Quotes about abuse
A collection of quotes on the topic of abuse, people, use, doing.
Quotes about abuse
Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, Foreword, p. viii.
Context: Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man, nor for us to reap from it the aesthetic harvest it is capable, under science, of contributing to culture.
As quoted in How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) by Dale Carnegie, p. 26
Gottfried to Jean-Christophe. Part 3: Ada
Jean-Christophe (1904 - 1912), Youth (1904)
The Mysterious Stranger (1916)
HIStory: Past, Present & Future, Book I (1995)
Die neuesten Arbeiten des Spartacus und Philo in dem Illuminaten-Orden (1794) pp. 20-21.
A further quote sometimes purported to be from a speech to Congress, January 7, 1790 purportedly in the Boston Independent Chronicle, January 14, 1790, this is actually a corruption of a statement made in his first State of the Union Address, relating to the need for maintaining governmental troops and military preparedness:
:: A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.
The proper establishment of the troops which may be deemed indispensable will be entitled to mature consideration. In the arrangements which may be made respecting it it will be of importance to conciliate the comfortable support of the officers and soldiers with a due regard to economy.
Misattributed, Spurious attributions
Source: Beyond the White House: Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, Building Hope
“Government works best under the glare of public scrutiny. Absent such scrutiny, abuses occur.”
Source: A Streetcar Named Desire
Source: Flowers for Algernon
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest
2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall (April 2014)
(Hiawatha seemed to think so,
Seemed to think it not unlikely.)</p>
Hiawatha's Photographing
Rhyme? and Reason? (1883)
"Conservatism and the Conservatory," https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/427945/conservatism-and-conservatory, National Review (December 2015).
Die Leuchte des Diogenes (1804) p. 329.
Address to the Springfield Washingtonian Temperance Society (22 February 1842). Frequently misquoted as "It has long been recognized that the problems with alcohol relate not to the use of a bad thing, but to the abuse of a good thing." http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/temperance.htm
1840s
Gar zu leicht missbrauchen oder vernachlässigen uns die Menschen, sobald wir mit ihnen vertraulich werden. Um angenehm zu leben, muss man fast immer ein Fremder unter den Leuten bleiben.
Über den Umgang mit Menschen (1788)
The Life, Martyrdom, and Selections from the Writings of Thomas Cranmer https://books.google.com/books?id=FvNeAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=The+Life,+Martyrdom,+and+Selections+from+the+Writings+of+Thomas+Cranmer+...&source=bl&ots=LbXiMjz5Zp&sig=0pi5SHuxfdt_YUoiJcxvLgr7x5E&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjzmZL_wsfaAhVl6YMKHWubBkcQ6AEILDAB by Thomas Cranmer, p.139-142, (1809)
"The Private Production of Defense" http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/Hoppe.pdf (15 June 1999)
anouncing his retirement to the world after been defeated by Alfonso Gomez. http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/boxing/6899401.stm
Quoted in News Brief http://www.jta.org/2003/10/15/archive/nobel-laureate-jose-saramago-said-the-jewish-people, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, October 15, 2003.
Remarks by President Obama and President Kenyatta of Kenya in a Press Conference at Kenyan State House in Nairobi, Kenya https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/25/remarks-president-obama-and-president-kenyatta-kenya-press-conference (July 25, 2015)
2015
Letter to Blumentritt (24 December 1886)
Ibid, pp. 517-518, (1809)
"Man – and Woman" in Vermont Freeman (Mid-February 1972) http://www.motherjones.com/files/Man_and_Woman_0.jpg; partially quoted, out of context in "Bernie Sanders: Woman 'fantasizes being raped'" http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/bernie-sanders-woman-fantasizes-being-raped/article/2565191 by Ariel Cohen, Washington Examiner (28 May 2015)
1970s
8 May 2015 tweet, according to Hollywood Reporter http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jk-rowling-burns-twitter-troll-794521
2010s
1910s, Address at Milwaukee, Wisconsin (1912)
From his review of Gail Eisnitz's Slaughterhouse; as quoted in Charles Patterson, Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust (New York: Lantern Books, 2002), p. 145.
Address to the Nation on the United States Air Strike Against Libya http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1986/41486g.htm (14 April 1986)
1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)
Oliver Cromwell, letter to Walter Dundas, 12 September 1650; this is also a recent misattribution.
Misattributed
A Man Without a Country (2005)
Usez, n’abusez point; le sage ainsi l’ordonne.
Je fuis également Épictète et Pétrone.
L’abstinence ou l’excès ne fit jamais d’heureux.
