Quotes about harm
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Ovid photo
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Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Cassandra Clare photo

“All knowledge hurts.”

Source: City of Bones

Mark Twain photo
Jenny Han photo
Jeffrey Eugenides photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Ravi Zacharias photo
Ovid photo
Steve Martin photo
Byron Katie photo

“I’m a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Source: Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

Virginia Woolf photo
Mercedes Lackey photo
Meg Cabot photo
Marcus Tullius Cicero photo
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Sylvia Plath photo

“Not being perfect hurts.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Ernest Hemingway photo
Johnny Cash photo
Wilhelm Von Humboldt photo
Orison Swett Marden photo
Agnetha Fältskog photo

“I have been described as a very mysterious human being and that hurts a little bit, because it's not like that at all.”

Agnetha Fältskog (1950) Swedish recording artist and entertainer

On the media's 'wrong impression' of her private life
BBC interview (March 2013)

Plato photo
Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues photo
Fiona Apple photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
John Locke photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.”

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 18 “On the Ice” (p. 249)

Salman Khan photo

“The only person I have hurt is me.”

Salman Khan (1965) Indian film actor

Quotes By Salman

Jordan Peterson photo

“One of the things you want to do with a conception like compassion is that you want to start thinking about it like a psychologist, or like a scientist, because compassion is actually definable. The easiest way to approach it is to think about it in Big-5 terms, because it maps onto Agreeableness, which you can break down into Compassion and Politeness. The liberal types, especially the Social Justice types, are way higher in Compassion. It's actually their fundamental characteristic. You might think, 'well, compassion is a virtue.' Yes, it's a virtue, but any uni-dimensional virtue immediately becomes a vice, because real virtue is the intermingling of a number of virtues and their integration into a functional identity that can be expressed socially. Compassion can be great if you happen to be the entity towards which it is directed. But compassion tends to divide the world into crying children and predatory snakes. So if you're a crying child, hey great. But if you happen to be identified as one of the predatory snakes, you better look the hell out. Compassion is what the mother grizzly bear feels for her cubs while she eats you because you got in the way. We don't want to be thinking for a second that compassion isn't a virtue that can lead to violence, because it certainly can. The other problem with compassion - this is why we have conscientiousness - there's five canonical personality dimensions. Agreeableness is good if you are functioning in a kin system. You want to distribute resources equally for example among your children, because you want all of them to have the same chance, and even roughly the same outcome. That is, a good one. But the problem is that you can't extend that moral network to larger groups. As far as I can tell, you need conscientiousness, which is a much colder virtue. It's also a virtue that is much more concerned with larger structures over the longer period of time. And you can think about conscientiousness as a form of compassion too. It's like: 'straighten the hell out, and work hard and your life will go well. I don't care how you feel about that right now.' Someone who's cold, that is, low in agreeableness and high in conscientiousness, will tell you every time. 'Don't come whining to me. I don't care about your hurt feelings. Do your goddamn job or you're going to be out on the street.' One might think, 'Oh that person is being really hard on me.' Not necessarily. They might have your long term best interest in mind. You're fortunate if you come across someone who is disagreeable. Not tyrannically disagreeable, but moderately disagreeable and high in conscientiousness because they will whip you into shape. And that's really helpful. You'll admire people like that. You won't be able to help it. You'll feel like, 'Oh wow, this person has actually given me good information, even though you will feel like a slug after they have taken you apart.' That's the compassion issue. You can't just transform that into a political stance. I think part of what we're seeing is actually the rise of a form of female totalitarianism, because we have no idea what totalitarianism would be like if women ran it, because that's never happened before in the history of the planet. And so, we've introduced women into the political sphere radically over the past fifty years. We have no idea what the consequence of that is going to be. But we do know from our research, which is preliminary, that agreeableness really predicts political correctness, but female gender predicts over and above the personality trait, and that's something we found very rarely in our research. Usually the sex differences are wiped out by the personality differences, but not in this particular case. On top of that, women are getting married later, and they're having children much later, and they're having fewer of them, and so you also have to wonder what their feminine orientation is doing with itself in the interim, roughly speaking. A lot of it is being expressed as political opinion. Fair enough. That's fine. But it's not fine when it starts to shut down discussion.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

