has a bit of gangster in him     

Binyavanga Wainaina

When you're a kid and you see gangsters living the life, you kind of want to be like that.     

Jaume Collet-Serra

Even gang members imagine a future that doesn't include gangs.     

Greg Boyle

Mafia is the best example of capitalism we have     

Marlon Brando

A thug only understands you when you speak his language     

Alexander Lukashenko


Ralph Waldo Emerson

A street thug and a paid killer are professionals - beasts of prey, if you will, who have dissociated themselves from the rest of humanity and can now see human beings in the same way that trout fishermen see trout.     

Willard Gaylin

The effect of a gangster film is to embody this dilemma in the person of the gangster and resolve it by his death...not ours.     

Robert Warshaw

A gangster doesn't think of himself a hustler, I assume he thinks of himself as a businessman.     

Delroy Lindo

He ain't a gangster, he's a real old time desperado. Gangsters is foreign, he's an American.     

Charley Grapewin

You think I care about the money? I only care about makin' people do what I tell `em.     

Eduardo Ciannelli

I didn't have to pour it on— but I wanted a reputation. I wanted to be known as the smartest, youngest, and toughest hood.     

Morris Rudensky

It's hard to tell whether there is more guns or flowers at a gangster's funeral. I would rather have the undertaker's privilege with some high-class gang, than to have a seat on the Stock Exchange.     

Will Rogers

The gangster was no social bandit engaged engaged in the redistribution of wealth, but the underworld society epitomized by the term 'Chicago Gangster' had some role, romanticized or not, to play in a period before the state apparatus of the social welfare contract was put in place in the immediate prewar and postwar years.     

Andrew Ross

Gangster warfare has ravaged the Americas, paradoxically when my nations appeared to be getting freer and wealthier.     

Ioan Grillo

Perhaps it is a combination of factors. When you mix broken families and gangster cultre with poverty, cartels, and impunity, it is a lethal cocktail.     

Ioan Grillo


Mark Twain

A mob is a monster with heads enough, but no heart, and little brains.     

Cardinal de Rez


Cardinal de Rez



The mob is a sort of bear, while your ring is through is nose, it will even dance under your cudgel; but should the ring slip, and you lose your hold, the brute will turn and rend you.     

Jane Porter

A crowd always think with its sympathy, never with its reason.     

W.R. Alger



Passion may not unfitly be termed the mob of the man, that commits a riot on his reason.     


They feared me because I feared Nothing.     

Lydia Lunch

When you understand the mechanics of stress and master the techniques to manipulate someone's fears and dreams, you will be powerful.     

Gregory Hartley

Cuz even a gangsta rapper can find redemption / For the sins committed before revelation.     

Carlos Salinas

It's always better to like a gangster from a distance anyway. Like a tiger cub in a cage. They always look soft and cute and warm behind those iron bars. Everybody's happy, smiling, waving, taking pictures. But you take away those bars and all that goes away. All that's left is the fear.”     

Lorenzo Carcaterra

In my world, of course, it don't matter. You could be a gangster with a dress, you could be a gangster with baggy pants.     

Young Thug

If you want street fight, let's go. If you want boxing, I show you. But people think I am, like, gangster. No. Ring is different world. Very dangerous.     

Gennady Golovkin


Stanley Kubrick


Charlie Hunnam


Vance Havner

Everybody needs love. There are a lot of guys that you think are hard-core gangsters, but all these guys' weaknesses are women. Look at the movie Scarface. At the end of the day, all he wanted to do was to have kids with his woman.     

Master P

A lot of these kids have no fathers, and they want to be gangsters. They don't believe in God and have no faith in anything but their own instincts. Boxing provides a way for them to express themselves in a positive way, and I'm happy to be able to help them.     

Bobby Slayton

Gun control? It's the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. I'm a bad guy; I'm always gonna have a gun. Safety locks? You will pull the trigger with a lock on, and I'll pull the trigger. We'll see who wins.     

Sammy Gravano

A well-read gangster is still a gangster.      

Doris Hursley

Just don't raise them to be gangsters. Because to be a gangster is a foolish way to live.     

Minoru Inuzuka

Gangsters are not nearly so frightening as you'd think. Some of them are quite ordinary looking.     

Joseph Conrad

If gangsters look like gangsters, the police would soon get after them.     

Joseph Conrad

Gangsters: they act like big men, until they turn into rats.     

Alan Burnett

Once a gangster, always a gangster.     

Gary Glasberg

The spirit of Pancasilla Youth - which people accuse of being gangsters - Gangsters are people who work outside the system - not for the government.     

Joshua Oppenheimer

The word "gangster" comes from 'free men'.     

