Quotes about assassination
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“It would be tedious to dwell upon every striking mark of national decline: some, however, will press themselves forward to particular notice; and amongst them are: that Italian-like effeminacy, which has, at last, descended to the yeomanry of the country, who are now found turning up their silly eyes in ecstacy at a music-meeting, while they should be cheering the hounds, or measuring their strength at the ring; the discouragement of all the athletic sports and modes of strife amongst the common people, and the consequent and fearful increase of those cuttings and stabbings, those assassin-like ways of taking vengeance, formerly heard of in England only as the vices of the most base and cowardly foreigners, but now become so frequent amongst ourselves as to render necessary a law to punish such practices with death; the prevalence and encouragement of a hypocritical religion, a canting morality, and an affected humanity; the daily increasing poverty of the national church, and the daily increasing disposition still to fleece the more than half-shorne clergy, who are compelled to be, in various ways, the mere dependants of the upstarts of trade; the almost entire extinction of the ancient country gentry, whose estates are swallowed up by loan-jobbers, contractors, and nabobs, who, for the far greater part not Englishmen themselves, exercise in England that sort of insolent sway, which, by the means of taxes raised from English labour, they have been enabled to exercise over the slaves of India or elsewhere; the bestowing of honours upon the mere possessors of wealth, without any regard to birth, character, or talents, or to the manner in which that wealth has been acquired; the familiar intercourse of but too many of the ancient nobility with persons of low birth and servile occupations, with exchange and insurance-brokers, loan and lottery contractors, agents and usurers, in short, with all the Jew-like race of money-changers.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register (27 October 1804).

Death, Money, People, Fear

“I do not pretend to be a man who knows no fear, but when I heard about van Gogh's murder I can honestly say I felt anger, not fear. I defiantly proclaimed to the journalists that I would not allow anyone to intimidate me into silence. I was angry at the assassin and his accomplices, I was angry at Islam—this doctrine that has people murdered for their opinions—and I was angry at the naive politicians, journalists, and so-called intellectuals in the West who refuse to admit how dangerous Islam is and how fundamentally incompatible it is with our Western values and ideals.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Source: 2010s, Marked for Death (2012), Ch. 2: "On Freedom", pp. 10–11

People, Fear, Silence, Anger

“The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

Interview in Metaphors No. 7, (1983)

World, Dreams, Cars

“”Is this man, ah, senile?”
”He’s absolutely competent,” she answered coldly.
”I assure you I am,” roared Cordo. Anger changed his countenance utterly. ”And I will not be put off from business by assassins in my own bedroom! Now, you will either kill me immediately or negotiate the price of my release!”

Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies (2007), Chapter 16 “Settling Accounts” section 3 (p. 712)

Business, Change, Anger

“All kinds of things set us back, but life goes on. You don’t shoot yourself. Soon this will be old news. People got lives to live, bills to pay, mouths to feed. Maybe a plane will go down with ninety people on it. Or a great man will be assassinated. That will be more important than Ali losing. I never wanted to lose, never thought I would, but the thing that matters is how you lose. I’m not crying. My friends should not cry.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Press conference, March 9, 1971, following his defeat by Joe Frazier, quoted in The Intercept, June 6, 2016 https://theintercept.com/2016/06/06/in-1971-muhammad-ali-helped-undermine-the-fbis-illegal-spying-on-americans/

Life, People, Cry

“Character assassination is at once easier and surer than physical assault; and it involves far less risk for the assassin. It leaves him free to commit the same deed over and over again, and may, indeed, win him the honors of a hero in the country of his victims.”

Alan Barth (1906–1979) American journalist

The Rights of Free Men: An Essential Guide to Civil Liberties (1984).

Country

“When I think what the US military is doing, brazenly bombing country after country, to take oil resources, bringing about coups, assassinating leaders of other countries, and pitting neighbor nations against each other, and demonizing anyone who disagrees with US policy, and detaining and deporting countless immigrants from all over the world, I thank Islam for bin Laden. America’s greed, aggressiveness, and self-righteous arrogance must be stopped. War and weaponry must be abolished.”

