Vincent Bugliosi
Even if a sense of honor and duty were not the primary motivating factors in the Warren Commission's work, simple self-interest would naturally have induced its members not to try to cover up the existence of a conspiracy if, in fact, they found one.
Over a hundred million Americans reject the findings of the Warren Commission, whose report at least ninety-nine out of a hundred have never read.
In my opinion, the Warren Commission's investigation has to be considered the most comprehensive investigation of a crime in history.
A tactic used by authors of virtually every single book I've ever read that propounds a conspiracy theory is to attack an agency as being part of a conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination, but when this same agency comes up with something favorable to the author's position, the author will cite that same agency as credible support for his argument.
As a trial lawyer in front of a jury and an author of true-crime books, credibility has always meant everything to me. My only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others.
The very best testament to the validity of the Warren Commission's findings is that after an unrelenting, close to forty-five-year effort, the Commission's fiercest critics have not been able to produce any new credible evidence that would in any way justify a different conclusion.
One thing I have seen over and over again in life is that there is virtually no correlation between intelligence and common sense. IQ doesn't seem to translate that way.
The question in the Simpson case has never been whether he is guilty or not guilty but, given the facts and circumstances of this case, whether it is possible for him to be innocent. And the answer to that question has always been an unequivocal no.
Contrary to common belief, the presumption of innocence applies only inside a courtroom. It has no applicability elsewhere, although the media do not seem to be aware of this.
I take no pride in having been the first public personality to come out publicly against Simpson. It just happened that way.
Our system, for readily apparent reasons, is far superior to those in nations, mostly totalitarian, which presume an arrested person is guilty and place the burden on the accused to prove his innocence.
I start out with the assumption that a lawyer in a criminal case is going to be incompetent - substantially so. I find my assumption to be rarely wrong. Yet society starts out with the very opposite assumption.
We're a nation of celebrity and hero worshipers, so much so that we make heroes out of those who aren't, such as John Wayne: a patriotic, red-blooded, two-fisted American who spent the Second World War in the trenches on the movie lots of Hollywood.
If there is one thing that I take pride in, it is the fact that I never, ever make a charge without offering a substantial amount of support for it. You may ultimately end up not agreeing with me, but you will have to concede that I offered much evidence in support of my position, something that people frequently do not do.
Doubt . . . impels a search for the truth. It opens the door to knowledge. Faith puts a lock on the door. Indeed, . . . faith anesthetizes the desire to seek knowledge and truth.Collection: Doors
For a lawyer to do less than his utmost is, I strongly feel, a betrayal of his client. Though in criminal trials one tends to focus on the defense attorney and his client the accused, the prosecutor is also a lawyer, and he too has a client: the People. And the People are equally entitled to their day in court, to a fair and impartial trial, and to justice.Collection: Betrayal
The Bible puts forth a strong case for no free will and that's a real problem you know, because the justification for supposedly being punished after death is that you had free will. If you didn't have free will and you did what God predetermined, then how can he punish you?"Collection: Strong
Winning is often simply getting up off the ground one more time than your opponent.Collection: Life
I've always subscribed to an old Chinese proverb that the palest ink is better than the best memory.Collection: Life
Look at what's in front of you, not what you've been told or what you expect or what you want to see.Collection: Looks
And I believe the truth is mighty, and shines by its own light.Collection: Believe
The conspiracy community regularly seizes on one slip of the tongue, misunderstanding, or slight discrepancy to defeat twenty pieces of solid evidence; accepts one witness of theirs, even if he or she is a provable nut, as being far more credible than ten normal witnesses on the other side; treats rumors, even questions, as the equivalent of proof; leaps from the most minuscule of discoveries to the grandest of conclusions; and insists that the failure to explain everything perfectly negates all that is explained.Collection: Discovery
I'm sure it's very obvious . . . how upset I am with incompetence and the lack of common sense in life. If I can sum up the reason . . . it's that these characteristics are not benign. They are responsible for much, if not most, of the great problems, misery, and injustice in the world.Collection: Common Sense
My only master, my only mistress are the facts and the evidence. So if I reach a conclusion, it's only because the evidence took me there.Collection: Mistress
