Quotes about anger
page 4

Horace photo

“Let hopes and sorrows, fears and angers be,
And think each day that dawns the last you'll see;
For so the hour that greets you unforeseen
Will bring with it enjoyment twice as keen.”

Inter spem curamque, timores inter et iras, Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum: Grata superveniet quae non sperabitur hora.

Book I, epistle iv, line 12 (translated by John Conington)
Epistles (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)

Michael Jordan photo
Richard Harris Barham photo
Charlotte Perkins Gilman photo

“Said I, in scorn all burning hot,
In rage and anger high,
"You ignominious idiot,
Those wings are made to fly!"”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

A Conservative.
In this Our World : Poems (1898)

Thich Nhat Hanh photo

“When you understand the roots of anger in yourself and in the other, your mind will enjoy true peace, joy and lightness”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Teachings on Love (2005) Full Circle Publishing ISBN 81-7621-167-2

Robert Jordan photo

“Anger narrowed the vision and made for foolish choices.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Source: (January 2004), Chapter 1: The Hook. p. 8

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
Alan Moore photo
Yanni photo
Nikos Kazantzakis photo
Mr. T photo

“Anger - use it, but don't lose it!”

Mr. T (1952) American actor and retired professional wrestler

Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool (1984)

“What's the dominant emotion associated with purity? Anger. The most aggressive people are the ones who insist on being utterly pure. It's responsible for countless wars at all levels of society. Far better to have no aspiration, no hope and relate to things just as they are.”

Ken McLeod (1948) Canadian lama

Heart Sutra Workshop http://www.unfetteredmind.org/heart-sutra-commentary-3#sect13. Unfettered Mind http://www.unfetteredmind.org. (2008-09-13) (Topic: Life)

Donald J. Trump photo
Bell Hooks photo

“We resist hegemonic dominance of feminist thought by insisting that it is a theory in the making, that we must necessarily criticize, question, re-examine, and explore new possibilities. My persistent critique has been informed by my status as a member of an oppressed group, experience of sexist exploitation and discrimination, and the sense that prevailing feminist analysis has not been the force shaping my feminist consciousness. This is true for many women. There are white women who had never considered resisting male dominance until the feminist movement created an awareness that they could and should. My awareness of feminist struggle was stimulated by social circumstance. Growing up in a Southern, black, father-dominated, working class household, I experienced (as did my mother, my sisters, and my brother) varying degrees of patriarchal tyranny and it made me angry-it made us all angry. Anger led me to question the politics of male dominance and enabled me to resist sexist socialization. Frequently, white feminists act as if black women did not know sexist oppression existed until they voiced feminist sentiment. They believe they are providing black women with "the" analysis and "the" program for liberation. They do not understand, cannot even imagine, that black women, as well as other groups of women who live daily in oppressive situations, often acquire an awareness of patriarchal politics from their lived experience, just as they develop strategies of resistance (even though they may not resist on a sustained or organized basis). These black women observed white feminist focus on male tyranny and women's oppression as if it were a "new" revelation and felt such a focus had little impact on their lives. To them it was just another indication of the privileged living conditions of middle and upper class white women that they would need a theory to inform them that they were "oppressed." The implication being that people who are truly oppressed know it even though they may not be engaged in organized resistance or are unable to articulate in written form the nature of their oppression. These black women saw nothing liberatory in party line analyses of women's oppression. Neither the fact that black women have not organized collectively in huge numbers around the issues of "feminism" (many of us do not know or use the term) nor the fact that we have not had access to the machinery of power that would allow us to share our analyses or theories about gender with the American public negate its presence in our lives or place us in a position of dependency in relationship to those white and non-white feminists who address a larger audience.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory, p. 10.

David Dixon Porter photo
Joan Rivers photo

“Anger is a symptom, a way of cloaking and expressing feelings too awful to experience directly—hurt, bitterness, grief and, most of all, fear.”

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American comedian, actress, and television host

As quoted in Reader's Digest Quotable Quotes (1997), p. 87

Jennifer Beals photo
Hesiod photo
Thich Nhat Hanh photo

“When you feel anger arising, remember to return to your breathing and follow it. The other person may see that you are practicing, and she may even apologize.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Teachings on Love (2005) Full Circle Publishing ISBN 81-7621-167-2

Francesco Petrarca photo

“Five enemies of peace inhabit with us — avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.”

De vita solitaria (1346) as quoted in Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing‎ (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 144

Dylan Moran photo
Samuel Butler photo
Gautama Buddha photo

“Conquer anger with love, evil with good, meanness with generosity, and lies with truth.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Khuddaka Nikaya (Minor Collection), Dhammapada, Ch. 17, Verse 223

Anthony Burgess photo
John Holloway photo
Christopher Marlowe photo

“My swelling heart for very anger breaks.”