Yuri Kochiyama (1921–2014) American activist

Yuri Kochiyama thanked Islam for Osama bin Laden and his actions against the United States
"Yuri Kochiyama, On War, Imperialism, Osama bin Laden, And Black-Asian Politic," 2003

War, World, Thinking, Country

“There have been articles lately asking why the United States is so hated in some parts of the world. As this week's Exhibit A from Hollywood, I offer Zoolander, a comedy about a plot to assassinate the prime minister of Malaysia because of his opposition to child labor. You might want to read that sentence twice. The logic: Child labor is necessary to the economic health of the fashion industry, and so its opponents must be eliminated…if the Malaysians made a comedy about the assassination of the president of the United States because of his opposition to slavery, it would seem approximately as funny to us as Zoolander would seem to them.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/zoolander-2001 of Zoolander (28 September 2001) Reviews, One-star reviews

Hate, Health, World, Fashion

“The three extreme kinds of schizophrenia are unmistakable: the haunted paranoid surrounded by his imaginary community of spies and assassins, the clownish, sometimes incontinent hebephrenic, and the frozen catatonic.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.3 Development

Communication

“The Congress decisively rejects terrorism, i. e., the system of individual political assassinations, as being a method of political struggle which is most inexpedient at the present time, diverting the best forces from the urgent and imperatively necessary work of organisation and agitation, destroying contact between the revolutionaries and the masses of the revolutionary classes of the population, and spreading both among the revolutionaries themselves and the population in general utterly distorted ideas of the aims and methods of struggle against the autocracy.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1903/2ndcong/5.htm
Second Congress of the RSDLP: Drafts of Minor Resolutions
July–August
1903
Collected Works
6
yes
Lenin
Vladimir Ilich
Marxists.
1900s

Idea, Decision, Time

“How shall the murdered man convince his assassin he will not haunt him.”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. III (p. 79)

“A French writer has paid the English a very well deserved compliment. He says that they never commit a useless crime. When they hire a man to assassinate an Irish patriot, when they blow a Sepoy from the mouth of a cannon, when they produce a famine in one of their dependencies, they have always an ulterior motive.”

Patrick Pearse (1879–1916) Irish revolutionary, shot by the British Army in 1916

The Murder Machine

Motivation, Dependency

“White southerners saw Lincoln as anti-slavery and his election as a direct threat to the survival of the peculiar institution. Are you going to tell me that they were stupid or deluded? Is that any way for white southerners to honor their ancestors, by ridiculing their intelligence? Indeed, Stephen Douglas' decision to accuse Lincoln of embracing racial equality tells us that playing the race, or racism, card in the 1850s was alive and well, because Douglas believed that he would gain political traction among racist Illinois voters, who were white, after all, by associating Lincoln with the cause of black equality. Lincoln's response was thus also an issue of political survival. So was his decision not to publicize his support for limited black suffrage in Louisiana in 1864. He advanced the idea in a private letter, but waited thirteen months until he made his sentiment public, and three days after he made that sentiment public, he fell victim to an assassin's bullet because that assassin could not bear the thought of black equality. Lincoln knew he lived in a racist America, North and South.”

Brooks D. Simpson (1957) American historian

Brooks D. Simpson. "Race and Slavery, North and South: Some Logical Fallacies" https://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/race-and-slavery-north-and-south-some-logical-fallacies/#comment-47560 (18 June 2011), Crossroads, WordPress 2010s

Stupidity, Way, Intelligence, Idea

“The population of Majorca has always been noted for its absolute indifference to politics. In the days of the Carlistes and the Cristinos, George Sand tells us how they welcomed with equal unconcern the refugees of either side. According to the head of the Phalange, you could not have found a hundred Communists in the whole island. Where could the Party have got them from? It is a country of small market-gardening, of olives, oranges and almonds, without industry, without factories. I declare on oath that during the months preceding the civil war there was no attempt of any kind made against persons or belongings. 'There was killing in Spain,' you say. 'A hundred and thirty-five political assassinations between March and July 1936.”

Georges Bernanos book Les grands cimetières sous la lune

But in Majorca there were no crimes to avenge, so it could only have been a preventative action, the systematic extermination of suspects.
Source: Les grands cimetieres sous la lune (A Diary of My Times) 1938, p.86 [Carlistes and Cristinos - followers of Don Carlos - reactionary, and Maria Cristina - liberal - in the Spanish War of Succession in the 1830s].

