Top 60 Vincent Bugliosi Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I’ve always subscribed to an old Chinese proverb that the palest ink is better than the best memory.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

2. “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.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

3. “This is America, not a banana republic.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

4. “Winning is often simply getting up off the ground one more time than your opponent.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

5. “Waiting for the conspiracy theorists to tell the truth is a little like leaving the front-porch light on for Jimmy Hoffa.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

6. “Hurkos later told the press: “Three men killed Sharon Tate and the other four – and I know who they are. I have identified the killers to the police and told them that these men must be stopped soon. Otherwise they will kill again.” The killers, he added, were friends of Sharon Tate, turned into “frenzied homicidal maniacs” by massive doses of LSD. The killings, he was quoted as saying, erupted during a black magic ritual known as “goona goona,” its suddenness catching the victims unawares.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

7. “You might not agree with me, but I always offer a lot of support.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

8. “Sheriff Don Ward talked to the two miners in Shoshone and.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

9. “The legal term for being one’s own attorney is “in propria persona,” commonly called “pro per.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

10. “Charlie said that death was beautiful, because people feared death.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

11. “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.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

12. “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.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

13. “Since we place so much value on human life, why do we glorify, in a perverse sort of way, the extinguishment of life? The answer to that question, whatever it is, is at least a partial answer to why people continue to be fascinated by Hitler, Jack the Ripper – Manson.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

14. “And I believe the truth is mighty, and shines by its own light.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

15. “The felonious five in their Supreme Court decision never said Gore did anything improperly in Florida.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

16. “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.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

17. “Charlie interpreted the song to mean that the Beatles were telling blackie to get guns and fight whitey.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

18. “My only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

19. “She is the best wife a guy could want. I didn’t realize how good she was until I got in here. I beat her at times. She writes to me all the time. She is going to have a baby.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

20. “You can convince anybody of anything if you just push it at them all of the time. They may not believe it 100 percent, but they will still draw opinions from it, especially if they have no other information to draw their opinions from.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

21. “A very beautiful honey blonde, Sharon Tate, looked into the eyes of the man who the evidence shows just four and a half months later would order her tragic and violent death.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

22. “Linda had been at Spahn Ranch a little over a month when, on the afternoon of Friday, August 8, 1969, Manson told the Family: “Now is the time for Helter Skelter.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

23. “During the first few days a total of forty-three officers would visit the crime scene, looking for weapons and other evidence. In searching the loft above the living room, Sergeant Mike McGann found a film can containing a roll of video-tape. Sergeant Ed Henderson took it to the Police Academy, which had screening facilities. The film showed Sharon and Roman Polanski making love. With a certain delicacy, the tape was not booked into evidence but was returned to the loft where it had been found.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

24. “SATURDAY, AUGUST 9, 1969.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

25. “Sooner or later, all conspiracy theories, no matter how outlandish, must eventually rest a certain set of facts. And facts can be checked.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

26. “Manson returned to Death Valley on December 31, 1968, he told the group, according to Poston, “Are you hep to what the Beatles are saying? Helter Skelter is coming down. The Beatles are telling it like it is.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

27. “The discrepancy or contradiction is the entire story. And being the entire story, it by itself discredits the entire twenty-six volumes of the Warren Commission. Nothing else has to be shown or even argued.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

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28. “Within the pages of The Betrayal of America I prove that these justices were absolutely up to no good, and they deliberately set out to hand the election to George Bush.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

29. “Even without all the independent evidence proving that Oswald killed Kennedy, it was obvious that Oswald’s murder of Tippit alone proved it was he who murdered Kennedy.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

30. “One of the people that wrote a forward to my book is Gerry Spence, whom I admire. Gerry is a friend of mine, and Gerry’s perhaps the leading criminal defense attorney in the country.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

31. “These people have elevated audacity to symphonic and operatic levels. The Florida Supreme Court relied on new law to resolve the election dispute down there.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

32. “Noting that it would be a long trial, with many witnesses, I recall the old Chinese proverb, “The palest ink is better than the best memory,” urging the jury to take detailed notes to aid them in their deliberations.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

33. “Although Capote had taken up the single-suspect theory, the Tate detectives had by now abandoned it. Their sole reason for adopting it in the first place – Garretson – was no longer a factor. Because of the number of victims, the location of their bodies, and the use of two or more weapons, they were now convinced that “at least two suspects” were.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

34. “Manson and the Beatles were mentally attuned.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

35. “No sense makes sense.” Charles Manson.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

36. “I lost court cases and misdemeanor juries, but of felony jury trials I was successful 105 of 106 times.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

37. “On the fifth day the jury sent a note to the bailiff, requesting NoDoz for themselves and sleeping pills for Mr. Kanarek.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

38. “Manson maintained, because he was completely paranoid. Being frightened of everything, he missed nothing.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

39. “Including the jury? I wondered, realizing that if Manson put on the mask of the peace-loving hippie at the trial, I’d be able to use Gregg’s remark to unmask him.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

40. “Crockett doubted if we could ever convict Manson, because “he does nothing himself. His people do it all for him. He doesn’t do anything anybody could pin on him.” He added that “all the women have been programmed to do exactly as he says, and they all have knives. He’s got those girls so programmed that they don’t even exist. They are a copy of him.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

41. “But I can tell you this, without question. She took no drugs at all, except for pot, and not too much. And during her pregnancy there was no question, she was so in love with her pregnancy she would do nothing. I’d pour a glass of wine and she.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

42. “I view myself primarily as a trial lawyer who happens to be writing, as opposed to a writer who happens to be a trial lawyer, so the audience is like a jury to me.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

43. “Whenever people unquestioningly turn over their minds to authoritarian figures to do with as they please – whether it be in a satanic cult or some of the more fanatic offshoots of the Jesus Movement, in the right wing or the far left, or in the mind-bending cults of the new sensitivity – those potentials exist. One hopes that none of these groups will spawn other Charles Mansons.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

44. “A national legal organization is giving very serious thought to using The Betrayal of America as a legal basis for asking the House Judiciary Committee to institute impeachment proceedings against these five justices.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

45. “They also knew something else the credit company investigators had never discovered. There was a darker side to Jay Sebring’s nature that surfaced during numerous interviews conducted by the police. As noted in the official report: “He was considered a ladies’ man and took numerous women to his residence in the Hollywood hills. He would tie the women up with a small sash cord and, if they agreed, would whip them, after which they would have sexual relations.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

46. “I could understand if the detectives had other duties, but they were assigned full time to the case.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

47. “It is said that the principal element that distinguishes a profession from a business is that in a profession, one’s primary obligation is to those he serves, not to himself.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

48. “Whatever you do is what you are supposed to do; you are following your own karma.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

49. “I’d rather kill people than animals.”

— Vincent Bugliosi

50. “The ruling in the Paula Jones case is so silly.”

— Vincent Bugliosi