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) English dramatist, poet and translator

King Edward, Act II, scene ii, line 197
Edward II (c. 1592)

“Professor S. A. A. Rizvi gives some graphic details of this dream described by Shah Waliullah himself in his Fuyûd al-Harmayn which he wrote soon after his return to Indian in 1732: “In the same vision he saw that the king of the kafirs had seized Muslim towns, plundered their wealth and enslaved their children. Earlier the king had introduced infidelity amongst the faithful and banished Islamic practices. Such a situation infuriated Allah and made Him angry with His creatures. The Shah then witnessed the expression of His fury in the mala’ala (a realm where objects and events are shaped before appearing on earth) which in turn gave rise to Shah’s own wrath. Then the Shah found himself amongst a gathering of racial groups such as Turks, Uzbeks and Arabs, some riding camels, others horses. They seemed to him very like pilgrims in the Arafat. The Shah’s temper exasperated the pilgrims who began to question him about the nature of the divine command. This was the point, he answered, from which all worldly organizations would begin to disintegrate and revert to anarchy. When asked how long such a situation would last, Shah Wali-Allah’s reply was until Allah’s anger had subsided… Shah Wali-Allah and the pilgrims then travelled from town to town slaughtering the infidels. Ultimately they reached Ajmer, slaughtered the nonbelievers there, liberated the town and imprisoned the infidel king. Then the Shah saw the infidel king with the Muslim army, led by its king, who then ordered that the infidel monarch be killed. The bloody slaughter prompted the Shah to say that divine mercy was on the side of the Muslims.””

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

S.A.A. Rizvi, Shah Wali-Allah and His Times, Canberra. 1980, p.218. Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (1995). Muslim separatism: Causes and consequences. ISBN 9788185990262

Andrew Vachss photo
Alphonse Daudet photo

“Hatred is the anger of the weak.”

Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897) French novelist

La haine, c'est la colère des faibles!
Lettres de mon Moulin (1869; repr. Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1882) p. 19; John P. Macgregor (trans.) Letters from My Mill (New York: Taplinger, 1967) p. 18.

Warren Farrell photo

“What’s true is that everyone is uncomfortable with expressing anger and being critical. Anger and criticism generates rejection. And everyone hates rejection.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 21.

David Kurten photo

“It doesn’t matter that the people of the UK voted for Brexit, and the people of the USA voted for Donald Trump — the anti-democrats of the left are incandescent with anger. Their programme of cultural destruction and managed decline of the West has fallen apart at the ballot box as the quiet, dignified conservative majority voted peacefully to take back control of their countries and reject mass immigration, radical Islam, and political correctness.”

David Kurten (1971) British politician

Left Rages Against Trump Tweets While Embracing Muslim MP Who Tweeted Grooming Victims Should ‘Shut Up for the Sake of Diversity’ http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/12/06/left-rages-against-trump-tweets-embracing-politicians-grooming-victims-shut-up/ (December 6, 2017)

Nigel Cumberland photo

“Refusing to forgive never made anyone feel better about anything. All you are doing is holding on to feelings of upset, anger and jealousy and that can never be good. I once read that being angry and unforgiving towards someone else is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Robert Barron (bishop) photo
Jeff Flake photo
Girolamo Cardano photo
Neil Peart photo
Satyananda Saraswati photo
Charles Darwin photo

“Even insects express anger, terror, jealousy, and love by their stridulation.”

Source: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), chapter XIV: "Concluding Remarks and Summary", page 350

Plutarch photo
Enoch Powell photo
George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax photo

“Anger is never without an Argument, but seldom with a good one.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

Of Anger.
Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Political Thoughts and Reflections

Jesse Helms photo
Clarence Thomas photo
E.M. Forster photo

“Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.”

Ch. 19 http://books.google.com/books?id=G7xfuc7lWvMC&q=%22Personal+relations+are+the+important+thing+for+ever+and+ever+and+not+this+outer+life+of+telegrams+and+anger%22&pg=PA199#v=onepage
Howards End (1910)

Sinclair Lewis photo
Keira Knightley photo
William Gibson photo
Guru Tegh Bahadur photo

“One who is not perturbed by misfortune, who is beyond comfort, attachment and fear, who considers gold as dust. He neither speaks ill of others nor feels elated by praise and shuns greed, attachments and arrogance. He is indifferent to ecstasy and tragedy, is not affected by honors or humiliations. He renounces expectations, greed. He is neither attached to the worldliness, nor lets senses and anger affect him. In such a person resides God.”