War, Personality, Country, Indifference

“They attacked the astronomers as though they were criminals—the geologists as though they were assassins. They regarded physicians as the enemies of God—as men who were trying to defeat the decrees of Providence. The biologists, the anthropologists, the archaeologists, the readers of ancient inscriptions, the delvers in buried cities, were all hated by the theologians. They were afraid that these men might find something inconsistent with the Bible.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The Truth (1896)

Men, God, Hate

“Fellow citizens, the fourteenth day of April 1865, of which this is the eleventh anniversary, is now and will ever remain a memorable day in the annals of this republic. It was on the evening of this day, while a fierce and sanguinary rebellion was in the last stages of its desolating power; while its armies were broken and scattered before the invincible armies of Grant and Sherman; while a great nation, torn and rent by war, was already beginning to raise to the skies loud anthems of joy at the dawn of peace, it was startled, amazed, and overwhelmed by the crowning crime of slavery, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It was a new crime, a pure act of malice. No purpose of the rebellion was to be served by it. It was the simple gratification of a hell-black spirit of revenge. But it has done good after all. It has filled the country with a deeper abhorrence of slavery and a deeper love for the great liberator.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Love, War, Peace, Hell

“I felt this coming. I tried unsuccessfully to assassinate Hitler in 1945. I am not concerned with jurisdiction of the court as Hess or others are. History will show the trials to be necessary.”

Albert Speer (1905–1981) German architect, Minister of Armaments and War Production for Nazi Germany

To Leon Goldensohn, April 14, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - (2004)

History

“The assassination must be attempted at all costs. Even if it should not succeed, an attempt to seize power in Berlin must be made. What matters now is no longer the practical purpose of the coup, but to prove to the world and for the records of history that the men of the resistance dared to take the decisive step. Compared to this objective, nothing else is of consequence.”

Henning von Tresckow (1901–1944) German general

1944. Fest, Joachim. Plotting Hitler's Death, p. 236.

Men, World, History, Decision

“Do you think I give that much of a damn about my lousy life? — For myself, I don't give a damn if I get executed, or drown, or crash in a plane, or drink myself to death! — But there is still a matter of honor in this life! — Assassination attempt on Hitler! — Ugh! — Gott im Himmel!! I could have sunk through the floor! And do you think I would have handed Himmler over to the enemy, guilty as he was? Dammit, I would have liquidated the bastard myself!”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

Interview in Göring's cell (3 January 1946)
Nuremberg Diary (1947)

Life, Death, Drink, Thinking

“Is [assassination] only justified if the target is a reactionary, anti-democratic, anti-human rights obscurantist like bin Laden?”

Enda Kenny (1951) Irish Fine Gael politician and Taoiseach

Joe Higgins questions Kenny on support from the Taoiseach, Tanaiste and presidents of the European Commission and European Council for use of assassination. I know you are a good Christian man who has your job to do in here from a political point of view. Many of his victims in the twin towers in New York were of Irish descent or directly Irish. Kenny apologising to Higgins after slandering him. Irish Independent http://www.independent.ie/national-news/ok-you-are-not-a-bin-laden-fan-taoiseach-tells-joe-higgins-2637835.html 2010s

“He (Saddam) had this huge war going on, and you have to act firmly when you have an assassination attempt.”

Ramsey Clark (1927) United States Marine

BBC interview, 28 November 2005, about the torture and murder of 148 men and boys near the mainly Shi'ite town of Dujail, Iraq in 1982.

War

“[Aviendha] didn't trust change. It couldn't be spotted or stabbed; it was more silent than any scout, more deadly than any assassin. No, she'd never trust it, but she would accept it.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

(27 October 2009)

Change, Scouting

“[A]ll the non-Stalinist versions concur in the following: the generals did indeed plan a coup d'état… The main part of the coup was to be a palace revolt in the Kremlin, culminating in the assassination of Stalin. A decisive military operation outside the Kremlin, an assault on the headquarters of the G. P. U., was also prepared. Tukhachevsky was the moving spirit of the conspiracy… He was, indeed, the only man among all the military and civilian leaders of that time who showed in many respects a resemblance to the original Bonaparte and could have played the Russian First Consul. The chief political commissar of the army, Gamarnik, who later committed suicide, was initiated into the plot. General Yakir, the commander of Leningrad, was to secure the co-operation of his garrison. Generals Uberovich, commander of the western military district, Kork, commander of the Military Academy in Moscow, Primakow, Budienny's deputy in the command of the cavalry, and a few other generals were also in the plot.”

