Torture Quotes - Page 15

• Was she really beautiful? Was she at least what they call attractive? She was exasperation, she was torture.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Beautiful, Attractive, Exasperation

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1996). “Novels, 1969-1974”

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• Torture can be a two edged sword.

  Christine Feehan

  Two

  Christine Feehan (2010). “Sea Storm”, p.198, Penguin

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• I certainly should have,' he agrees, smiling and thinking what an absurd and universally-accepted bit of nonsense it is, that your best friends must necessarily be the ones who best understand you. As if there weren't far too much understanding in the world already; above all, that understanding between lovers, celebrated in song and story, which is actually such torture that no two of them can bear it without frequent separations or fights.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Song, Fighting, Thinking

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• My life would never contain a convenient, pain-saving plan when it could stretch a problem out into an endless agony of uncertainty and torture.

  James Patterson

  Pain, Agony, Saving

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• Death row is a nightmare to serial killers and ax murderers. For an innocent man, it's a life of mental torture that the human spirit is not equipped to survive.

  John Grisham

  Men, Innocent Man, Serial Killer

  John Grisham (2010). “The Confession”, p.104, Random House

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• Nothing says you care for me better than offering to torture my enemies." He grinned. "No sense doing things halfhearted. And to think, some girls have to endure listening to poetry.

  Maria V. Snyder

  Girl, Thinking, Offering

  Maria V. Snyder (2011). “Outside In”, p.86, Harlequin

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• Mr. Solomon was right the worst kind of torture is watching someone you love get hurt.

  Ally Carter

  Hurt, Someone You Love, Kind

  Ally Carter (2010). “Gallagher Girls: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have To Kill You”, p.157, Hachette UK

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• She sifted, sighed, and stared up at the ceiling, trying to think about anything but Lord Maccoon, her current predicament, or Lord Akeldama's safety. Which meant she could do nothing but reflect on the complex plight of her mama's more recent embroidery project. Thins, in itself, was a worse torture than any her captors could devise.

  Gail Carriger

  Thinking, Safety, Trying

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• I have made up my mind that if there is a God, he will be merciful to the merciful. Upon that rock I stand. That he will not torture the forgiving. Upon that rock I stand. That every man should be true to himself, and that there is no world, no star in which honesty is a crime. Upon that rock I stand.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Stars, Honesty, Men

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.291, Library of Alexandria

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• A man, who can, in cold blood, hunt and torture a poor, innocent animal, cannot feel much compassion for the distress of his own species.

  Frederick The Great

  Men, Compassion, Hunting

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• The right of an individual to refuse to kill, to torture, or to participate in the preparation for the nuclear destruction of humanity seems to me to be fundamental.

  Sean MacBride

  Humanity, Preparation, Nuclear

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• Nothing whatever but the constitutional law, the political structure, of these United States protects any American from arbitrary seizure of his property and his person, from the Gestapo and the Storm Troops, from the concentration camp, the torture chamber, the revolver at the back of his neck in a cellar.

  Rose Wilder Lane

  Government, Law, Political

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• As to Science, she has never sought to ally herself to civil power. She has never attempted to throw odium or inflict social ruin on any human being. She has never subjected anyone to mental torment, physical torture, least of all to death, for the purpose of upholding or promoting her ideas. She presents herself unstained by cruelties and crimes. But in the Vatican-we have only to recall the Inquisition-the hands that are now raised in appeals to the Most Merciful are crimsoned. They have been steeped in blood!

  John William Draper

  Science, Blood, Hands

  John William Draper (1875). “History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science: By John William Draper ...”, p.11, New York, D. Appleton

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• Of course, Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.

  W. H. Auden

  Funny, Science, Simple

  A CertainWorld "Behaviorism" (1970)

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• Someday someone will write a pathology of experimental physics and bring to light all those swindles which subvert our reason, beguile our judgement and, what is worse, stand in the way of any practical progress. The phenomena must be freed once and for all from their grim torture chamber of empiricism, mechanism, and dogmatism; they must be brought before the jury of man's common sense.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Writing, Science, Men

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• Something is wrong. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, crime, torture, corruption and the ice capades. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed. This is not what you expect to find on the resume of a supreme being. It's what you expect from an office temp with a bad attitude.

  George Carlin

  Attitude, War, Ice

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• Urging humans to be superhumans, on pain of death and torture, is the urging of terrible self-abasement at their repeated and inevitable failure to keep the rules.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Pain, Self

  Christopher Hitchens (2011). “God is Not Great”, p.152, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• "Judge not, that ye be not judge"... is an abdication of moral responsibility: it is a moral blank check one gives to others in exchange for a moral blank check one expects for oneself. There is no escape from the fact that men have to make choices; so long as men have to make choices, there is no escape from moral values; so long as moral values are at stake, no moral neutrality is possible. To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accesory to the torture and murder of his victims. The moral principle to adopt... is: "Judge, and be prepared to be judged."

  Ayn Rand

  Fear, Responsibility, Men

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• No, you can take it from an expert in cover-ups-I've lived through Watergate-that nothing less than a resurrected Christ could have caused those men to maintain to their dying whispers that Jesus is alive and is Lord. Two thousand years later, nothing less than the power of the risen Christ could inspire Christians around the world to remain faithful-despite prison, torture, and death.

  Charles Colson

  Christian, Jesus, Easter

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• Jazz: Music invented for the torture of imbeciles.

  Henry Van Dyke

  Sarcastic, Imbeciles, Jazz

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• Torture numbers, and they'll confess to anything.

  Gregg Easterbrook

  Fun, Science, Numbers

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• The belief in eternal torment, still subscribed to by fundamentalist Christian denominations, undoubtedly ranks as the most vicious and reprehensible doctrine of classical Christianity. It has resulted in an incalculable amount of psychological torture, especially among children where it is employed as a terror tactic to prompt obedience.

  George H. Smith

  Christian, Children, Religion

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• Beware of the problem of testing too many hypotheses; the more you torture the data, the more likely they are to confess, but confessions obtained under duress may not be admissible in the court of scientific opinion.

  Stephen Stigler

  Science, Data, May

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• Once, when a religionist denounced me in unmeasured terms, I sent him a card saying, "I am sure you believe that I will go to hell when I die, and that once there I will suffer all the pains and tortures the sadistic ingenuity of your deity can devise and that this torture will continue forever. Isn't that enough for you? Do you have to call me bad names in addition?"

  Isaac Asimov

  Pain, Believe, Names

  Isaac Asimov (2009). “I, Asimov: A Memoir”, p.330, Bantam

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• Christians often threaten atheists with eternal torture. But if we say that they're delusional, they will tell us that we're being rude.

  Mark Thomas

  Christian, Atheist, Rude

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