The 100 Best Quotes from 'Criminal Minds'

From famous to philosophical, these quotes are the best!

For 15 seasons and more than 300 episodes, Criminal Minds kept fans on the edges of our seats with its pulse-pounding criminal investigations and gripping characters—several inspired by disturbingly real crimes. From the beginning, the CBS series set itself apart from other ripped-from-the-headlines procedurals (looking at you, Law & Order) by beginning and ending nearly every episode with famous quotes from historical, philosophical or cultural figures. The bookend quotes have been a great way to get fans into the fast-thinking mindsets of characters like Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) and Jennifer "J.J." Jareau (A.J. Cook), while also bringing forward quotes that have served as guiding principles for years.

Related: It's Still Alive! Everything to Know About the Criminal Minds Reboot, Including the First Trailer and Premiere Date

In honor of Criminal Minds' 15 outstanding seasons, which ended Feb. 20, 2020 (but is coming back on Paramount+ on Thanksgiving Day), Parade.com has compiled a list of 100 of the best opening and closing quotes from the previous 14 seasons. Here are the best Criminal Minds quotes.

Criminal Minds season 1 quotes

1. "The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness." —Joseph Conrad
Referenced in "Extreme Aggressor" (Season 1, Episode 1)

2. "The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see." —Winston Churchill
Referenced in "Extreme Aggressor" (Season 1, Episode 1)

3. "Try again, fail again. Fail better." —Samuel Beckett
Referenced in "Extreme Aggressor" (Season 1, Episode 1)

4. "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." —Albert Einstein
Referenced in "Plain Sight" (Season 1, Episode 4)

5. "Birds sing after a storm. Why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?"—Rose Kennedy
Referenced in "Plain Sight" (Season 1, Episode 4)

Related: The 150 Best Quotes About Life

6. "Nothing is so common as the wish to be remarkable." —William Shakespeare
Referenced in "L.D.S.K." (Season 1, Episode 6)

7. "The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?" —Albert Einstein
Referenced in "Derailed" (Season 1, Episode 9)

8. "What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal." —Albert Pine
Referenced in "Riding the Lightning" (Season 1, Episode 14)

9. "In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." —Abraham Lincoln
Referenced in "Unfinished Business" (Season 1, Episode 15)

Related: See the Criminal Minds Cast Through the Years

Criminal Minds season 2 quotes

10. "It has been said that time heals all wounds. I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue, and the pain lessens, but it is never gone." —Rose Kennedy
Referenced in "The Fisher King, Part 2" (Season 2, Episode 1)

11. "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." —Oscar Wilde
Referenced in "Psychodrama" (Season 2, Episode 4)

12. "Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it." —Helen Keller
Referenced in "Aftermath" (Season 2, Episode 5)

13. "It's not so important who starts the game, but who finishes it." —Erich Fromm
Referenced in "North Mammon" (Season 2, Episode 7)

14. "In order to learn the most important lessons in life, one must each day surmount a fear." —Ralph Waldo Emerson
Referenced in "Lessons Learned" (Season 2, Episode 10)

15. "All secrets are deep. All secrets become dark. That's in the nature of secrets."—Corey Doctorrow
Referenced in "Profiler, Profiled" (Season 2, Episode 12)

16. "The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living." —Cicero
Referenced in "Fear and Loathing" (Season 2, Episode 16)

17. "There can be no good without evil." —Russian proverb
Referenced in "Honor Among Thieves" (Season 2, Episode 20)

Criminal Minds season 3 quotes

18. "Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars." —Khalil Gibran
Referenced in "The Perfect Storm" (Season 3, Episode 2)

19. "Love all. Trust a few. Do wrong to none." —William Shakespeare
Referenced in "Penelope" (Season 3, Episode 9)

20. "A woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself." —Susan B. Anthony
Referenced in "Tabula Rasa" (Season 3, Episode 19)