Isaac Deutscher (1907–1967) British historian

Isaac Deutscher in his Stalin: A Political Biography, second edition (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 360-361. Quote from Ludo Martens's Another view of Stalin, pp. 176.

Decision, Suicide, Time, Parting

“Yes, there may be other attacks and assassination attempts. One of us may pay the price. Anyway, hopefully it will be us, not anyone else.”

Gebran Tueni (1957–2005) journalist

Attributed

“Don’t be shameless, Mr Blair. Don’t be immoral, Mr. Blair. You are one of those who have no morals. You are not one who has the right to criticize anyone about the rules of the international community. You are an imperialist pawn who attempts to curry favor with Danger Bush-Hitler, the number one mass murderer and assassin there is on the planet. Go straight to hell, Mr. Blair.”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Responding to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, which Mr. Blair urged Venezuela to abide by the rules of the international community. (February 2006) 1 http://world.time.com/2013/03/05/remembering-hugo-chavez-a-demagogues-career-in-quotes/ 2 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-20712033 2006

Communication, Hell

“The scum of the earth, I believe?"
"The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?”

David Low (cartoonist) (1891–1963) British cartoonist

Evening Standard, September 20, 1939.
"Rendezvous", a cartoon set in the ruins of Poland showing Stalin and Hitler genially bowing to each other.

“In Iran, no-one can ignore the tragic record of the revolution. Over the past three decades some six million Iranians have fled their homeland. The Iran-Iraq war claimed almost a million lives on both sides. During the first four years of the Khomeinist regime alone 22,000 people were executed, according to Amnesty International. Since then, the number of executions has topped 80,000. More than five million people have spent some time in prison, often on trumped-up charges. In terms of purchasing power parity, the average Iranian today is poorer than he was before the revolution. De-Khomeinization does not mean holding the late ayatollah solely responsible for all that Iran has suffered just as Robespierre, Stalin, Mao, and Fidel Castro shared the blame with others in their respective countries. However, there is ample evidence that Khomeini was the principal source of the key decisions that led to tragedy… Memoirs and interviews and articles by dozens of Khomeini’s former associates—including former Presidents Abol-Hassan Banisadr and Hashemi Rafsanjani and former Premier Mehdi Bazargan—make it clear that he was personally responsible for some of the new regime’s worst excesses. These include the disbanding of the national army, the repression of the traditional Shi’ite clergy, and the creation of an atmosphere of terror, with targeted assassinations at home and abroad. Khomeini has become a symbol of what went wrong with Iran’s wayward revolution. De-Khomeinization might not spell the end of Iran’s miseries just as de-Stalinization and de-Maoization initially produced only minimal results. However, no nation can plan its future without coming to terms with its past.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Opinion: Iran must confront its past to move forwards" http://www.aawsat.net/2015/02/article55341173, Ashraq Al-Awsat (February 6, 2015).

War, People, Home, Decision

“If you want to be an assassin, remember that you must decline all challenges. Showing off is not your job.
If you are insulted, smile meekly. Don’t break your cover.
Be afraid. This is information about the world.
You are valuable. Push yourself.
Take the easiest way out whenever possible. Resist curiosity, pride, and the temptation to defy limits. You are not your own woman and must be built to last.
Indulge hatred. Action comes from the heart.
Pray often. How else can you quarrel with God?”

Joanna Russ (1937–2011) American author

Part 8, Chapter 9 (p. 191)
Fiction, The Female Man (1975)

God, World, Smile, Way

“In the Middle East, the opposition is quite different than the opposition in advanced countries. In our countries, the opposition takes the form of explosions, assassinations, killings.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Video lecture at Columbia University (23 March 2006), quoted in BBC News (23 March 2006) "Gaddafi gives lesson on democracy"
Speeches

Country

“With the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, the death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, the ongoing protests throughout the country, and the assassinations of NYPD Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, we are at a crossroads. As a society, we can choose to live our everyday lives, raising our families and going to work, hoping that someone, somewhere, will do something to ease the tension—to smooth over the conflict. We can roll up our car windows, turn up the radio and drive around these problems, or we can choose to have an open and honest discussion about what our relationship is today—what it should be, what it could be, and what it needs to be—if we took more time to better understand one another.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Death, Family, Hope, Cars

