Scoundrels Quotes - Page 4

• I am not, and never was, and never could have been, a brutal scoundrel.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Brutal, Could Have Been, Has Beens

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.204, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Equality is. one of the most consummate scoundrels that ever crept from the brain of a political juggler--a fellow who thrusts his hand into the pocket of honest industry or enterprising talent, and squanders their hard-earned profits on profligate idleness or indolent stupidity.

  James Kirke Paulding

  Equality, Hands, Stupidity

  Washington Irving, William Irving, James Kirke Paulding (1857). “Salmagundi: Or, The Whim-whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, Esq. [pseud.] and Others ....”, p.162

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Whether or not patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, national security can be the last refuge of the tyrant.

  Robert Walker, Baron Walker of Gestingthorpe

  Peace, War, Tyrants

  "A gag full of holes". www.theguardian.com. May 11, 2007.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The greater the stupidity, the greater the clarity. Stupidity is brief and guileless, while wit equivocates and hides. Wit is a scoundrel, while stupidity is honest and sincere.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Stupidity, Honest, Clarity

  19 Copy quote

• He who speaks ill of an absent friend, or fails to take his part if attacked by another, that man is a scoundrel.

  Horace

  Men, Speak, Failing

  11 Copy quote

• There was once a community of scoundrels, that is to say, they were not scoundrels, but ordinary people.

  Franz Kafka

  People, Community, Ordinary

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool.

  Unknown

  Religious, Religion, Atheism

  "Have Atheists Hijacked Humanism (And How Humanists Can to Get it Back)" by Mike Mennonno, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 29, 2015.

  367 Copy quote

  Show source

• Whereas scoundrels become reconciled after knifing one another, lovers break up irrevocably over a mere glance or word.

  Honore de Balzac

  Lovers, Break, Glances

  7 Copy quote

• Only a sadistic scoundrel-or a fool-tells the bald truth on social occasions.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Truth, Fool, Sadistic

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.323, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• It didn’t make any more sense to me then than it does now, how life can pile troubles up on a man what don’t deserve them, while letting some of the biggest jackasses and scoundrels alive waltz their way through long, untroubled existences.

  Caleb Carr

  Men, Long, Alive

  Caleb Carr (2010). “The Angel of Darkness”, p.13, Ballantine Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Well, Page, I do wish the Devil had old Cooke, for I am sure I never was so tired of an old dull scoundrel in my life ... But the old-fellows say we must read to gain knowledge; and gain knowledge to make us happy and be admired. Mere jargon! Is there any such thing as happiness in this world? No.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Educational, Tired, Wish

  4 Copy quote

• The price of liberty is, always has been, and always will be blood. The person who is not willing to die for his liberty has already lost it to the first scoundrel who is willing to risk dying to violate that person's liberty. Are you free?

  Andrew W. Ford

  Blood, Risk, Dying

  8 Copy quote

• What would become of the world without the Devil? Under all the different systems of religion that have guided or misguided the world for the last six thousand years, the Devil has been the grand scapegoat. He has had to bear the blame of every thing that has gone wrong. All the evil that gets committed is laid to his door, and he has, besides, the credit of hindering all the good that has never got done at all. If mankind were not thus one and all victims to the Devil, what an irredeemable set of scoundrels they would be obliged to confess themselves!

  Geraldine Jewsbury

  Doors, Years, Evil

  Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury (1845). “Zoe: The History of Two Lives”, p.90

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I would sooner receive injustice in the Queen's courts than justice in a foreign court. I hold that man or woman to be a scoundrel who goes abroad to a foreign court to have the judgments of the Queen's courts overturned, the actions of her Government countermanded or the legislation of Parliament struck down.

  Enoch Powell

  Queens, Men, Justice

  Speech in Ilford (13 March 1982), from Simon Heffer, "Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell", p. 853, 1999.

  89 Copy quote

  Show source

• The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes. Every man who tries to tell it is unpopular, and even when, by the sheer strength of his case, he prevails, he is put down as a scoundrel.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Trying, Mysterious

  Chicago Tribune, May 23, 1926.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am Diogenes the Dog. I nuzzle the kind, bark at the greedy and bite scoundrels.

  Diogenes

  Dog, Kind, Greedy

  115 Copy quote

• His contempt for humanity grew fiercer, and at last he came to realize that the world is made up mostly of fools and scoundrels. It became perfectly clear to him that he could entertain no hope of finding in someone else the same aspirations and antipathies; no hope of linking up with a mind which, like his own, took pleasure in a life of studious decrepitude; no hope of associating an intelligence as sharp and wayward as his own with any author or scholar.

  Joris-Karl Huysmans

  Humanity, Mind, World

  Joris-Karl Huysmans (1959). “Against nature: a new translation of À rebours”

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

  Michael Crichton

  Matter, Way, Firsts

  "Aliens Cause Global Warming". A lecture at the California Institute of Technology, January 17, 2003.

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• The tobacco business is a conspiracy against womanhood and manhood. It owes its origin to that scoundrel Sir Walter Raleigh, who was likewise the founder of American slavery.

  John Harvey Kellogg

  Smoking, Slavery, Conspiracy

  16 Copy quote

• Braggarts and rogues, dogs and scoundrels, drive them out, Harry Potter, see them off!

  J. K. Rowling

  Dog, Potters, Rogues

  4 Copy quote

• When Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel, he ignored the enormous possibilities of the word reform.

  Roscoe Conkling

  Reform, Drs, Lasts

  6 Copy quote

• I could not become anything; neither good nor bad; neither a scoundrel nor an honest man; neither a hero nor an insect. And now I am eking out my days in my corner, taunting myself with the bitter and entirely useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot seriously become anything, that only a fool can become something.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Hero, Intelligent, Men

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The more gifted by nature is a man, the more is deplorable the abuse that he does by using them to shameful ends. A swindler (or crook) of higher condition is more blameworthy than a vulgar scoundrel; an intelligent eveil-doer, having benefited from a higher education, represent a more saddening phenomenon ("phénomène", Fr.) than an unfortune illiterate fellow having commited an offence.

  African Spir

  Men, Intelligent, Abuse

  "Paroles d'un sage: Choix de pensées d'African Spir" ("Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir") by Hélène Claparède-Spir, (p. 48), 1937.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• He will have to learn, I know, that all people are not just- that all men and women are not true. Teach him that for every scoundrel there is a hero that for every enemy there is a friend. Let him learn early that the bullies are the easiest people to lick.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Wise, Wisdom, Hero

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The damnest scoundrel that ever lived, but in the infinite mercy of Providence... also the damnest fool.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Fool, Infinite, Mercy

  4 Copy quote