Joshua Oppenheimer

Gangsters can create both security and riots.     

Joshua Oppenheimer

Gangsters don't look like gangsters anymore - they look like businessmen.     

Dean Riesner

There'll always be cops like there'll always be gangsters. There'll always be cops like there'll always be gangsters.     

Jonathan Nolan


Paulo Lins

Make up your mind to be a cop, not a gangster with a badge.     

A.I. Bezzerides

All institutions of the American government are essentially a gangster syndicate; and everybody knows this.     

Francis Richard Conolly

We need reliable candidates with solid military backgrounds or good social skills. Taking on wannabe gangsters will turn us into a bunch of thugs.     

Sang-yoon Lim

When you mix broken families and gangster culture with poverty, cartels and impunity, it is a lethal cocktail.     

Ioan Grillo

In communities scarred with violence, many don't know what peace looks like.     

Ioan Grillo

Teenagers in Brazilian favelas, jamaican garrisons and honduran slums see these crime wars as a natural state of affairs.     

Ioan Grillo

Gangster warlords nurture their culture, their pseudo religion, and their rhetoric of fighting for the poor.     

Ioan Grillo

A gangster who does not want to stop living life gangster will not stop living life gangster.     

G.A. Global Services Inc. Fellowship Approved

One historian has also described New York as having a 'gangster era' of municipal government in the late 1800s when 'elections were decided by repeat voters and poll-box smashers, by the intimidation and beating of citizens before they could cast their votes.     

K. Hirschfeld

Political gangsterism and kleptocracy are also readily visible in the 20th century histories of Cuba's closest neighbors.     

K. Hirschfeld

Can you ever trust a cop to make real deal with a gangster? The answer is no. A cop is a cop.     

Arturo Rossenaldo Romero DeLeone

If you are going to snitch on a brother and be protected by cops, you are making a mistake which can cost you your freedom.     

Arturo Rossenaldo Romero DeLeone

Gangster Lean, Gangster Lean / Is he the baddest dude you ever seen? / Three piece suits, complete with a diamond ring.     

Arturo Rossenaldo Romero DeLeone

He is a really nice guy, gives money to the poor / Thanks heaven above for even more / He does not hurt anyone because he so cool / But don't get him wrong / he is nobody's fool.     

Arturo Rossenaldo Romero DeLeone

Catch him if you can, if you are so mean / Never leaves tracks because he is not in that seen / He makes the get away so complete / always so clean / Do you really know the Gangster Lean.     

Arturo Rossenaldo Romero DeLeone

My role model were gangsters, criminals, drug dealers, and my father made me a wise guy. My mother was the only thing sane in my life.     

Paul Tully


Mario Puzo

A true gangster can smell out a person's strengths and weaknesses in a matter of minutes, but what they can sense most of all, what their bodies are most attuned to, is the scent of fear.     

Lorenzo Carcaterra

The older you get, the deadlier you have to be and you use age to your advantage. You make it a strength. Most of us are more dangerous the longer we live. If we didn't care about dying when we were young, we're not going to be too concerned about it when we have two feet in our grave.     

Lorenzo Carcaterra

Like many executives in the corporate world, a gangster is consumed with an insatiable desire to possess what belongs to someone else.     

Lorenzo Carcaterra

Mobsters are not satisfies with a mere Wall Street-backed takeover, no matter how lucrative. They will not rest until they live to see their opponent buried.     

Lorenzo Carcaterra

A gangster's survival depended not on the destruction of his enemies but on the strength of his allies.     

Lorenzo Carcaterra

The Gangster has a secret identity, just like Superman, except that I never could understand why Superman needed a secret identify.     

Gangster of Love

Cuz even a gangsta rapper can find redemption for the sins committed before revelation.     

Carlos Salinas

Members of every major street gang, outlaw biker, and domestic extremist group have been found in a number of military branches.     

Carter F. Smith

Only God can judge me.     

Tupac Shakur


John Rooney


Frank Costello

Somebody messes with me, I’m gonna mess with him.     

Al Capone

I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.     

Vito Corleone


Frank Abagnale


Frank Lucas


Lucky Luciano


Tony Montana

Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.     

Michael Corleone


Al Pacino


Lord Acton

I think we have always had a fascination for gangs and gangsters, and I think we always will.     

Ross Kemp

Let me say for the record, I am not a gangster and never have been. I`m not the thief who grabs your purse. I`m not the guy who jacks your car. I`m not down with the people who steal and hurt others. I`m just a brother who fight back.     

Tupac Shakur

Americans accept that gangsters are running the government.     

Tim Robbins


John Gotti

Power wears out those who don’t have it.     

Giulio Andreotti


Mae West