“To a clergyman lying under a vow of chastity any act of sex is immoral, but his abhorrence of it naturally increases in proportion as it looks safe and is correspondingly tempting. As a prudent man, he is not much disturbed by incitations which carry their obvious and certain penalties; what shakes him is the enticement bare of any probable secular retribution. Ergo, the worst and damndest indulgence is that which goes unwhipped. So he teaches that it is no sin for a woman to bear a child to a drunken and worthless husband, even though she may believe with sound reason that it will be diseased and miserable all its life, but if she resorts to any mechanical or chemical device, however harmless, to prevent its birth, she is doomed by his penology to roast in Hell forever, along with the assassin of orphans and the scoundrel who forgets his Easter duty.”

H.L. Mencken book Treatise on the Gods

Treatise on the Gods (1930; 2nd Edition 1946)
1930s

Life, Disease, Penalty, Sex

“This is Harvey Milk speaking from the camera store on the evening of Friday, November 18. This is to be played only in the event of my death by assassination. I fully realize that a person who stands for what I stand for, an activist, a gay activist, becomes a target or the potential target for somebody who is insecure, terrified, afraid, or very disturbed themselves. Knowing that I could be assassinated at any moment, any time, I feel it's important that some people know my thoughts. And so the following are my thoughts, my wishes, and my desires, whatever, and I'd like to pass them on and have them played for the appropriate people.”

Harvey Milk (1930–1978) American politician who became a martyr in the gay community

From a tape recording (1977-11-18) to be played in the event of his assassination, quoted in Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (1982, ISBN 0-31256-085-0), p. 275

Death, People, Feeling, Time

“Since the Persian monarchy began some 2550 years ago, Iran has had more than 350 kings. No fewer than half of them were either assassinated or killed in battle. Many went into exile to escape death. Iran's long history is full of fallen crowns and shattered imperial dreams. Of Mohammad-Reza Shah's five immediate predecessors, one was assassinated and three were forced into exile. What makes Mohammad-Reza Shah's tragedy special is that he was, perhaps, the first Iranian king in more than a century to have a real possibility of ending his reign peacefully and dying in his own country. That this was not the case was, to a large extent, the result of Iran's chronic political underdevelopment. But the Shah's own failure to operate within the realities of Iranian society - unpleasant as they undoubtedly were - contributed to his downfall and its dramatic consequences for the nation as a whole. The fall of the Shah was, in a since, the prelude to more than a decade of instability in the region, culminating in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent massacre of Kurds and shi'ites in Mesopotamia. It may take Iran and her region many more years before the shockwaves unleashed by the fall of the Shah are fully absorbed.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

The Unknown Life of the Shah (1991)

Death, Dreams, History, Failure

“I am receiving what I suppose to be the usual number of threatening letters on the subject. Assassination can be no more guarded against than death by lightning; it is best not to worry about either.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

As quoted in Garfield of Ohio : The Available Man (1970) by John M. Tyler

Death

“When you move off a point of power, pay all your obligations on the nail, empower all your friends completely and move off with your pockets full of artillery, potential blackmail on every erstwhile rival, unlimited funds in your private account and the addresses of experienced assassins and go live in Bulgravia and bribe the police.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

"The Responsibilities of Leaders" (12 February 1967) ( Bulgravia http://solitarytrees.net/racism/bulgrav1.htm is an acronym of BULgaria, GReece, Albania and YugoslaVIA]. Scientology Policy Letters

“Friday, don't despise assassins indiscriminately. As with any tool, merit or demerit lies in how it is used.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Friday

Friday (1983)

“Could I forget that the event [Mehmet Ali Ağca’s assassination attempt] in Saint Peter's Square took place on the day and at the hour when the first appearance of the Mother of Christ to the poor little peasants has been remembered for over sixty years at Fatima in Portugal? For, in everything that happened to me on that very day, I felt that extraordinary motherly protection and care, which turned out to be stronger than the deadly bullet.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Source: [Pope John Paul II, 2005, Memory and identity: conversations at the dawn of a millennium, Rizzoli]

Appearance, Christ, Forgetting

“To defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils: indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war.”

