Ruthless Quotes - Page 8

• After the film it was raining, a light steady rain. Ruthless neon on the wet streets like busted candy.

  Denis Johnson

  Rain, Light, Neon

  Denis Johnson (2010). “Nobody Move: A Novel”, p.25, Macmillan

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• It is said that it is far more difficult to hold and maintain leadership (liberty) than it is to attain it. Success is a ruthless competitor for it flatters and nourishes our weaknesses and lulls us into complacency. We bask in the sunshine of accomplishment and lose the spirit of humility which helps us visualize all the factors which have contributed to our success. We are apt to forget that we are only one of a team, that in unity there is strength and that we are strong only as long as each unit in our organization functions with precision.

  Samuel J. Tilden

  Leadership, Strong, Team

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• Making out an invitation list for a party brings out the worst in everyone. It is then that our most ruthless estimates of the people we know come into play.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Party, Play, People

  Sydney J. Harris (1953). “Strictly personal”

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• People have nannies and big cars, and they want to go to Maui for Christmas. When there are those kind of stakes involved, people get ruthless.

  Amy Sherman-Palladino

  Christmas, People, Car

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• We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence — on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day

  John F. Kennedy

  Mean, Army, Night

  Address to the American Newspaper Publishers, delivered 27 April 1961, Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York

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• I'm the best ever. I'm the most brutal and vicious, and most ruthless champion there's ever been. There's no one can stop me. Lennox is a conqueror? No, I'm Alexander, he's no Alexander. I'm the best ever! There's never been anybody as ruthless! I'm Sonny Liston, I'm Jack Dempsey. There's no one like me. I'm from their cloth. There's no one that can match me. My style is impetuous, my defense is impregnable, and I'm just ferocious. I want your heart! I want to eat his children! Praise be to Allah!

  Mike Tyson

  Children, Fear, Heart

  YouTube Chanel "sheltonn"/ "Mike Tyson" (Interview with Jim Gray), www.youtube.com. February 5, 2006.

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• As Americans, we want peace - we work and sacrifice for peace. But there can be no peace if our security depends on the will and whims of a ruthless and aggressive dictator. I'm not willing to stake one American life on trusting Saddam Hussein.

  George W. Bush

  Leadership, Sacrifice, Hussein

  Address to the Nation on the Threat of Iraq, delivered 7 October 2002, Cincinnati Union Terminal, Cincinnati, Ohio

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• O neglectful Nature, wherefore art thou thus partial, becoming to some of thy children a tender and benignant mother, to others a most cruel and ruthless stepmother? I see thy children given into slavery to others without ever receiving any benefit, and in lieu of any reward for the services they have done for them they are repaid by the severest punishments.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Mother, Art, Nature

  Leonardo (da Vinci) (1906). “Note Books: Arranged and Rendered Into English, with Introd”

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• I require only three things of a man. He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid.

  Dorothy Parker

  Marriage, Wedding, Stupid

  Dorothy Parker, Stuart Y. Silverstein (2009). “Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

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• I would not question the sincerity of vegetarians who take little interest in Animal Liberation because they give priority to other causes; but when nonvegetarians say that "human problems come first" I cannot help wondering what exactly it is that they are doing for human beings that compels them to continue to support the wasteful, ruthless exploitation of farm animals.

  Peter Singer

  Animal, Giving, Support

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• Love has no thought of self!
  Love buys not with the ruthless usurer's gold
  The loathsome prostitution of a hand
  Without a heart! Love sacrifices all things
  To bless the thing it loves!

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Life, Heart, Sacrifice

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• As I have already urged, the practice of that which is ethically best - what we call goodness or virtue - involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless selfassertion it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect , but shall help his fellows. It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence. Laws and moral precepts are directed to the end of curbing the cosmic process.

  Thomas Huxley

  Struggle, Science, Self

  "Evolution And Ethics".

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• When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government and expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of free government.

  Grover Cleveland

  Patriotic, Government, People

  Second Annual Message, December 1886.

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• Our efforts are not aimed at isolating Israel or de-legitimizing it; rather we want to gain legitimacy for the cause of the people of Palestine. We only aim to de-legitimize the settlement activities and the occupation and apartheid and the logic of ruthless force, and we believe that all the countries of the world stand with us in this regard.

  Mahmoud Abbas

  Country, Believe, Countries Of The World

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• I'm the most brutal and ruthless conquerer there has ever been.

  Mike Tyson

  Crazy, Brutal

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• Years! Years, ye shall mix with me!
  Ye shall grow a part
  Of the laughing Sea;
  Of the moaning heart
  Of the glittered wave
  Of the sun-gleam's dart
  In the ocean-grave.
  Fair, cold, and faithless wert thou, my own!
  For that I love
  Thy heart of stone!
  From the heights above
  To the depths below,
  Where dread things move,
  
  There is naught can show
  A life so trustless! Proud be thy crown!
  Ruthless, like none, save the Sea, alone!

  Voltairine de Cleyre

  Life, Ocean, Moving

  "The Dirge of the Sea". Poem by Voltairine de Cleyre, April 1891.

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• An unfinished book. left unattended, turns feral, and she would need all her focus, will and ruthless determination to tame it again.

  Ruth Ozeki

  Determination, Book, Focus

  Ruth Ozeki (2013). “A Tale for the Time Being: A Novel”, p.70, Penguin

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• And this is the simple truth - that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Life, Loneliness, Simple

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• Sooner or later, fate puts us together with all the people, one by one, who show us what we could, and shouldn’t, let ourselves become. Sooner or later we meet the drunkard, the waster, the betrayer, the ruthless mind, and the hate-filled heart. But fate loads the dice, of course, because we usually find ourselves loving or pitying almost all of those people. And it’s impossible to despise someone you honestly pity, and to shun someone you truly love.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Hate, Heart, Fate

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• Ruthless, greedy, tyrannical, disreputable... they have had one principle worth all the rest, the principle of delight!

  Kenneth Clark

  Principles, Delight, Greedy

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• O ruthless, perilous, imperious hate,
  you can not thwart
  the promptings of my soul.

  Hilda Doolittle

  Hate, Soul, Can Not

  Hilda Doolittle, Louis L. Martz (1986). “Collected Poems 1912-1944”, p.172, New Directions Publishing

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• [Walter Burns is] the archetypal managing editor-ruthless, self-righteous, manipulative, downright maniacal if it means an exclusive, especially one that it can congratulate itself for on its own front page.

  Jay Carr

  Mean, Self, Editors

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• There's also the idea in this country [USA], it's not wholly new, but it's new in its kind of purity, in that you have to be really smart to be really rich. I always say to people, the reason people believe this is a) they've never met a really smart person, and b) they've never met a really rich person. I have met both, and I cannot see the crossover. You do not have to be a genius to get rich. You have to be ruthless to get rich.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Country, Smart, Believe

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Nobody likes to be found out, not even one who has made ruthless confession a part of his profession. Any autobiographer, therefore, at least between the lines, spars with his reader and potential judge.

  Erik Erikson

  Judging, Lines, Likes

  Erik H. Erikson (1977). “Life History and the Historical Moment: Diverse Presentations”, p.142, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Is self-interest a bad thing? We want our leaders to be pure and good, but at the same time we want them to be effective, and to be effective you often have to be ruthless and not bound by ideology or the same morals that we pretend to hold ourselves to.

  Beau Willimon

  Self, Leader, Want

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