Guru Tegh Bahadur (1621–1675) The ninth Guru of Sikhism

Guru Tegh Bahadur, Sorath 633 (Translated by Gopal Singh), Tegh Bahadur (Translated by Gopal Singh) (2005). Mahalla nawan: compositions of Guru Tegh Bahādur-the ninth guru (from Sri Guru Granth Sahib): Bāṇī Gurū Tega Bahādara. Allied Publishers. pp. xxviii–xxxiii, 15–27. ISBN 978-81-7764-897-3.

Starhawk photo

“We need to fully feel and express our emotions without worrying that they are likely to cause harm to another. But intensely and obsessively brooding on one's anger or resentment is not a good thing to do.”

Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan

The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess (1979)

Agatha Christie photo

“There was no emotion in my blood. There was no anger. There was nothing. It was dead silence in my brain.”

Mark Chapman (1955) American assassin

Mark Chapman explaining how he felt when he committed murder http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2310873.stm

George H. W. Bush photo

“Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the identity of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

Speech at CIA headquarters to Agency employees (26 April 1999) https://www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/1999/bush_speech_042699.html

Anaïs Nin photo

“He was insane with anger. Or is all insanity anger?”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Sallust photo

“It becomes all men, Senators, who deliberate on dubious matters, to be influenced neither by hatred, affection, anger, nor pity.”
Omnes homines, patres conscripti, qui de rebus dubiis consultant, ab odio, amicitia, ira atque misericordia vacuos esse decet.

Sallust (-86–-34 BC) Roman historian, politician

Source: Bellum Catilinae (c. 44 BC), Chapter LI, section 1

“The excursus upon the origin of Odysseus’ scar is not basically different from the many passages in which a newly introduced character, or even a newly appearing object or implement, though it be in the thick of a battle, is described as to its nature and origin; or in which, upon the appearance of a god, we are told where he last was, what he was doing there, and by what road he reached the scene; indeed, even the Homeric epithets seem to me in the final analysis to be traceable to the same need for an externalization of phenomena in terms perceptible to the senses. Here is the scar, which comes up in the course of the narrative; and Homer’s feeling simply will not permit him to see it appear out of the darkness of an unilluminated past; it must be set in full light, and with it a portion of the hero’s boyhood. … To be sure, the aesthetic effect thus produced was soon noticed and thereafter consciously sought; but the more original cause must have lain in the basic impulse of the Homeric style: to represent phenomena in a fully externalized form, visible and palpable in all their parts, and completely fixed in their spatial and temporal relations. Nor do psychological processes receive any other treatment: here too nothing must remain hidden and unexpressed. With the utmost fullness, with an orderliness which even passion does not disturb, Homer’s personages vent their inmost hearts in speech; what they do not say to others, they speak in their own minds, so that the reader is informed of it. Much that is terrible takes place in the Homeric poems, but it seldom takes place wordlessly: Polyphemus talks to Odysseus; Odysseus talks to the suitors when he begins to kill them; Hector and Achilles talk at length, before battle and after; and no speech is so filled with anger or scorn that the particles which express logical and grammatical connections are lacking or out of place.”

Source: Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946), p. 5

André Maurois photo
Bill Clinton photo
Czeslaw Milosz photo

“Earth, what have I to do with thee?
With your meadows where dumb beasts
Grazed before the deluge without lifting their heads?
What have I to do with your implacable births?
So why this gracious melancholia?
Is it because anger is no use?”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"A Portal" (1976), trans. Czesław Miłosz and Robert Hass
Hymn of the Pearl (1981)

Marcus Aurelius photo
Russell Brand photo
Queen Rania of Jordan photo
Warren Farrell photo
James Thurber photo
Bernice King photo
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo

“Aristotle (De Anima, I. 1) makes in the first place the general remark that it appears as if the soul must, on the one hand, be regarded in its freedom as independent and as separable from the body, since in thinking it is independent; and, on the other hand, since in the emotions it appears to be united with the body and not separate, it must also be looked on as being inseparable from it; for the emotions show themselves as materialized Notions (λόγοι έννοια), as material modes of what is spiritual. With this a twofold method of considering the soul, also known to Aristotle, comes into play, namely the purely rational or logical view, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the physical or physiological; these we still see practiced side by side. According to the one view, anger, for instance, is looked on as an eager desire for retaliation or the like; according to the other view it is the surging upward of the heartblood and the warm element in man. The former is the rational, the latter the material view of anger; just as one man may define a house as a shelter against wind, rain, and other destructive agencies, while another defines it as consisting of wood and stone; that is to say, the former gives the determination and the form, or the purpose of the thing, while the latter specifies the material it is made of, and its necessary conditions.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History Vol 2 1837 translated by ES Haldane and Francis H. Simson first translated 1894 p. 181
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 2

Clarence Thomas photo
Rāmabhadrācārya photo
Vyasa photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Philip K. Dick photo
Anastacia photo
Darius I of Persia photo
Étienne Bonnot de Condillac photo

“The tone in which an Englishman expresses anger would, in Italy, be only a mark of surprise.”