Criminal Minds season 4 quotes

21. "We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will." —Chuck Palahniuk
Referenced in "The Angel Maker" (Season 4, Episode 2)

22. "We are all brothers under the skin, and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it." —Ayn Rand
Referenced in "Brothers in Arms" (Season 4, Episode 10)

Criminal Minds season 5 quotes

23. "So much of what is best in us is bound up in our love of family, that it remains the measure of our stability because it measures our sense of loyalty." —Haniel Long
Referenced in "100" (Season 5, Episode 9)

24. "There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They are messengers of overwhelming grief and unspeakable love." —Washington Irving
Referenced in "Retaliation" (Season 5, Episode 11)

25. "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."—Sir Walter Scott
Referenced in "Parasite" (Season 5, Episode 14)

26. "Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all."—Emily Dickinson
Referenced in "Mosley Lane" (Season 5, Episode 16)

27. "The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."—George Bernard Shaw
Referenced in "The Internet is Forever" (Season 5, Episode 22)

Criminal Minds season 6 quotes

28. "No man chooses evil because it is evil he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks."—Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Referenced in "Corazón" (Season 6, Episode 12)

29. "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched—they must be felt with the heart."—Helen Keller
Referenced in "Corazón" (Season 6, Episode 12)

30. "And yet to every bad there's a worse."—Thomas Hardy
Referenced in "Supply and Demand" (Season 6, Episode 24)

Criminal Minds season 7 quotes

31. "Find the place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain."—Joseph Campbell
Referenced in "Hope" (Season 7, Episode 8)

32. "Love is giving someone the ability to destroy you, but trusting them not to." —Unknown
Referenced in "I Love You Tommy Brown" (Season 7, Episode 17)

33. "To the living, we owe respect. But to the dead, we owe only the truth." —Voltaire
Referenced in "Profiling 101" (Season 7, Episode 22)

Criminal Minds season 8 quotes

34. "One of the deep secrets in life is that all that is really worth doing is what we do for others." —Lewis Carroll
Referenced in "Through the Looking Glass" (Season 8, Episode 3)

35. "The greatest good you can do for another, is not to share your own riches, but to reveal to him, his own." —Benjamin Disraeli
Referenced in "The Apprenticeship" (Season 8, Episode 6)

36. "The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life." —Richard Bach
Referenced in "Brothers Hotchner" (Season 8, Episode 23)

37. "Death ends a life, not a relationship." —Mitch Albom
Referenced in "In Blood" (Season 9, Episode 6)

38. "There is no terror after the bang of the gun; only the anticipation in it." —Alfred Hitchcock
Referenced in "The Return" (Season 9, Episode 8)

Criminal Minds season 9 quotes

39. The universe doesn’t like the secrets. It conspires to reveal the truth to lead you to it." —Lisa Unger
Referenced in "Strange Fruit" (Season 9, Episode 9)

40. Forgiveness does not change the past but it does enlarge the future." —Paul Boese
Referenced in "The Road Home" (Season 9, Episode 13)

41. "Beware the fury of a patient man." —John Dryden
Referenced in "The Road Home" (Season 9, Episode 13)

42. "When you look into an abyss...The abyss looks into you." —Nietzsche
Referenced in "200" (Season 9, Episode 14)

43. "There is no footprint too small to leave an imprint on this world."—Unknown
Referenced in "Gabby" (Season 9, Episode 16)

44. "It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease that to know what sort of disease a person has."—Hippocrates
Referenced in "Rabid" (Season 9, Episode 18)

Criminal Minds season 10 quotes

45. "I remained too much in my head and ended up losing my mind." —Edgar Allan Poe
Referenced in "X" (Season 10, Episode 1)

46. "Just because everything's different doesn’t mean anything has changed." —Irene Peter
Referenced in "X" (Season 10, Episode 1)

47. "We knew the world would not be the same. Some people laughed. A few people cried. Most people were silent." —J. Robert Oppenheimer
Referenced in "A Thousand Sons" (Season 10, Episode 3)

