“Whenever people say "we mustn't be sentimental" you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add, "we must be realistic," they mean they are going to make money out of it.”

—  Brigid Brophy

Quoted in Spiritual Ecology by Jim Nollman (Bantam Books, 1990), pp. 189-190.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Whenever people say "we mustn't be sentimental" you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add, …" by Brigid Brophy?
Brigid Brophy photo
Brigid Brophy 6
novelist, essayist 1929–1995

Related quotes

Frank Chodorov photo

“[When people] say ‘let's do something about it’, they mean ‘let's get hold of the political machinery so that we can do something to somebody else.’ And that somebody is invariably you.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov (1980), p. 396, “Freedom is Better,” Plain Talk, (November 1949)

Shepard Smith photo

“And on that day, at that time, we as a collective being must not give in. On that day, we don’t have to change everything about our lives, we don’t have to add things that make us not a free people … if we want to have a free nation, there’s give and there’s bend. If you see something, say something, but beyond that don’t freak out when it happens. Easier said than done, isn’t it?”

Shepard Smith (1964) television news anchor from the United States

As quoted in "After Ottawa Shootings, Shep Smith Urges Public Not To 'Give In' To Panic" https://web.archive.org/web/20141028004609/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/23/shepard-smith-ottawa-shooting_n_6035208.html (October 23, 2014), by Avery Stone, The Huffington Post, The Huffington Post, Inc.
2010s

“You might say that a creative person is a person who simply has a desire to have something, to add something to the world that's not there yet, and goes about arranging fort that to happen.... when you desire a work of art and make it, you've added to the stock of art in the world. Artists are one of the people who can do that: add to the stock of things.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 15

Friedrich Hayek photo

“I don't believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can't take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can't stop.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

Exclusive Interview with F.A. Hayek by James U. Blanchard III, in Cato Policy Report (May/June 1984)
1980s and later

Marian Wright Edelman photo

“We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.”

Marian Wright Edelman (1939) American children's rights activist

“Whenever we [public officials] make a mistake, some-one jumps on us for it, but whenever we do something well nobody pays any attention to us. We never get any recognition except when we get ‘bawled out’.”

Leonard D. White (1891–1958) American historian

Source: Introduction to the Study of Public Administration, 1926, p. 243-244

James Branch Cabell photo

“People must have both their dreams and their dinners in this world, and when we go out of it we must take what we find. That is all.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

Niafer, in Book Ten : At Manuel's Tomb, Ch. LXIX : Economics of Jurgen
The Silver Stallion (1926)

Margaret Thatcher photo

“We will not take money in taxes from those who work hard and pay it out to those who don't. We are trying to roll back the tide of Socialism. We must get ‘stuck in’ and sort out our problems in our traditional British way instead of asking the Government to intervene every time. Intervening means taking from people who work jolly hard and just manage to live within their means and make a profit, money in extra tax to pay for those who don't.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Finchley Conservatives ("We are trying to roll back the tide of Socialism") (26 January 1980) https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104297
First term as Prime Minister

Donald J. Trump photo

“I love the Saudis. Many are in this building. They make a billion dollars a day. Whenever they have problems, we send over the ships. We say “we’re gonna protect.” What are we doing? They’ve got nothing but money.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

John N. Bahcall photo

“Every time we get slapped down, we can say, Thank you Mother Nature, because it means we're about to learn something important.”

John N. Bahcall (1934–2005) American physicist

[1995, March 6, UNRAVELING UNIVERSE. Is the cosmos younger than the stars it contains? Was Einstein's biggest blunder not a mistake? Here's why cosmology is in chaos, Time, 145, 84]
This quote was Bahcall's response to the ongoing controversy about which new observation will eventually "tie up the loose ends in cosmology?"

Related topics