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H.P. Lovecraft photo

“Of the complete biological inferiority of the negro there can be no question—he has anatomical features consistently varying from those of other stocks, & always in the direction of the lower primates... Equally inferior—& perhaps even more so—is the Australian black stock, which differs widely from the real negro... In dealing with these two black races, there is only one sound attitude for any other race (be it white, Indian, Malay, Polynesian, or Mongolian) to take—& that is to prevent admixture as completely & determinedly as it can be prevented, through the establishment of a colour-line & the rigid forcing of all mixed offspring below that line. I am in accord with the most vehement & vociferous Alabaman or Mississippian on that point … Other racial questions are wholly different in nature—involving wide variations unconnected with superiority or inferiority. Only an ignorant dolt would attempt to call a Chinese gentleman—heir to one of the greatest artistic & philosophic traditions in the world—an "inferior" of any sort... & yet there are potent reasons, based on wide physical, mental, & cultural differences, why great numbers of the Chinese ought not to mix into the Caucasian fabric, or vice versa. It is not that one race is any better than any other, but that their whole respective heritages are so antipodal as to make harmonious adjustment impossible. Members of one race can fit into another only through the complete eradication of their own background-influences—& even then the adjustment will always remain uneasy & imperfect if the newcomer's physical aspect froms a constant reminder of his outside origin. Therefore it is wise to discourage all mixtures of sharply differentiated races—though the color-line does not need to be drawn as strictly as in the case of the negro, since we know that a dash or two of Mongolian or Indian or Hindoo or some such blood will not actually injure a white stock biologically.... As a matter of fact, most of the psychological race-differences which strike us so prominently are cultural rather than biological. If one could take a Japanese infant, alter his features to the Anglo-Saxon type through plastic surgery, & place him with an American family in Boston for rearing—without telling him that he is not an American—the chances are that in 20 years the result would be a typical American youth with very few instincts to distinguish him from his pure Nordic college-mates. The same is true of other superior alien races including the Jew—although the Nazis persist in acting on a false biological conception. If they were wise in their campaign to get rid of Jewish cultural influences (& a great deal can be said for such a campaign, when the dominance of the Aryan tradition is threatened as in Germany & New York City), they would not emphasize the separatism of the Jew but would strive to make him give up his separate culture & lose himself in the German people. It wouldn't hurt Germany—or alter its essential physical type—to take in all the Jews it now has.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

However, that wouldn't work in Poland or New York City, where the Jews are of an inferior strain, & so numerous that they would essentially modify the physical type.
Letter to Natalie H. Wooley (22 November 1934), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 77
Non-Fiction, Letters

Jacques Chirac photo

“Anything that can hurt the convictions of another, particularly religious convictions, must be avoided. Freedom of expression must be exercised in a spirit of responsibility. I condemn all manifest provocation that might dangerously fan passions.”

Jacques Chirac (1932–2019) 22nd President of France

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4693628.stm Statement made about free speech following the publication of Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed

Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Henry M. Jackson photo

“The danger of Americans being killed, the danger of divisiveness that would accrue from those developments … are all too real. A superpower should not play that kind of role in a cauldron of trouble, because sooner or later we are going to get hurt.”

Henry M. Jackson (1912–1983) American politician

on Reagan's 1982 decision to send troops to Lebanon) Harrop, Froma. " Dems Need Another Scoop Jackson http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-11_23_05_FH.html", RealClearPolitics, 11-23-2005.

Tomas Tranströmer photo
Bruce Lee photo
Byron Katie photo

“No one can hurt me—that’s my job.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

Abraham Lincoln photo
Sherilyn Fenn photo
Han Yong-un photo
Archie Carr photo
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“Love's ship has foundered on the rocks of life.
We're quits: stupid to draw up a list
of mutual sorrows, hurts and pains.”

Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist and stage and film actor

Untitled last poem found after his death; translation from Martin Seymour-Smith Guide to Modern World Literature (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975) vol. 4, p. 235

Shahrukh Khan photo
Jim Ross photo

“"He's not just trying to hurt the man - he's out to end his career!" (usually said when a heavyweight or superheavyweight is destroying his opponent)”

Jim Ross (1952) American professional wrestling commentator, professional wrestling referee, and restaurateur

Commentary Quotes

C.G. Jung photo
Antonio Gramsci photo
Liam Gallagher photo

“I wanna love you
I wanna be a better man
I don't wanna hurt you
I just wanna see what's in your hand.”