If Christianity cannot present evidence that the soul is immortal, then they have nothing to offer the masses, eternity in heaven with God or hold over their heads suffering forever in hell. They need the immortality of the soul. I did my research, it's not in the Bible, so what do they do? They relied on Judaism, which has always believed in the immortality of the soul. I start checking on that and I look in the Judaica Encyclopedia and what do I find? Their remark that Judaism probably got the immortality of the soul from the Greeks, so I go back further, where it all started with Plato.Collection: Plato
[Faith] is nothing more than wishful thinking, and the wish is no evidence of anything beyond itself. Yet so many religious people take their wishes for reality.Collection: Religious
If Lee Harvey Oswald had nothing to do with President Kennedy's assassination and was framed....this otherwise independent and defiant would-be revolutionary, who disliked taking orders from anyone, turned out to be the most willing and cooperative frame-ee in the history of mankind!! Because the evidence of his guilt is so monumental, that he could have just as well gone around with a large sign on his back declaring in bold letters 'I Just Murdered President John F. Kennedy'!!!Collection: Independent
Waiting for the conspiracy theorists to tell the truth is a little like leaving the front-porch light on for Jimmy Hoffa.Collection: Light
I may have implied on several occasions to several different people that I may have been Jesus Christ, but I haven't decided yet what I am or who I am.Collection: Jesus
All things and all people in life have to sink or swim on their own merits, not their reputation; that just as a wise man can say a foolish thing, a fool can say something wise.Collection: Wise
When books come out on religion today, what are they about, well, Noah's Ark or when we go to heaven, does our body or soul go to heaven? What was the name of the book? The Da Vinci Code. Who is seated at the last supper? Well, as brilliant as Da Vinci was, he didn't know anymore about who was seated at the last super if there ever was a last super than you or I or Yogi Berra. Well, no one is bringing anything new to the table.Collection: Book
One could safely say that David Lifton took folly to an unprecedented level. And considering the monumental foolishness of his colleagues in the conspiracy community, that's saying something.Collection: Community
You don't know what I'm going to say until I say it and that's because I'm only looking at the facts and the evidence.Collection: Facts
The Bible, contrary to what people think, actually puts forth a strong case for no free will, no free will.Collection: Strong
Even though . . . 9/11 happened because . . . Bush's FBI and CIA did not detect the Al Qaeda conspiracy . . . , Bush not only failed to apologize to the nation or the victims' survivors, he demonstrated his total lack of leadership by refusing to fire or even criticize those in these agencies who, like Bush, let this nation down. As in private life, to stimulate excellence, good performances have to be rewarded and gross negligence and incompetence punished.Collection: Fire
There's no immortality of the soul that you can infer from the Bible.Collection: Soul
My only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others.Collection: Objectivity
I don't view myself as a particularly intelligent people, but I do have one ability that I've demonstrated over and over again, that's helped me see things that other people for whatever reason have not seen. That's that most people see what they expect to see, what they want to see, what conventional wisdom tells them to see. I guess it could be stated that most people only hear the music, not the lyrics of human events.Collection: Intelligent
I don't like mansions. They depress me. In fact, I even feel sorry for a rich husband and wife living in a forty-room mansion. They're obviously searching for something they don't have, such as happiness or the respect of others.Collection: Depressing
When your blood is found at the murder scene, that's the end of the ball game, there's nothing more to say.Collection: Blood
The thing that's most uppermost in my mind and will continue to be until I hit a brick wall is that I am dead serious, dead serious about going after George Bush, trying to get him into an American courtroom and prosecute him for what happened in Iraq.Collection: Wall
George Bush is guilty of murder for the deaths of over 4000 young American soldiers who have died in the Iraqi war.Collection: War
I never, never ever make a charge without supporting it. You may not agree with me, but I always offer tremendous amount of support.Collection: Support
In the [John F.] Kennedy case, I believe the absence of a conspiracy can be proved to a virtual certainty.Collection: Believe
We shouldn't forget about the over 100,000, in fact some estimates place it in excess of one million, the over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women and children and babies who've died horrible violent deaths because of George Bush's war.Collection: Baby
Just as a wise man can say something foolish, a fool can say something wise.Collection: Wise
Whenever you hear me talk about anything, you never know what I'm going to say until the words come out of my mouth. I'm not one of these Rush Limbaugh individuals, you know what he's going to say before it comes out of his mouth. Whatever the Democrats say, not 99 percent of the time, 100 percent of the time, he's on the opposite side. That's not the way I am.Collection: Opposites
I only form an opinion when I feel that I've done sufficient research and have sufficient access to information.Collection: Done
To form a strong opinion, you have to be knowledgeable about the subject. You have to have access to all the relevant information. You gotta be literally an expert.Collection: Strong