"Cinquième discours: sur la nature de plaisir," Sept Discours en Vers sur l'Homme (1738)
Citas
From the intervention to the fifteenth national conference on school health and safety in schools , 1987; quoted in AA.VV., Osamu Tezuka: A Manga Biography , vol. 2, translated by Marta Fogato, Coconino Press, Bologna, 2001, p. 79. ISBN 8888063072
Sukirti Kandpal on #MeToo campaign http://www.tellychakkar.com/tv/features/metoo-tv-celebs-share-their-experiences-being-harassed-and-assaulted-171018/
2015, Remarks to the People of Africa (July 2015)
2012, Remarks at Clinton Global Initiative (September 2012)
1900s, First Annual Message to Congress (1901)
Interview with Putra Nababan in the White House https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38sFgxBhpkU (March 2010)
2010
[Raffi, Khatchadourian, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian, No Secrets, The New Yorker, June 9, 2010, 2010-06-17]
2016, United Nations Address (September 2016)
Open letter to Barrantes on the Noli, published in La Solidaridad (15 February 1890)
Robin Eggar (July 27, 1997) "Is it a bird? - Interview", The Sunday Times, p. Style 8.
“Olivia Munn Unveils New Naked Anti-Fur Billboard In Los Angeles,” in PETA.org.uk (13 January 2012) https://www.peta.org.uk/media/news-releases/olivia-munn-unveils-new-naked-anti-fur-billboard-in-los-angeles/.
"The Treaty With China", article in The New York Tribune, 1868-08-04. Quoted in Mark Twain's Letters, volume ii, p. 239 https://books.google.com/books?id=EWvU21-vV8EC&pg=PA239&lpg=PA239&dq=%22I+have+seen+Chinamen+abused+and+maltreated+in+all+the+mean,+cowardly+ways+possible+to+the+invention+of+a+degraded+nature.%22&source=bl&ots=-MSeb52ibq&sig=7EJ2Hkgp58wiQNoBmWysiM5YcIQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjMxPKKvbTMAhUM4mMKHbICCt0Q6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%22I%20have%20seen%20Chinamen%20abused%20and%20maltreated%20in%20all%20the%20mean%2C%20cowardly%20ways%20possible%20to%20the%20invention%20of%20a%20degraded%20nature.%22&f=false
Launch.com, October 30, 1998<!-- site no longer exists -->
St. 4
"Stanzas on Freedom" (1843)
1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)
Source: 2000s, Anti-Americanism (2003), p. 143
“Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.”
"Circular to the States" (8 June 1783) http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch7s5.html
1780s
"Francis Biddle's Sister: Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech" (1984), p. 188
Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (1987)
2014, Review of Signals Intelligence Speech (June 2014)
Context: There was a recognition by all who participated in these reviews that the challenges to our privacy do not come from government alone. Corporations of all shapes and sizes track what you buy, store and analyze our data, and use it for commercial purposes; that’s how those targeted ads pop up on your computer and your smartphone periodically. But all of us understand that the standards for government surveillance must be higher. Given the unique power of the state, it is not enough for leaders to say: Trust us, we won’t abuse the data we collect. For history has too many examples when that trust has been breached. Our system of government is built on the premise that our liberty cannot depend on the good intentions of those in power; it depends on the law to constrain those in power.
Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 98
1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)
Context: To my mind the failure resolutely to follow progressive policies is the negation of democracy as well of progress, and spells disaster. But for this very reason I feel concern when progressives act with heedless violence, or go so far and so fast as to invite reaction. The experience of John Brown illustrates the evil of the revolutionary short-cut to ultimate good ends. The liberty of the slave was desirable, but it was not to be brought about by a slave insurrection. The better distribution of property is desirable, but it is not to be brought about by the anarchic form of Socialism which would destroy all private capital and tend to destroy all private wealth. It represents not progress, but retrogression, to propose to destroy capital because the power of unrestrained capital is abused. John Brown rendered a great service to the cause of liberty in the earlier Kansas days; but his notion that the evils of slavery could be cured by a slave insurrection was a delusion analogous to the delusions of those who expect to cure the evils of plutocracy by arousing the baser passions of workingmen against the rich in an endeavor at violent industrial revolution. And, on the other hand, the brutal and shortsighted greed of those who profit by what is wrong in the present system, and the attitude of those who oppose all effort to do away with this wrong, serve in their turn as incitements to such revolution; just as the insolence of the ultra pro-slavery men finally precipitated the violent destruction of slavery.
