Torture Quotes - Page 29

• The shy man does have some slight revenge upon society for the torture it inflicts upon him.

  Jerome K. Jerome

  Revenge, Men, Doe

  Jerome K. Jerome (2016). “The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow”, p.78, Jerome K. Jerome

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• The thought that I had been captured so soon, without having done anything for the revolution, made me feel ashamed. I thought: at least now, I must carry out my duty well under torture.

  Ashraf Dehghani

  Done, Revolution, Made

  "Torture and Resistance in Iran". Book by Ashraf Dehghani, 1971.

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• Every man should study conciseness in speaking; it is a sign of ignorance not to know that long speeches, though they may please the speaker, are the torture of the hearer.

  Owen Feltham

  Ignorance, Men, Long

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• If you start parsing the cause-and-effect chain backward through time, eventually you land in cosmology - does the story begin with the Big Bang or the out-of-nothing creation of the world by the word of a Southern Baptist god? And that question is even more fraught than any of the others. The stakes couldn't be any higher, because not it's not just a question of life and death, but also a question of life after death or eternal torture after death.

  Kyle Minor

  Land, Life And Death, Southern

  "To Rage Against Meaninglessness". Interview with Matt Bell, logger.believermag.com. February 6, 2014.

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• Torture gives you reliable and unreliable information. That's the reason why most people in the world don't do it. So this idea that you have to torture people in order to protect national security is a false argument, and I reject it.

  John McCain

  Order, Ideas, Giving

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• I believe the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight. That is a source of our strength. That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America's commitment to abide by the Geneva conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend.

  Barack Obama

  War, Believe, Commitment

  Nobel Prize for Peace Acceptance Speech and Lecture, delivered 10 December 2009, Oslo City Hall, Oslo, Norway

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• To me, torture would be, "I can't think what to write in the next sentence. I'm stuck." Torture would be if you didn't have the next idea.

  Steve Martin

  Writing, Thinking, Ideas

  Interview with Meghan Daum, www.believermag.com. May 2005.

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• To discover depravity in those whom we have loved, is one of the most exquisite tortures to a virtuous mind, and the conviction is often rejected before it is finally admitted.

  Ann Radcliffe

  Disappointment, Mind, Conviction

  Ann Radcliffe (1820). “The romance of the forest, by the authoress of 'A Sicilian romance'.”, p.147

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• If it had taught them nothing else, twenty years of living past high school had taught them self-preservation. ... No one was going to risk putting his ego on the line; they would come prepared with dates, flattering clothes, and a well-rehearsed, carefully edited biography. They would all be kind to each other. High school was enough torture for one lifetime.

  Sharyn McCrumb

  School, Past, Self

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• Letter-writing I imagine is counted as 'work' from which you must abstain, and I scribble this letter simply from the self-satisfied notion that you will like to hear from me. You see, I have asked no questions, which are the torture-screws of correspondence. Hence you have nothing to answer.

  George Eliot

  Writing, Self, Answers

  George Eliot (1860). “Life and Letters”, p.671

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• Better be with the dead,
  Whom we to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
  Than on the torture of the mind to lie
  In restless ecstasy.

  William Shakespeare

  Lying, Anxiety, Mind

  'Macbeth' (1606) act 3, sc. 2, l. 11

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• Health is certainly more valuable than money; because it is by health that money is procured; but thousands and millions are of small avail to alleviate the protracted tortures of the gout, to repair the broken organs of sense, or resuscitate the powers of digestion. Poverty is, indeed, an evil from which we naturally fly, but let us not run from one enemy to another, nor take shelter in the arms of sickness.

  Samuel Johnson

  Running, Health, Broken

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1811). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, L. L. D.: In Twelve Volumes”, p.270

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• Beauty is what attracts men naturally, but really I think we dress for other women, not necessarily for men. We torture ourselves every single day, and I wish that we wouldnt because we should all just get along, really.

  Odette Annable

  Men, Thinking, Wish

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• Torture injures everyone who comes into contact with it and corrodes the country that abides it.

  Rene Balcer

  Country, Contact

  "The People v. The Torture Team: Six Questions for Law & Order’s René Balcer" by Scott Horton, harpers.org. October 5, 2009.

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• A question: when is a bed not a bed? When it is angled lie-flat. My back hurts, my legs ache and my clothes are all rumpled - and all because the airline, which claimed to have a bed, actually offered up a torture machine which I prefer to call a slide.

  Richard Quest

  Hurt, Lying, Clothes

  Richard Quest's blog for CNN, August 21, 2007.

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• If I had the capabilities of being something other than I am, I would. It's no fun being an artist. You know what it's like, writing, it's torture.

  John Lennon

  Music, Fun, Writing

  Jeff Burger, John Lennon (2017). “Lennon On Lennon: Conversations With John Lennon”, p.126, Omnibus Press

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• So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year, sends out cards praying for Peace on Earth.

  David C. Coates

  Laughter, Animal, Men

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• I abhor anything that constitutes torture. Water-boarding, its perfectly clear to me it is torture. I never supported extraordinary rendition to torture, always said that Guantanamo should be closed. There is no clash of ideals and pragmatism there.

  David Miliband

  Water, Should, Said

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• And in the general hardening of outlook that set in ... practices which had been long abandoned ... -- imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages and the deportation of whole populations -- not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.

  George Orwell

  War, Practice, Long

  George Orwell (2003). “1984”, Plume Books

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• There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart - an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Heart, Imagination, Sublime

  1839 'The Fall of the House of Usher', in the Gentleman's Magazine, Sep.

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• You can’t pray away the gay, but you can torture a conflicted closet case to death.

  Dan Savage

  Gay, Praying, Closets

  "Bill Maher Panel Hits New Low With Talk Of Angry F**king Michele Bachmann And Rick Santorum" by Glenn Davis, www.mediaite.com. July 16, 2011.

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• I survived this torture which left me paralyzed for years. That's what that night was all about, mutilation, more than violence through sex. I really do feel as though I was psychologically mutilated that night and now I'm trying to put the pieces back together again. Through love, not hatred. And through my music. My strength has been to open again, to life, and my victory is the fact that, despite it all, I kept alive my vulnerability.

  Tori Amos

  Sex, Night, Years

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• Torture, including practices like waterboarding, violates the legal and moral standards of all civilized nations.

  Jerrold Nadler

  Practice, Civilized Nations, Moral

  "No More Clever Wordplay on Torture" by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 15, 2007.

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• We do not need torture as an available instrument of interrogation.

  Jerrold Nadler

  Needs, Instruments, Interrogation

  "No More Clever Wordplay on Torture" by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 15, 2007.

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• I suppose there must be idiots who dream of signing deals with publishers while fully intending to drink martinis in cool bars or ride around on skateboards. But the actual writers I know are experts in neurotic self-torture. Every page of writing is the result of a thousand tiny decisions and desperate acts of will.

  Helen Garner

  Dream, Writing, Self

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