“Torture will give a dozen pence or more
To keep a drab from bawling at his door.
The public taste is quite a different thing—
Torture is positively paid to sing.”

—  Hilaire Belloc

"On Torture: A Public Singer"
Sonnets and Verse (1938)

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 "Torture will give a dozen pence or more To keep a drab from bawling at his door. The public taste is quite a differen…" by Hilaire Belloc?
Hilaire Belloc photo
Hilaire Belloc 91
writer 1870–1953

Related quotes

Barry McCaffrey photo

“We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the CIA.”

Barry McCaffrey (1942) United States Army general

Quoted in State-Sanctioned Torture in the Age of Trump https://truthout.org/articles/state-sanctioned-torture-in-the-age-of-trump/, by Marjorie Cohn, Truthout (23 January 2017)

Garry Kasparov photo

“The public must come to see that chess is a violent sport. Chess is mental torture.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

As quoted in Martin Amis's review of "Kasparov-Short" by Raymond Keene, Independent on Sunday, November 1995.
1990s

Ron Paul photo

“Legal issues aside, the American people and government should never abide the use of torture by our military or intelligence agencies. A decent society never accepts or justifies torture. It dehumanizes both torturer and victim, yet seldom produces reliable intelligence. Torture by rogue American troops or agents puts all Americans at risk, especially our rank-and-file soldiers stationed in dozens of dangerous places around the globe. God forbid terrorists take American soldiers or travelers hostage and torture them as some kind of sick retaliation for Abu Gharib.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Torture, War, and Presidential Powers, June 15, 2004 http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul185.html
2000s, 2001-2005

Cheryl Strayed photo

“There are so many things to be tortured about, sweet pea. So many torturous things in this life. Don't let the man who doesn't love you be one of them.”

Cheryl Strayed book Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Variant: There are so many torturous things in this life. Don't let a man who doesn't love you be one of them.
Source: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

“He had the kind of personality that makes you think a boy will grow up to be a public torturer.”

Lindsey Davis book The Ides of April

The Ides of April

Thomas Merton photo

“Indeed, 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. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture.”

Thomas Merton book The Seven Storey Mountain

Source: The Seven Storey Mountain (1948), p. 91

Naomi Klein photo

“As a means of extracting information during interrogations, torture is notoriously unreliable, but as a means of terrorizing and controlling populations, nothing is quite as effective.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007)

Elie Wiesel photo

“After the war we reassured ourselves that it would be enough to relate a single night in Treblinka, to tell of the cruelty, the senselessness of murder, and the outrage born of indifference: it would be enough to find the right word and the propitious moment to say it, to shake humanity out of its indifference and keep the torturer from torturing ever again.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

Jonathan Franzen photo

“Here was a torture that Greek inventors of the Feast and the Stone had omitted from their Hades: the Blanket of Self-Deception. A lovely warm blanket as far as it covered the soul in torment, but it never quite covered everything.”

Jonathan Franzen book The Corrections

Source: The Corrections

James Joyce photo

“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 (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

Letter to Fanny Guillermet (Zurich, 5 September 1918)

Related topics