1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)
Context: From the National standpoint nothing can be worse - nothing can be full of graver menace - for the National life than to have the Federal courts active in nullifying State action to remedy the evils arising from the abuse of great wealth, unless the Federal authorities, executive, legislative, and judicial alike, do their full duty in effectually meeting the need of a thoroughgoing and radical supervision and control of big inter-State business in all its forms. Many great financiers, and many of the great corporation lawyers who advise them, still oppose any effective regulation of big business by the National Government, because, for the time being, it serves their interest to trust to the chaos which is caused on the one hand by inefficient laws and conflicting and often unwise efforts at regulation by State governments, and, on the other hand, by the efficient protection against such regulation afforded by the Federal courts. In the end this condition will prove intolerable, and will hurt most of all the very class which it at present benefits. The continuation of such conditions would mean that the corporations would find that they had purchased immunity from the efficient exercise of Federal regulative power at the cost of being submitted to a violent and radical local supervision, inflamed to fury by having repeatedly been thwarted, and not chastened by exercised responsibility. To refuse to take, or to permit others to take, wise and practical action for the remedying of abuses is to invite unwise action under the lead of violent extremists.
“But the government collection and storage of such bulk data also creates a potential for abuse.”
2014, Review of Signals Intelligence Speech (June 2014)
Context: [T]he combination of increased digital information and powerful supercomputers offers intelligence agencies the possibility of sifting through massive amounts of bulk data to identify patterns or pursue leads that may thwart impending threats. It’s a powerful tool. But the government collection and storage of such bulk data also creates a potential for abuse.
1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)
Context: The greatest evils in our industrial system to-day are those which rise from the abuses of aggregated wealth; and our great problem is to overcome these evils and cut out these abuses. No one man can deal with this matter. It is the affair of the people as a whole. When aggregated wealth demands what is unfair, its immense power can be met only by the still greater power of the people as a whole, exerted in the only way it can be exerted, through the Government; and we must be resolutely prepared to use the power of the Government to any needed extent, even though it be necessary to tread paths which are yet untrod. The complete change in economic conditions means that governmental methods never yet resorted to may have to be employed in order to deal with them. We can not tolerate anything approaching a monopoly, especially in the necessaries of life, except on terms of such thoroughgoing governmental control as will absolutely safe guard every right of the public. Moreover, one of the most sinister manifestations of great corporate wealth during recent years has been its tendency to interfere and dominate in politics.
Source: 1780s, p. 34 of a draft of a discarded and undelivered version of his first inaugural address (30 April 1789)
Context: The blessed Religion revealed in the word of God will remain an eternal and awful monument to prove that the best Institutions may be abused by human depravity; and that they may even, in some instances be made subservient to the vilest of purposes. Should, hereafter, those who are intrusted with the management of this government, incited by the lust of power & prompted by the supineness or venality of their Constituents, overleap the known barriers of this Constitution and violate the unalienable rights of humanity: it will only serve to shew, that no compact among men (however provident in its construction & sacred in its ratification) can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable—and if I may so express myself, that no wall of words—that no mound of parchmt can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other.
As translated in In Love with Eternity : Philosophical Essays and Fragments (2005) by Richard Schain, p. 47
Dream and Reality (1949)
Context: I see myself immersed in the depths of human existence and standing in the face of the ineffable mystery of the world and of all that is. And in that situation, I am made poignantly and burningly aware that the world cannot be self-sufficient, that there is hidden in some still greater depth a mysterious, transcendent meaning. This meaning is called God. Men have not been able to find a loftier name, although they have abused it to the extent of making it almost unutterable. God can be denied only on the surface; but he cannot be denied where human experience reaches down beneath the surface of flat, vapid, commonplace existence.
Source: Instructions to his Son and to Posterity (published 1632), Chapter III
Context: Take care that thou be not made a fool by flatterers, for even the wisest men are abused by these. Know, therefore, that flatterers are the worst kind of traitors; for they will strengthen thy imperfections, encourage thee in all evils, correct thee in nothing; but so shadow and paint all thy vices and follies, as thou shalt never, by their will, discern evil from good, or vice from virtue. And, because all men are apt to flatter themselves, to entertain the additions of other men's praises is most perilous. Do not therefore praise thyself, except thou wilt be counted a vain-glorious fool; neither take delight in the praises of other men, except thou deserve it, and receive it from such as are worthy and honest, and will withal warn thee of thy faults; for flatterers have never any virtue — they are ever base, creeping, cowardly persons. A flatterer is said to be a beast that biteth smiling: it is said by Isaiah in this manner — "My people, they that praise thee, seduce thee, and disorder the paths of thy feet;" and David desired God to cut out the tongue of a flatterer.
