Joseph “Yellow Kid” Weil, a prolific and successful swindler—he reportedly once talked the detective who was escorting him to prison into buying $30,000 in phony stock— here’s a collection of quotes in the same vein:
“Each of my victims had larceny in his heart. I never fleeced anyone who could not afford to pay my price for a lesson in honesty. A truly honest man would never have had my schemes.”
Weil wrote: “The desire to get something for nothing has been very costly to many people who have dealt with me and other con men. But I have found that this is the way it works. The average person, in my estimation, is ninety-nine percent animal and one percent human. The ninety-nine percent that is animal causes very little trouble. But the one percent that is human causes all our woes. When people learn – as I doubt they will – that they can’t get something for nothing, crime will diminish, and we shall live in greater harmony.”
“Sure, I am a con man, the best, but I’ve always taken from those who can afford the education. I always left them enough to survive. Never send them to the river – that was my motto.”
“They wanted something for nothing,” he once explained. “I gave them nothing for something.”
Hmm, why does this sound to me like a case against the existence of honest voters?