Remorseless Quotes

• When beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean’s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.

  Herman Melville

  Beauty, Ocean, Heart

  Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.459

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• The sinner does not feel any remorse over his sins, that is because his heart is already dead

  Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya

  Religious, Islamic, Heart

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• The study of Nature makes a man at last as remorseless as Nature.

  H. G. Wells

  Men, Lasts, Study

  H.G. Wells (2009). “The Island of Doctor Moreau”, p.49, Broadview Press

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• Such is the remorseless progression of human society, shedding lives and souls as it goes on its way. It is an ocean into which men sink who have been cast out by the law and consigned, with help most cruelly withheld, to moral death. The sea is the pitiless social darkness into which the penal system casts those it has condemned, an unfathomable waste of misery. The human soul, lost in those depths, may become a corpse. Who shall revive it?

  Victor Hugo

  Ocean, Men, Sea

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• Who feels no ills, should, therefore, fear them; and when fortune smiles, be doubly cautious, lest destruction come remorseless on him, and he fall unpitied.

  Sophocles

  Fall, Prosperity, Destruction

  Sophocles (1848). “Sophocles”, p.122

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• The book, as it stands, seems to me to be one of the most frightful muddles I have ever read, with scarcely a sound proposition in it beginning with page 45 [Hayek provided historical background up to page 45; after that came his theoretical model], and yet it remains a book of some interest, which is likely to leave its mark on the mind of the reader. It is an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in bedlam.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Mistake, Book, Historical

  John Maynard Keynes, Royal Economic Society (Great Britain) (1971). “The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes: The general theory and after: pt. 1, Preparation”

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• I have never accepted what many people have kindly said - namely that I inspired the nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless, and as it proved, unconquerable. It fell to me to express it.

  Winston Churchill

  Creativity, Acceptance, People

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• The car as we know it is on the way out. To a large extent, I deplore its passing, for as a basically old-fashioned machine, it enshrines a basically old-fashioned idea: freedom. In terms of pollution, noise and human life, the price of that freedom may be high, but perhaps the car, by the very muddle and confusion it causes, may be holding back the remorseless spread of the regimented, electronic society.

  J. G. Ballard

  Life, Ideas, Confusion

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• The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them.

  Harold Pinter

  Literature, World, Systematic

  Harold Pinter (2009). “Various Voices: Sixty Years of Prose, Poetry, Politics, 1948-2008”

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• Of all human struggles there is none so treacherous and remorseless as the struggle between the artist man and the mother woman.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Mother, Struggle, Artist

  'Man and Superman' (1903) act 1

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• The lust of gold succeeds the rage of conquest; The lust of gold, unfeeling and remorseless! The last corruption of degenerate man.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Lust, Gold

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1825). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: with Murphy's essay”, p.328

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• She was remorseless, but she lacked method.

  Diana Wynne Jones

  Method

  Diana Wynne Jones (2002). “Wizard's Castle”

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• The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.

  Garrett Hardin

  Essence, Tragedy, Dramatic

  Garrett James Hardin (1995). “The Immigration Dilemma: Avoiding the Tragedy of the Commons”, F A I R-Federation for American Immigration Reform

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• I wanted to feel the blood running back into my veins, even at the cost of annihilation. I wanted to shake the stone and light out of my system. I wanted the dark fecundity of nature, the deep well of the womb, silence, or else the lapping of the black waters of death. I wanted to be that night which the remorseless eye illuminated, a night diapered with stars and trailing comets. To be of night so frighteningly silent, so utterly incomprehensible and eloquent at the same time. Never more to speak or to listen or to think.

  Henry Miller

  Running, Stars, Eye

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• I was very glad that Mr. Attlee described my speeches in the war as expressing the will not only of Parliament but of the whole nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless and, as it proved, unconquerable. It fell to me to express it, and if I found the right words you must remember that I have always earned my living by my pen and by my tongue. It was a nation and race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.

  Winston Churchill

  War, Heart, Race

  Speech at Westminster Hall, London, 30 Nov. 1954

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• Our leaders are cruel because only those willing to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishment. People capable of expressing a full human measure of compassion and empathy toward faraway powerless strangers do not become president of the United States, or vice president, or secretary of state, or national security adviser or secretary of the treasury. Nor do they want to.

  William Blum

  Compassion, People, Empathy

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• Young men kill someone for a handful of coins, then are remorseless, even casual: Hey, man, things happen. And their parents nab the culprit: it was the city, the cops, the system, the crowd, the music. Anyone but him. Anyone but me.

  Anna Quindlen

  Responsibility, Men, Cities

  Anna Quindlen (2010). “Thinking Out Loud: On the Personal, the Political, the Public and the Private”, p.81, Ballantine Books

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• The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier is supposed to function: without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends upon it.

  Ronald Speirs

  Hope, War, Acceptance

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• I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated.

  James Nachtwey

  Photography, Events, Torn Apart

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• How remorseless life is!

  Virginia Woolf

  Life Is

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.175, Wordsworth Editions

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• Remorseless time! fierce spirit of the glass and scythe,--what power can stay him in his silent course, or melt his iron heart with pity!

  George D. Prentice

  Time, Heart, Glasses

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• Politics is never a victory, it's just the remorseless grinding forward of events.

  Robert Harris

  Victory, Events

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• Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.

  Herman Melville

  War, Sharks, Sea

  Herman Melville (2015). “Annotated Moby Dick or, the Whale with English Grammar Exercises: by Herman Melville (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)”, p.438, Powell Publications, LLC

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• I hate and fear 'science' because of my conviction that, for long to come if not for ever, it will be the remorseless enemy of mankind. I see it destroying all simplicity and gentleness of life, all the beauty of the world; I see it restoring barbarism under a mask of civilization; I see it darkening men's minds and hardening their hearts.

  George Gissing

  Hate, Heart, Men

  George Gissing (2008). “The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft”, p.253, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever more dangerous. Jesus had to work on the perilous confines of reason and religion; and a step to the right or left might place him within the grasp of the priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Jesus, Mean, Writing

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