But it is hard to know them from friends, they are so obsequious and full of protestations; for as a wolf resembles a dog, so doth a flatterer a friend. A flatterer is compared to an ape, who, because she cannot defend the house like a dog, labour as an ox, or bear burdens as a horse, doth therefore yet play tricks and provoke laughter. Thou mayest be sure, that he that will in private tell thee thy faults is thy friend; for he adventures thy mislike, and doth hazard thy hatred; for there are few men that can endure it, every man for the most part delighting in self-praise, which is one of the most universal follies which bewitcheth mankind.
2012, Remarks at Clinton Global Initiative (September 2012)
Context: Now, I do not use that word, "slavery" lightly. It evokes obviously one of the most painful chapters in our nation’s history. But around the world, there’s no denying the awful reality. When a man, desperate for work, finds himself in a factory or on a fishing boat or in a field, working, toiling, for little or no pay, and beaten if he tries to escape -- that is slavery. When a woman is locked in a sweatshop, or trapped in a home as a domestic servant, alone and abused and incapable of leaving -- that’s slavery. When a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed -- that’s slavery. When a little girl is sold by her impoverished family -- girls my daughters’ age -- runs away from home, or is lured by the false promises of a better life, and then imprisoned in a brothel and tortured if she resists -- that’s slavery. It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world.
Veto Mesage Regarding the Bank of the United States http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/ajveto01.asp (10 July 1832).
1830s
Context: It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society — the farmers, mechanics, and laborers — who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.
2015, Remarks to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2015)
Quoted in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez met Greta Thunberg: 'Hope is contagious', The Guardian, Emma Brockes https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/29/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-met-greta-thunberg-hope-contagious-climate|When (29 June 2019)
2019
Economic Sophisms, 1st series (1845), ch. 20 Human Labour, National Labour
Economic Sophisms (1845–1848)
Infinite Jest (1996)
2014, Review of Signals Intelligence Speech (June 2014)
Quo usque tandem factionem cartellum et officiorum machina patientia nostra abutitur dum navis praetoria resurrectionis ad profiscendum parata est?
Hoelang stellen het partijkartel en de baantjescarrousel ons geduld nog op de proef terwijl het vlaggenschip van de renaissancevloot klaarligt?
60th Plenary Session of the Tweede Kamer. https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/plenaire_verslagen/detail/fe96bbcd-c77d-4e32-9f78-481d7921f379 Maiden speech in Parliament on 28 March 2017.
Modelled after the opening line of Cicero’s famous Catiline Orations: Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?
In English: “How long will you, Catiline, abuse our patience?”
Baudet makes several grammatical mistakes, namely, declining factio in the accusative singular factionem instead of the genitive plural factionum, conjugating abutor, abuti in the third-person singular present active indicative abutitur instead of the third-person plural present abutuntur or the third-person plural future abutentur, and declining proficiscor into the accusative gerund as *profiscendum instead of proficiscendum.
A grammatically correct version would read: Quo usque tandem factionum cartellum et officiorum machina patientia nostra abutuntur dum navis praetoria resurrectionis ad proficiscendum parata est?
Source: https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/11/07/seeking-judicial-activism/
2014
Source: theguardian.com https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/-sp-edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-interview-transcript
Source: 1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)
Context: When they get ready to settle it, we hope they will let us know. Public opinion settles every question here, any policy to be permanent must have public opinion at the bottom, something in accordance with the philosophy of the human mind as it is. The property basis will have its weight. The love of property and a consciousness of right or wrong have conflicting places in our organization, which often make a man's course seem crooks, his conduct a riddle.
2020s, 2021
Source: Quoted in Pope thanks journalists for helping expose Church sex scandals. Reuters 13 November 2021
Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
Medium Raw (2010)
Source: Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook
Source: From the book The Demon-Haunted World Sagan quoting from Kenneth V. Lanning, FBI Behavioral Science Research Unit, from an article Satanic, Occult and Ritualistic Crime in The Police Chief, Oct 1989 note: Misattributed
Source: The Beauty Myth (1991), Chapter 6 : 'Hunger', p. 187
1960s, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)
Context: Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change. … Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our moral convictions and concerns, and so often have problems with power. There is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly. You see, what happened is that some of our philosophers got off base. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites — polar opposites — so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love.
It was this misinterpretation that caused Nietzsche, who was a philosopher of the will to power, to reject the Christian concept of love. It was this same misinterpretation which induced Christian theologians to reject the Nietzschean philosophy of the will to power in the name of the Christian idea of love. Now, we've got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. And this is what we must see as we move on. What has happened is that we have had it wrong and confused in our own country, and this has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience.
This is leading a few extremists today to advocate for Negroes the same destructive and conscienceless power that they have justly abhorred in whites. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times.
Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story
“Perfectionism is self-abuse of the highest order.”
