There is no doubt that this is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world, and it has been done by scientific machinery by nominally civilised men in the name of a great State and one of the leading races of Europe. It is quite clear that all concerned in this crime who may fall into our hands, including the people who only obeyed orders by carrying out the butcheries, should be put to death after their association with the murders has been proved.

I know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it. And I know, which is much worse, and this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. One can be, indeed one must strive to become, tough and philosophical concerning destruction and death, for this is what most of mankind has been best at since we have heard of man. (But remember: most of mankind is not all of mankind.) But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.

The greatest crimes in modern history resulted not just from hatred and greed, but even more so from ignorance and indifference.

Classical Utilitarians...would claim, as Sidgwick did, that the destruction of mankind would be by far the greatest of all conceivable crimes. The badness of this crime would lie in the vast reduction of the possible sum of happiness.

There is, in fact, but one great crime in the universe, and most of the instances of terrestrial wrong-doing are instances of this crime. It is the crime of exploitation—the considering by some beings of themselves as ends, and of others as their means—the refusal to recognize the equal, or the approximately equal, rights of all to life and its legitimate rewards—the crime of acting toward others as one would that others would not act toward him. For millions of years, almost ever since life began, this crime has been committed, in every nook and quarter of the inhabited globe.

But to punish and not to restore, that is the greatest of all offences.

When several imperialist powers seek to plunder the weaker nations of the world, the result is an imperialist world war for the redistribution of colonies. And this crime, the most monstrous in world history, is committed by the bourgeoisie under the banner of “nationalism.”

The principal crime of the human race, the highest guilt charged upon the world, the whole procuring cause of judgment, is idolatry.

The transatlantic slave trade is one of the biggest crimes in the history of humankind. And we continue to live in its shadow. We can only move forward by confronting the racist legacy of slavery together.

S. B. is the greatest crime of modern times. It was committed on principles professed by Rome. It was approved, sanctioned, praised by the papacy. The Holy See went out of its way to signify to the world, by permanent and solemn acts, how entirely it admired a king who slaughtered his subjects treacherously, because they were Protestants. To proclaim forever that because a man is a Protestant it is a pious deed to cut his throat in the night.

War is the largest crime.

A crime, which, though perhaps not considered by law as the highest, is in truth and in fact, the blackest sin, which can contaminate the hands, or pollute the soul of man.

I believe the slave trade to be by far the foulest crime that taints the history of mankind in any Christian or pagan country.

Our nation bringing slaves from Africa was the biggest hate crime of all. Then, when the slaves were freed, there wasn't anywhere for them to go. Then came the reign of terror by the KKK that never really ended. Then there is the fact that none of this stuff is taught in American History, at least not in detail.