Callous Quotes

• A callous disregard for the claims of innocent human life is the heart and soul of the evil of terrorism.

  Alan Keyes

  Heart, Evil, Soul

  Alan Keyes' Speech at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, Utah, www.keyesarchives.com. September 24, 2002.

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• It is a callous age; we have seen so many marvels that we are ashamed to marvel more; the seven wonders of the world have become seven thousand wonders.

  L. Frank Baum

  Age, World, Wonder

  "Julius Caesar: An Appreciation of the Hollywood Production". "The Mercury" Newspaper, June 15, 1916.

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• Of praise a mere glutton, he swallow'd what came, And the puff a dunce, he mistook it for fame; Till his relish grown callous, almost to displease, Who pepper'd the highest was surest to please.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Puff, Peppers, Flattery

  Oliver Goldsmith (1839). “Poetical Works”, p.145

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• I'm sarcastic, skeptical, and sometimes callous because I'm still afraid, deep down, of letting myself be hurt.

  Sylvia Plath

  Sarcastic, Hurt, Sometimes

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• Callous greed grows pious very fast.

  Lillian Hellman

  Greed, Grows, Pious

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• Pleasures may turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrows cannot break it. Hearts live by being wounded.

  Oscar Wilde

  Heart, Sorrow, May

  Oscar Wilde, Peter Raby (2008). “The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays: Lady Windermere's Fan; Salome; A Woman of No Importance; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest”, p.151, Oxford Paperbacks

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• CALLOUS, adj. Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils afflicting another.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Evil, Bears, Fortitude

  Ambrose Bierce (2004). “The Devil's Dictionaries: The Best of the Devil's Dictionary and the American Heretic's Dictionary”, p.22, See Sharp Press

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• One of the fundamental reasons why so many doctors become cynical and disillusioned is precisely because, when the abstract idealism has worn thin, they are uncertain about the value of the actual lives of the patients they are treating. This is not because they are callous or personally inhuman: it is because they live in and accept a society which is incapable of knowing what a human life is worth.

  John Berger

  Life, Doctors, Knowing

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• Only people who have been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I'm as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Elliot calls 'hollow men'. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they're doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don't want to.

  Haruki Murakami

  Hurt, Pain, Men

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• As adults, we do know more, but we don't know enough. People can be very unthinkingly callous.

  Dennis Potter

  People, Adults, Enough

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• Evolution is, as well as smarter than we are, infinitely more callous and cruel, and also capricious.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Evolution, Capricious, Wells

  Christopher Hitchens (2011). “God is Not Great”, p.65, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• I'll tell you one thing about me: I'm very private. I always have been private. People think I'm callous, arrogant. I didn't like the media attention.

  Eric Dickerson

  Football, Thinking, Media

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• The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Ebola, Political Will, Nwo

  The Washington Post, December 23, 1973.

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• Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask. ... For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow. There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain.

  Oscar Wilde

  Sad, Stars, Pain

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• Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous-indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.

  Richard Dawkins

  Nature, Learning, Science

  Richard Dawkins (1995). “River out of eden: a Darwinian view of life”, Basic Books (AZ)

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• The political spin in Washington is revolting, just revolting. Its a callous political game.

  Rob Bishop

  Games, Political, Political Games

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• As this world becomes increasingly ugly, callous and materialistic it needs to be reminded that the old fairy stories are rooted in truth, that imagination is of value, that happy endings do, in fact, occur, and that the blue spring mist that make an ugly street look beautiful is just as real a thing as the street itself.

  Elizabeth Goudge

  Beautiful, Spring, Real

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• Hope? Hope is not the absence of tragedy, my friend. It is the conviction that tragedy can be endured. Hope is the spark in you that is not subdued in the face of the vast and callous indifference of the universe. Hope is that which is not shattered by hardship. Hope is the urge to fight what is wrong even when you know it will destroy you. Hope is the decision to love and need someone knowing that they will one day die. For me to promise that there are no obstacles would be the cruelest lie I could possibly tell. That lie is not hope. Hope is the will which needs no lies.

  Travis Beacham

  Love, Lying, Fighting

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• Behind Joy and Laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind Sorrow there is always Sorrow. Pain, unlike Pleasure, wears no mask.

  Oscar Wilde

  Laughter, Pain, Joy

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: De profundis, "Epistola : in carcere et vinculis"”, p.105, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent.

  Virginia Woolf

  Numbness, People, Soul

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2280, Delphi Classics

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• The family is the basic cell of government: it is where we are trained to believe that we are human beings or that we are chattel, it is where we are trained to see the sex and race divisions and become callous to injustice even if it is done to ourselves, to accept as biological a full system of authoritarian government.

  Gloria Steinem

  Family, Sex, Believe

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• I'm not this callous clown walking around laughing at life all the time. I've had some serious, serious problems in my life. But I've come out with a smile.

  John Lydon

  Laughing, Serious, Problem

  "John Lydon On Marriage, Losing A Child And Gargling With Brandy". www.huffingtonpost.com. March 28, 2008.

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• I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Country, Issues, People

  "The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence". Book by John D. Marks and Victor Marchetti, 1974.

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• Who pepper'd the highest was surest to please.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Peppers, Please, Highest

  Oliver Goldsmith, Tobias Smollett, Samuel Johnson, William Shenstone (1861). “Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith, Tobias Smollett, Samuel Johnson and William Shenstone”, p.31

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• CALLOUS, adj. Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils afflicting another. When Zeno was told that one of his enemies was no more he was observed to be deeply moved. "What!" said one of his disciples, "you weep at the death of an enemy?" "Ah, 'tis true," replied the great Stoic; "but you should see me smile at the death of a friend.".

  Ambrose Bierce

  Evil, Death Of A Friend, Enemy

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.31, University of Georgia Press

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