Quotation Explorer - 'Torture'

There are situations in which torture is not merely permissible but morally mandatory.
Soldiers who are not afraid of guns, bombs, capture, torture or death say they are afraid of homosexuals. Clearly we should not be used as soldiers; we should be used as weapons. - anonymous
Some nights are made for torture, or reflection, or the savoring of loneliness. - Poppy Z. Brite
The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul. - John Calvin
Always mystify, torture, mislead, and surprise the audience as much as possible. - Don Roff
I Will Follow Anyone And Tell EveryoneHow They Abduct...And Torture ChildrenIn the Name Of Religion - Widad Akreyi
QUILL, n. An implement of torture yielded by a goose and commonly wielded by an ass. This use of the quill is now obsolete, but its modern equivalent, the steel pen, is wielded by the same everlasting Presence. - Ambrose Bierce
Hell has no benefits, only torture. - John Milton
My heart will never forget what it’s like to fade in and out of time, to never know if one year or a thousand have passed by, to torture yourself with the idea of your soul trapped behind ice for all eternity.I know what torture there is behind ice. - Beth Revis
The doctrine of eternal punishment is in perfect harmony with the savagery of the men who made the orthodox creeds. It is in harmony with torture, with flaying alive, and with burnings. The men who burned their fellow-men for a moment, believed that God would burn his enemies forever. - Robert G. Ingersoll
For the "We" must never be spoken, save by one's choice and as a second thought. This word must never be placed first within a man's soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all evils on earth, the root of man's torture by men, and an unspeakable lie. - Ayn Rand
Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself. - James A. Froude
What torture, this life in society! Often someone is obliging enough to offer me a light, and in order to oblige him I have to fish a cigarette out of my pocket. - Karl Kraus
Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? - Albert Camus
There are infinite ways for your mind to torture it's self. - Stanley Victor Paskavich
Has it tortured you as much as it's tortured me?" He asked. "Don't call it torture when it's self-inflicted. You always have a choice. - Donna Lynn Hope
Don't torture yourself over the past. Use it as a teacher. Whatever happened to you in the past, has only prepared you for now. - Robert Tew
Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procrustes turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians. - Henrik Ibsen
And how unfair it would be to torture your heart in never feeling again, because of a feeling you haven't even tried to understand yet. - Nikki Rowe
The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt. - Thomas Merton
If any religion allows you to torture animals or sacrifice an animal for the sake of procuring god’s favor, then that is not a religion. It is an absurd practice of inhumanity. - Debasish Mridha
Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why. - James Joyce
I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage - Friedrich Nietzsche
I think that anyone who comes upon a Nautilus machine suddenly will agree with me that its prototype was clearly invented at some time in history when torture was considered a reasonable alternative to diplomacy. - Anna Quindlen
In the cause of expedience and the quest for information, man has always been willing to trump his laws and betray his beliefs to legitimize the torture of those who do not share them. - Mark Allen Smith
The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. - George Orwell
Any religion which uses the words such as hell, fire, curse, burning, amputating can never be a religion of love because a religion of love must only use the language of love, must only use only the sweet words of affection, not the words of darkness and torture! - Mehmet Murat ildan
They had long ago forsaken the war of newspapers for the one they carried everywhere with them, and which had no colors, no sides, and which could be fit neatly to any new opportunity that presented itself: ambush, pillage, torture. - Taylor Brown
Mortality was never designed to torture you. It was designed to test you. - Toni Sorenson
To torture a man you have to know his pleasures. - Stanisław Lem
Writers often torture themselves trying to get the words right. Sometimes you must lower your expectations and just finish it. - Don Roff
...the waiting was torture, the worst Ka had ever known. It was this pain, this deadly wait, he now remembered, that had made him afraid to fall in love. - Orhan Pamuk
When you walk into a chocolate store, suddenly the most difficult decision you will ever have to make in your life, is which chocolates to pick! It is pure torture! Especially when you are in Belgium surrounded by Belgian chocolates! - C. JoyBell C.
CLARIONET, n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments that are worse than a clarionet -- two clarionets. - Ambrose Bierce
Being a detective isn't all about torture and murder and monsters. Sometimes it gets truly unpleasant...The fate of the world may depend on whether or not you can bring yourself to visit your relatives. - Derek Landy
The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.Carl JungSwiss psychologist (1875 - 1961) - C.G. Jung
Hate is self-inflicted torture. It hungers for revenge, damage, division, and violence, but is never satiated. Hate is a psychological hell to which we condemn ourselves and endeavor to burn others. - Steve Maraboli
It would be advisable to think of progress in the crudest, most basic terms: that no one should go hungry anymore, that there should be no more torture, no more Auschwitz. Only then will the idea of progress be free from lies. - Theodor W. Adorno
You don’t have a monopoly on pain or loss. It’s a level playing field—we all lose—we all grieve. It’s what remains afterwards that defines us. Guilt is the poison we pump into our own veins. It’s self-inflicted torture. - R.W. Patterson
Thinking is a great joy for a good writer and a great torture for the bad one! - Mehmet Murat ildan
Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being. - Mahavira
Does not people's preoccupation these days with drugs, alcohol, medication and self deception prove that the truth not only hurts, but it is torture to bear? - James Turner
I feel proud that I have been counted worthy to have blood shed by a traitor, and to suffer torture at the hands of those who have undertaken to trail our Flag in the dust. Signed, Yours as Ever, Franklin M. Haven. - Franklin Marion Havens
The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers. - Carl Jung
One of the most dangerous things that can happen to a child is to kill or torture an animal an get away with it. - Margaret Mead
The fires of hell may be made of the very love of God, experienced as torture by those who hate him: the very light of God's truth, hated and fled from in vain by those who love darkness. - Peter Kreeft
Hell means torture; torture means badness. Goodness cannot create or produce badness. Hell does not belong to God; it has been invented by the horrific and sick minded people. - Mehmet Murat ildan
Memories and emotions could be the greatest form of torture. - A. Petrov
We are determined to answer evil with GOOD, slavery with FREEDOM, rape with hope!We are against slavery, rape, beheading, torture, violations of human rights, corruption and misuse of religion! - Widad Akreyi
It's a good thing I'm not the president, because I would prosecute everybody who was involved in that torture, I would prosecute the people who did it, I would prosecute the people who ordered it and they would all go to jail! Because Torture is against the law! - Jesse Ventura
Modern sovereignty, whether expressed through killing in battle or the torture of suspects, brings together the desire to build up and the desire to destroy, to let Aid Agencies offer charity (in its original meaning of "love") while the military offers death. The two are intrinsically connected. - Talal Asad
What a blessing to love someone so much that you long for them at the core of your being. At the same time, when you are separated from that person, that longing is a torture I would not wish on anyone. - Steve Maraboli
Ironically, torture requires empathy, too, in the sense that one cannot deliberately inflict pain without realizing what is painful. - Frans de Waal
The survival of religion is on the basis of torture and punishment; end of torture is end of religion. - M.F. Moonzajer
What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer. - Bertrand Russell
Now I understand that this passion for pain, even in the torture of martyrdom, represents the haste and impatience to no longer be interrupted and disturbed by the evil that can come from this side (meaning this life). - Lou Andreas-Salomé
The teacher pretended that algebra was a perfectly natural affair, to be taken for granted, whereas I didn't even know what numbers were. Mathematics classes became sheer terror and torture to me. I was so intimidated by my incomprehension that I did not dare to ask any questions. - Carl Jung
Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins commited in previous lives. - James Joyce
It is a torture to see people whom you don't like. - Nikita Dudani
Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. - George Orwell
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