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714–1780) French academic

As quoted in David Booth, The principles of English composition (1831), p. 8.

Shiva Ayyadurai photo
Clive Hamilton photo
Max Boot photo

“Catering to populist anger with extremist proposals that are certain to fail is not a viable strategy for political success.”

Max Boot (1969) American writer and historian

How the ‘Stupid Party’ Created Trump (August 2, 2016)

Jennifer Beals photo
James Comey photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo
Geert Wilders photo
George William Russell photo

“Nay, let this earth, your portion, likewise cover
All the old anger, setting us apart:
Always, in all, in truth was I your lover;
Always, I held your heart.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

You Would Have Understood Me

John P. Kotter photo
Yoshida Shoin photo
Mitt Romney photo

“I will dispense for now from discussion of the moral character of the president's Charlottesville statements. Whether he intended to or not, what he communicated caused racists to rejoice, minorities to weep, and the vast heart of America to mourn. His apologists strain to explain that he didn't mean what we heard. But what we heard is now the reality, and unless it is addressed by the president as such, with unprecedented candor and strength, there may commence an unraveling of our national fabric.The leaders of our branches of military service have spoken immediately and forcefully, repudiating the implications of the president's words. Why? In part because the morale and commitment of our forces-made up and sustained by men and women of all races--could be in the balance. Our allies around the world are stunned and our enemies celebrate; America's ability to help secure a peaceful and prosperous world is diminished. And who would want to come to the aid of a country they perceive as racist if ever the need were to arise, as it did after 9/11?In homes across the nation, children are asking their parents what this means. Jews, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims are as much a part of America as whites and Protestants. But today they wonder. Where might this lead? To bitterness and tears, or perhaps to anger and violence?The potential consequences are severe in the extreme. Accordingly, the president must take remedial action in the extreme. He should address the American people, acknowledge that he was wrong, apologize. State forcefully and unequivocally that racists are 100% to blame for the murder and violence in Charlottesville. Testify that there is no conceivable comparison or moral equivalency between the Nazis--who brutally murdered millions of Jews and who hundreds of thousands of Americans gave their lives to defeat--and the counter-protestors who were outraged to see fools parading the Nazi flag, Nazi armband and Nazi salute. And once and for all, he must definitively repudiate the support of David Duke and his ilk and call for every American to banish racists and haters from any and every association.This is a defining moment for President Trump. But much more than that, it is a moment that will define America in the hearts of our children. They are watching, our soldiers are watching, the world is watching. Mr. President, act now for the good of the country.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Facebook statement https://www.facebook.com/mittromney/posts/10154652303536121 (18 August 2017)
2017

Scott Lynch photo
Joyce Brothers photo

“Anger repressed can poison a relationship as surely as the cruelest words.”

Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) Joyce Brothers

"When Your Husband's Affection Cools" in Good Housekeeping (May 1972)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Chanakya photo
Wilfred Owen photo
Jeremy Corbyn photo
Anne Bradstreet photo

“Fire hath its force abated by water, not by wind; and anger must be allayed by cold words, and not by blustering threats.”

Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672) Anglo-American poet

43.
Meditations Divine and Moral (1664)

Francis Quarles photo

“Anger, when it is long in coming, is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept.”

Francis Quarles (1592–1644) English poet

Enchiridion (1640)

Ted Cruz photo

“We deserve leaders who stand for principle, who unite us all behind shared values, who cast aside anger for love. That is the standard we should expect from everybody.”

Ted Cruz (1970) American politician

2010s, Speech at the Republican National Convention (July 20, 2016)

Mahatma Gandhi photo

“I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Young India (15 September 1920), reprinted in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 21 (electronic edition), p. 252.
1920s

Bertolt Brecht photo
Tsunetomo Yamamoto photo
Joni Mitchell photo

“Friends have told her "Not so proud"
Neighbors trying to sleep are yelling "Not so loud"
Lovers in anger, "Block of ice"
Harder and harder just to be nice.”

Joni Mitchell (1943) Canadian musician

"Shades of Scarlett Conquering" from The Hissing of Summer Lawns
Songs