48. "Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of the truth." —Ludwig B?rne
Referenced in "The Itch" (Season 10, Episode 4)

49. "Deep vengeance is the daughter of deep silence." —Vittorio Alfieri
Referenced in "If the Shoe Fits" (Season 10, Episode 5)

50. "Na?veté in grown ups is often charming. But when coupled with vanity, it is indistinguishable from stupidity." —Eric Hoffer
Referenced in "Hashtag" (Season 10, Episode 7)

51. "There is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which rightly understood, is solitude made perfect." —Robert Louis Stevenson
Referenced in "Hashtag" (Season 10, Episode 7)

52. "How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours." —Wayne Dyer
Referenced in "The Boys of Sudworth Place" (Season 10, Episode 8)

53. "Our moral responsibility is not to stop the future, but to shape it. To channel our destiny in humane directions and to ease the trauma of transition." —Alvin Toffler
Referenced in "The Boys of Sudworth Place" (Season 10, Episode 8)

54. "Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." —John F. Kennedy (JFK Quotes)
Referenced in "Fate" (Season 10, Episode 9)

55. "When it comes to life, we spin our own yarn. And where we end up is really in fact where we always intended to be." —Julia Glass
Referenced in "Fate" (Season 10, Episode 9)

56. "Remove my sin and I will be clean. Wash me and I will be whiter than snow." —Psalm 51
Referenced in "Amelia Porter" (Season 10, Episode 10)

57. "Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not, and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad." —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Referenced in "The Forever People" (Season 10, Episode 11)

58. "As life runs on, the road grows strange with faces new and near the end, the milestones into headstones change, 'neath every one a friend." —James Russell Lowell
Referenced in "Anonymous" (Season 10, Episode 12)

59. "The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone." —Harriet Beecher Stowe
Referenced in "Nelson's Sparrow" (Season 10, Episode 13)

60. "When a good man is hurt, all who would be called good must suffer with him." —Euripides
Referenced in "Nelson's Sparrow" (Season 10, Episode 13)

61. "The truth is rarely pure and never simple." —Oscar Wilde
Referenced in "Rock Creek Park" (Season 10, Episode 18)

62. "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success."
—Henry Ford
Referenced in "Beyond Borders" (Season 10, Episode 19)

63. "We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility of our future." —George Bernard Shaw
Referenced in "A Place at the Table" (Season 10, Episode 20)

64. "Your memory is a monster. It summons with will of its own. You think you have a memory but it has you." —John Irving
Referenced in "Mr. Scratch" (Season 10, Episode 21)

65. It is the man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways." —Buddha
Referenced in "Protection" (Season 10, Episode 22)

66. "The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch without doing anything." —Albert Einstein
Referenced in "The Hunt" (Season 10, Episode 23)

67. "Life is about choices. Some we regret. Some we’re proud of. We are what we choose to be." — Graham Brown
Referenced in "The Hunt" (Season 10, Episode 23)

Criminal Minds season 11 quotes

68. "Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work."—Aristotle
Referenced in "The Job" (Season 11, Episode 1)

69. "Courage is grace under pressure." —Ernest Hemingway
Referenced in "The Job" (Season 11, Episode 1)

70. "It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped." —Tony Robbins
Referenced in "The Witness" (Season 11, Episode 2)

71. "The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we’re in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in some ways we’re not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence." —Paul Auster
Referenced in "The Witness" (Season 11, Episode 2)

72. "And think not that you can direct the course of love. For love finds you worthy directs your course." —Khalil Gibran's The Prophet
Referenced in "'Til Death Do Us Part" (Season 11, Episode 3)

73. "All sins tend to be addictive. And the terminal point of addiction is damnation." —W.H. Auden
Referenced in "Outlaw" (Season 11, Episode 4)