Liam Gallagher (1972) English musician and songwriter

Song Better Man

H.P. Lovecraft photo

“Oh, yes … I'm really frightfully human and love all mankind, and all that sort of thing. Mankind is truly amusing, when kept at the proper distance. And common men, if well-behaved, are really quite useful. One is a cynick only when one thinks. At such times the herd seems a bit disgusting because each member of it is always trying to hurt somebody else, or gloating because somebody else is hurt. Inflicting pain seems to be the chief sport of persons whose tastes and interests run to ordinary events and direct pleasures and rewards of life—the animalistic or (if one may use a term so polluted with homoletick associations) worldly people of our absurd civilisation. ……. I may be human, all right, but not quite human enough to be glad at the misfortune of anybody. I am rather sorry (not outwardly but genuinely so) when disaster befalls a person—sorry because it gives the herd so much pleasure. … The natural hatefulness and loathsomeness of the human beast may be overcome only in a few specimens of fine heredity and breeding, by a transference of interests to abstract spheres and a consequent sublimation of the universal sadistic fury. All that is good in man is artificial; and even that good is very slight and unstable, since nine out of ten non-primitive people proceed at once to capitalise their asceticism and vent their sadism by a Victorian brutality and scorn towards all those who do not emulate their pose. Puritans are probably more contemptible than primitive beasts, though neither class deserves much respect.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to James F. Morton (8 March 1923), in Selected Letters I, 1911-1924 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 211-212
Non-Fiction, Letters

Martin Luther photo

“You must not murder. (Exodus 20:13)
Q. What does this mean?
A. We should fear and love God so that we may not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and befriend him in every bodily need [in every need and danger of life and body.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Small Catechism http://www.ccel.org/ccel/luther/smallcat.text.i.5.html|The, The Fifth Commandment, (1529)

Barack Obama photo
Barack Obama photo

“So we pulled up to this diner, where people told us that we could get some good pie. And I like pie. Do you like pie too? So, we go in there, and we say, "Oh, what kind of pie you got?' And they didn't have sweet potato pie, they didn't have pumpkin pie. They had some cream pies mostly, which is OK with me. So, I got some coconut cream pie. And Governor Strickland, he got lemon meringue pie.
So while we're waiting for our pie, the staff come and they want to take a picture with me because they say, you know, the owner of this dinner is a staunch die-hard Republican, so we want to kind of tease him a little bit by getting this picture with you. So we're taking this picture and suddenly the owner comes out with the pie. And he looks at me and I say, "Sir, I understand that you are a die-hard Republican." He says, "That's right." I said, "How's business?" He said, "Not so good." He said, "My customer, they can't afford to eat out anymore." I said, "Who's been in charge of the economy for the last eight years?" He said, "Republicans." I said, "You know, if you kept on hitting your head against a wall over and over again and it started to hurt, at some point would you stop hitting your head against the wall?"”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

He said, "You've got a point."
At a rally in Londonberry, New Hampshire (16 October 2008) http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0810/16/cnr.04.html
2008

Salman Khan photo
Carl R. Rogers photo

“It is the client who knows what hurts, what directions to go, what problems are crucial, what experiences have been deeply buried.”

Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987) American psychologist

On Becoming a Person (1961)
Source: page 11

Thomas Paine photo

“Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them. Britain has trembled like an ague at the report of a French fleet of flat-bottomed boats; and in the fourteenth [sic (actually the fifteenth)] century the whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven back like men petrified with fear; and this brave exploit was performed by a few broken forces collected and headed by a woman, Joan of Arc. Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment! Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact, they have the same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out the hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world. Many a disguised Tory has lately shown his head, that shall penitentially solemnize with curses the day on which Howe arrived upon the Delaware.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

The Crisis No. I.
1770s, The American Crisis (1776–1783)

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“… when you recollect something which belonged in an earlier chapter, do not go back, but jam it in where you are. Discursiveness does not hurt an autobiography in the least.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

advice to his brother Orion, p. 8.
Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010)

Jordan Peterson photo

“You can't have the conversation about rights without the conversation about responsibility, because your rights are my responsibility. That's what they are technically. So, you just can't have only half of that discussion. And we're only having half of that discussion. Then the questions is, 'well what are you leaving out if you're only having that half of the discussion.' And the answer is, 'well, you're leaving out responsibility.' And then the questions is, 'Well, what are you leaving out if you're leaving out responsibility.' And the answer might be: 'Well maybe you're leaving out the meaning of life.' Here you are, suffering away. What makes it worthwhile? Rights? It's almost impossible to describe how bad an idea that is. Responsibility. That's what gives life meaning. Lift a load. Then you can tolerate yourself. Look at yourself. You're useless. Easily hurt. Easily killed. Why should you have any self-respect? Pick something up and carry it. Make it heavy enough so that you can think, yah, well, useless as I am, at least I can move that from there to there. For men, there's nothing but responsibility. Women have their sets of responsibilities. They're not the same. Women have to take primary responsibility for having infants at least, then also for caring for them. They're structured differently than men for biological necessity. Women know what they have to do. Men have to figure out what they have to do. And if they have nothing worth living for, then they stay Peter Pan. And why the hell not? The alternative to valued responsibility is low class pleasure. Why lift a load if there's nothing in it for you? And that's what we're doing to men and boys that's a very bad idea. Basically we give them the message, 'you're pathological and oppressive.' They often respond, 'fine then, why the hell should I play? If I get no credit for bearing responsibility, then you can be sure I won't bear any.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Then your life is useless and meaningless, and you're full of self contempt and nihilism, and that's not good. And so that's what I think is going on at a deeper level with regard to men needing this direction. A man has to decide that he's going to do something. He has to decide that."
Concepts

