Stifling Quotes

• We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.

  John Stuart Mill

  Evil, Liberty, Would Be

  On Liberty ch. 2 (1859)

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• One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.

  Henry Miller

  Reason Why, Reason, Impulse

  Henry Miller (1969). “The Books in My Life”, p.120, New Directions Publishing

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• Be able to sneeze without sounding ridiculous. That means neither stifling yourself or spraying your immediate vicinity.

  Marilyn vos Savant

  Mean, Sneezing, Literature

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• But I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure at all. How did I know that someday―at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere―the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?

  Sylvia Plath

  College, Europe, Bells

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.124, Hamilton Books

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• The public must suffer untold pangs from the stiffness, the deliberate stifling of emotion, on the part of many British actors.

  Ivor Novello

  Suffering, Actors, Emotion

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• Romance is mush, stifling those who strive.

  Billy Strayhorn

  Romance, Strive

  Song: Lush Life

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• Nashville's like any other hometown - after a while, it's stifling.

  Justin Townes Earle

  Nashville, Hometown

  "Justin Townes Earle: Steve’s Son? Yes, Just as Talented, but Not Political and Much More Fun". Interview with Jesse Kornbluth, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 12, 2010.

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• I see my way as birds their trackless way. I shall arrive,- what time, what circuit first, I ask not; but unless God send his hail Or blinding fire-balls, sleet or stifling snow, In some time, his good time, I shall arrive: He guides me and the bird. In his good time.

  Robert Browning

  Time, Fire, Snow

  Robert Browning (2015). “Complete Plays of Robert Browning”, p.129, e-artnow sro

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• In Western Europe people perish from the congestion and stifling closeness, but with us it is from the spaciousness.... The expanses are so great that the little man hasn't the resources to orient himself.... This is what I think about Russian suicides.

  Anton Chekhov

  Suicide, Men, Thinking

  Letter to D. V. Grigorovich, February 5, 1888.

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• I found marriage somewhat stifling. I don't know that I am the kind of man who ought to be married.

  Burt Lancaster

  Men, Married, Kind

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• Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.

  Liu Xiaobo

  Mother, Truth, Freedom

  "Liu Xiaobo: 'No Enemies, No Hatred,' Only Courage". Statement prepared for court, www.npr.org. February 16, 2012.

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• It is possible in medicine, even when you intend to do good, to do harm instead. That is why science thrives on actively encouraging criticism rather than stifling it.

  Richard Dawkins

  Medicine, Criticism, Harm

  "Libel laws silence scientists" by Richard Dawkins, www.theguardian.com. September 21, 2009.

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• A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.

  Will Durant

  War, Struggle, Rome

  Will Durant, Ariel Durant (1944). “The Story of Civilization: Caesar and Christ, a history of Roman civilization and of Christianity from their beginnings to A.D. 325”

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• Nothing is so stifling as symmetry. Symmetry is boredom, the quintessence of mourning. Despair yawns. There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering - a hell of boredom.

  Victor Hugo

  Wisdom, Blessing, Boredom

  Victor Hugo, Charles Edwin Wilbour (1987). “Les misérables”, Dutton Adult

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• No hoary falsehood shall be a truth to me; no stifling dogma shall encramp my pen!

  Anton Szandor LaVey

  Dogma, Pens, Falsehood

  "The Satanic Bible". Book by Anton Szandor LaVey, 1969.

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• When under the influence of certain (or some) reasons (or causes) (alcohol, war, etc - added Spir here) the low instincts are unbridled (or unrestrained), the brute appears (or come forward, "apparait", Fr.) and rule over (or dominate), stifling every ("toute", Fr.) noble, generous impulse; it is then the ruin (or downfall or decline) of any humanity in man.

  African Spir

  War, Men, Alcohol

  "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.

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• In behaving respectfully toward all that the land contains, it is possible to imagine a stifling ignorance falling away from us.

  Barry Lopez

  Fall, Ignorance, Land

  Barry Lopez (2013). “Arctic Dreams”, p.18, Open Road Media

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• I had taken some of my solo music into the record label. They didn't really care for the direction I was moving in and I found it really disheartening. They wanted a pop hit, which I understand in terms of making money. I get that. But what they were going to ask of me was something I wasn't prepared to deliver and I felt kind of trapped. I just stopped writing. I just stopped. It was stifling.

  Shirley Manson

  Moving, Taken, Writing

  "Shirley Manson: Rock Star Terminator". Interview with Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna, www.suicidegirls.com. November 11, 2008.

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• Governments are trying to achieve unanimity by stifling any scientist who disagrees. Einstein could not have got funding under the present system.

  Nigel Calder

  Government, Trying, Scientist

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• I believe, indeed, that overemphasis on the purely intellectual attitude, often directed solely to the practical and factual, in our education, has led directly to the impairment of ethical values. I am not thinking so much of the dangers with which technical progress has directly confronted mankind, as of the stifling of mutual human considerations by a 'matter-of-fact' habit of thought which has come to lie like a killing frost upon human relations. Without 'ethical culture' there is no salvation for humanity.

  Albert Einstein

  Attitude, Educational, Lying

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.53, Broadway Books

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• The consistent thinker, the consistently moral man, is either a walking mummy or else, if he has not succeeded in stifling all his vitality, a fanatical monomaniac.

  Aldous Huxley

  Men, Vitality, Ethics

  Aldous Huxley (1956). “The collected works of Aldous Huxley”

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• It's practically my subject, my theme: solitude and community; the weirdness and terrors of solitude: the stifling and consolations of community. Also, the consolations of solitude.

  Derek Mahon

  Community, Solitude, Weirdness

  "Derek Mahon, The Art of Poetry No. 82". Interview with Eamonn Grennan, www.theparisreview.org. Spring 2000.

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• resignation, perhaps the most stifling word in the language.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Language, Resignation

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• We start from the presumption that our people are talented and want to contribute. We accept that, without meaning to, our company is stifling that talent in myriad unseen ways. Finally, we try to identify those impediments and fix them.

  Edwin Catmull

  People, Trying, Unseen

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• I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.

  Jack London

  London, Meteors, Sparks

  Quoted in Bulletin (San Francisco), 2 Dec. 1916.

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