Aging & Wisdom Quote by Ronald Biggs

The genius of this line is how aggressively it shrinks a notorious crime down to a piece of logistics. Biggs doesn’t talk like a mastermind or a villain; he talks like a guy explaining why he invited someone to help him move a couch. “For a purpose” sounds almost corporate, the language of a project brief. Then he doubles down on the banality: the whole reason, he insists, is that he “knew somebody” who could drive a diesel train. Not greed, not ideology, not even thrill. Just a skill set and a contact.

That deflation is the subtext. Biggs is laundering moral weight through practicality, positioning himself as the responsible planner rather than the reckless criminal. “I was responsible to take along this old guy” is especially slippery: it reframes coercion and complicity as duty of care, like he’s protecting an elderly specialist from being left out. The “old guy” becomes a prop that makes the caper seem almost quaint, more workplace than underworld.

Context matters because Biggs became famous not just for the Great Train Robbery, but for the long afterlife of it: the escapes, the interviews, the media persona. By the time he’s saying this, he’s not only narrating a crime; he’s maintaining a brand. The line plays into a cultural appetite for outlaws as entertainers, where the telling is part of the take. His intent is self-exoneration by minimization: if the job is just assembling the right crew, then the speaker becomes a coordinator, not a conscience.