Jordan Peterson photo

“There's an insistence that the Being that's spoken into being through Truth is Good. This is the most profound ever. It is also the most believable idea ever. What cures in therapy is Truth. Of course, you must encounter the things that you're afraid of, but this is enacted Truth, because if you know that there's something you need to do by your own set of rules and you're avoiding it, then you're enacting a lie. You're not speaking the lie, but you're enacting it, and that's the same thing: untruth. If you can confront If I can get you to face what it is that you know you shouldn't be avoiding, then what's happening is that we're both partaking in the process of you attempting to act out your deepest truth. That improves people's lives radically. The clinical evidence for that is overwhelming. We know that if you expose people to the things that they're afraid of and are avoiding, they get better. You have to do it carefully, cautiously, and with their approval and participation. Of all the things that clinicians have established that's credible, that's #1. It's redemptive insofar as both people are telling the truth. The difference between deception and repression is very small. People can handle earthquakes and cancer and even death, but they can't handle deception. They can't handle the rug being pulled out from underneath them by people who they love and trust. This does them in. It makes them ill, it hurts them psycho-physiologically, and worse than that it makes them cynical, bitter, vicious, and resentful. And then they also start to act all that out in the world, and that makes it worse.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Kenzaburō Ōe photo
Martin Luther photo

“Paul calleth the Galatians foolish and bewitched, comparing them to children, to whom witchcraft doth much harm. As though he should say: It happeneth to you as it doth to children, whom witches, sorcerers, and enchanters are wont to charm by their enchantments, and by the illusions of the devil. Afterwards, in the fifth chapter, he rehearseth sorcery among the works of the flesh, which is a kind of witchcraft, whereby he plainly testifieth, that indeed such witchcraft and sorcery there is, and that it may be done. Moreover, it cannot be denied but that the devil, yea, and reigneth throughout the whole world. Witchcraft and sorceru therefore are the works of the devil; whereby he doth not only hurt men, but also, by the permission of God, he sometimes destroyeth them. Furthermore, we are all subject to the devil, both in body and goods; and we be strangers in this world, whereof he is the prince and god. Therefore the bread which we eat, the drink which we drink, the garments which we wear, yea, the air, and whatsoever we live by in the flesh is under his dominion.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

A Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians https://books.google.com/books?id=zeCWncYgGOgC&pg=PA37&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false by Martin Luther, Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Tischer, Samuel Simon Schmucker Chapter 3, p. 286
Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535)

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“The mechanism of modern business is so delicate that extreme care must be taken not to interfere with it in a spirit of rashness or ignorance. Many of those who have made it their vocation to denounce the great industrial combinations which are popularly, although with technical inaccuracy, known as "trusts," appeal especially to hatred and fear. These are precisely the two emotions, particularly when combined with ignorance, which unfit men for the exercise of cool and steady judgment. In facing new industrial conditions, the whole history of the world shows that legislation will generally be both unwise and ineffective unless undertaken after calm inquiry and with sober self-restraint. […] All this is true; and yet it is also true that there are real and grave evils, one of the chief being over-capitalization because of its many baleful consequences; and a resolute and practical effort must be made to correct these evils. There is a widespread conviction in the minds of the American people that the great corporations known as trusts are in certain of their features and tendencies hurtful to the general welfare. This […] is based upon sincere conviction that combination and concentration should be, not prohibited, but supervised and within reasonable limits controlled; and in my judgment this conviction is right.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, First Annual Message to Congress (1901)

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Octavia E. Butler photo
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I. K. Gujral photo
Ronald Reagan photo

“Recognizing the equality of all men and women, we are willing and able to lift the weak, cradle those who hurt, and nurture the bonds that tie us together as one nation under God.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Address accepting the Republican presidential nomination (23 August 1984)
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“Such as harm is when it hurts me not, is good which avails me not.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations

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Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus photo

“An adversary is more hurt by desertion than by slaughter. (General Maxims)”
aduersarium amplius frangunt transfugae quam perempti.

De Re Militari (also Epitoma Rei Militaris), Book III, "Dispositions for Action"

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