74. "Ghosts were created when the first man woke in the night." —J.M. Barrie
Referenced in "The Night Watch" (Season 11, Episode 5)

75. "We are all sharks, circling, and waiting for traces of blood to appear in the water." —Allan Clark
Referenced in "Target Rich" (Season 11, Episode 7)

76. "To a father nothing is dearer than a daughter." —Euripides
Referenced in "Target Rich" (Season 11, Episode 7)

77. "You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body but you will never imprison my mind." —Mahatma Gandhi
Referenced in "Awake" (Season 11, Episode 8)

78. "Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death." —Coco Chanel
Referenced in "Awake" (Season 11, Episode 8)

79. "The enemies are within the gates. It is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend." —Marcus Tullius Cicero
Referenced in "Internal Affairs" (Season 11, Episode 9)

80. "The clock talked loud. I threw it away. It scared me when it talked." —Tillie Olsen
Referenced in "Future Perfect" (Season 11, Episode 10)

81. "Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to struggle against entropy." —Vaclav Havel
Referenced in "Entropy" (Season 11, Episode 11)

82. "To educate a person in the mind but not in morals is to educate a menace to society." —Theodore Roosevelt
Referenced in "Drive" (Season 11, Episode 12)

83. "A man’s very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust and beats his breast and tells all the sins of his life." —Oscar Wilde
Referenced in "Drive" (Season 11, Episode 12)

84. "The heart of a mother is a deep abyss, at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness." —Honoré de Balzac
Referenced in "The Bond" (Season 11, Episode 13)

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85. "The influence of a mother in the lives of her children is beyond calculation." —James E. Faust
Referenced in "The Bond" (Season 11, Episode 13)

86. "By the will art thou lost, by the will art thou found, by the will art thou free, captive, and bound." —Angelus Silesius
Referenced in "Hostage" (Season 11, Episode 14)

87. "Revenge is an act of passion, vengeance of justice." —Samuel Johnson
Referenced in "Hostage" (Season 11, Episode 14)

88. "The darkness always lies." —Anthony Liccione
Referenced in "A Badge and a Gun" (Season 11, Episode 15)

89. "You see what power is — holding someone else’s fear in our hand and showing it to them." — Amy Tan
Referenced in "A Badge and a Gun" (Season 11, Episode 15)

90. "No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself." —John Steinbeck
Referenced in "Devil's Backbone" (Season 11, Episode 21)

91. "The sea is dangerous and its storms terrible, but these obstacles have never been sufficient reason to remain ashore." —Ferdinand Magellan
Referenced in "The Storm" (Season 11, Episode 22)

Criminal Minds season 12 quotes

92. "God sometimes takes us into troubled waters, not to drown us, but to cleanse us." —Unknown
Referenced in "Scarecrow" (Season 12, Episode 8)

93. "We all have a monster within; the difference is in degree, not in kind." —Douglas Preston
Referenced in "Alpha Male" (Season 12, Episode 15)

94. "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." —Soren Kirkegaard
Referenced in "Unforgettable" (Season 12, Episode 20)

Criminal Minds season 13 quotes

95. "You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that they will somehow connect in your future." —Steve Jobs
Referenced in "To a Better Place" (Season 13, Episode 2)

96. "People like to say that the conflict is between good and evil. The real conflict is between truth and lies." —Don Miguel Ruiz
Referenced in "Lucky Strikes" (Season 13, Episode 6)

97. "Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die." —Anonymous
Referenced in "All You Can Eat" (Season 13, Episode 20)

Criminal Minds season 14 quotes

98. "We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality." —Iris Murdoch
Referenced in "Innocence" (Season 14, Episode 4)

99. "The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned." —Maya Angelou
Referenced in "Ashley" (Season 14, Episode 8)

100. "The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life." —Richard Bach
Referenced in "Broken Wing" (Season 14, Episode 9)

Next, See Inside the Home of Criminal Minds Composers Marc and Steffan Fantini