In reality the world is as full of bad mothers as it is of bad fathers, and it is not the motherless children who become delinquent but the fatherless ones.
One good teacher in a lifetime may sometimes change a delinquent into a solid citizen.
The members of such a society consider that the transgression of a religious ordinance should be punished by civil penalties, and that the violation of a civil duty exposes the delinquent to divine correction.
All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent.
I was, without exaggeration, a delinquent teenager.
My second grade teacher told me I would never graduate high school. That I was going to be a juvenile delinquent.
I was a bit of a delinquent growing up, a very poor student - I nearly failed several grades before dropping out of high school and getting a G.E.D. But I still read a lot. Thrillers and war novels, mostly, along with the occasional literary novel from my parents' bookshelf.
When we first met, I was trying to put a band together. I asked around at school for other guys who wanted to play in a band. Someone told me about a juvenile delinquent they knew who played bongos.
One of my best friends, Mike, had a kid. Just seeing him go through it all was inspiring. It would be so nice to care about someone more than yourself. And Mike is a total delinquent, so if he can do it, I figure I can, too.
If anybody had a reason to become a delinquent, to become a criminal, to be angry at the man, to be angry at the white man, to be angry at America, it's my dad, but he did not feel that way at all.