Michael Ignatieff (1947) professor at Harvard Kennedy School and former Canadian politician

New York Times magazine op-ed piece, May 2, 2004

War, Evil

“Rushdie had written a book of nonfiction which offered critical but decided support to the Nicaraguan revolution. He had also been eloquent about the rights of the ever-relegated Palestinians. What more natural, when he was threatened with assassination by contract, than to jubilate about a terrorist-symp who had been caught in his own logic? I counted some ten newspaper and magazine columns from the Podhoretz school, all making this same point in the same words — demonstrating the impressive Zhdanovite discipline that is the special mark of the faction. All of them seemed to regard the affair as some sort of heavenly revenge for the sin of radical promiscuity; much as they have represented the AIDS crisis as a vengeance as on sixties morality. The ethical nullity of these positions never got beyond mere gloating, and will one day help to illustrate the essential distinction between irony and brutish sarcasm.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"Siding with Rushdie" (1989).
1990s, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)

Books, School, Support, Revenge

“When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into
the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and
the assassin… in the dust, in the cool tombs.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

"Cool Tombs" (1918)

“Higgins: Is [assassination] only justified if the target is a reactionary, anti-democratic, anti-human rights obscurantist like bin Laden?
Enda Kenny: I know you are a good Christian man who has your job to do in here from a political point of view. Many of his victims in the twin towers in New York were of Irish descent or directly Irish.”

Joe Higgins (1949) Irish socialist politician

Enda Kenny apologising to Higgins after slandering him. Irish Independent http://www.independent.ie/national-news/ok-you-are-not-a-bin-laden-fan-taoiseach-tells-joe-higgins-2637835.html

“The story of widows and orphans now wandering amid the ravines of the rural counties of my native state seeking protection and maintenance from others who are yet unable, on account of their own poverty, to grant them aid. I could dwell upon the sorrows of poor women, with their helpless infants, cast upon the world, homeless and destitute, deprived of their natural protectors by the red hand of the midnight assassin. I could appeal to you, members upon this floor, as husbands and fathers, to picture to yourselves the desolation of your own happy firesides should you be suddenly snatched away from your loved ones. Think of gray-haired men, whose fourscore years are almost numbered, the venerated heads of peaceful households, without warning murdered for political opinion's sake.”

Joseph Hayne Rainey (1832–1887) politician

1871, Speech on the the Ku Klux Klan Bill of 1871 (1 April 1871)

Love, Women, Men, World

“People tell me, 'Bill, let it go. The Kennedy assassination was years ago. It was just the assassination of a President and the hijacking of our government by a totalitarian regime — who cares? Just let it go.' I say, 'All right then. That whole Jesus thing? Let it go! It was 2,000 years ago! Who cares?”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Revelations (1993)

People

“Where was her bloom! These deadly and blood-suffused orbs but ill resemble the azure and ecstatic tenderness of her eyes. The lucid stream that meandered over that bosom, the glow of love that was wont to sit upon that cheek, are much unlike these livid stains and this hideous deformity. Alas! These were the traces of agony; the grip of the assassin had been here!”

Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) American novelist, historian and editor

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

Love

“We all know that the roots of injustice run deep. But violence cannot redress a solitary wrong, or remedy a single unfairness. Of course, all America is outraged at the assassination of an outstanding Negro leader who was at that meeting that afternoon in the White House in 1966. And America is also outraged at the looting and the burning that defiles our democracy. We just must put our shoulders together and put a stop to both. The time is here. Action must be now. So, I would appeal to my fellow Americans by saying, the only real road to progress for free people is through the process of law and that is the road that America will travel.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

"Remarks Upon Signing the Civil Rights Act.," April 11, 1968. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=28799&st=&st1=#axzz2gguIRFi1 1960s, Remarks on the Civil Rights Act (1968)

People, Law, Travel, Democracy

“Intellectuals cannot be good revolutionaries; they are just good enough to be assassins.”

Jean Paul Sartre Dirty Hands

Act 5, sc. 3
Dirty Hands (1948)

“What is the matter with you?' I asked. 'Be a man and tell me; is the President dead?' My prophetic soul told me that must be so. It was some time before the man could speak. At length he stammered out, 'Assassinated!' and then I knew I had come too late. I might, perhaps, have saved his life with my persistent precautions, which he did not at all object to. I should have been about him until all excitement was over, and would have impressed the Cabinet with the necessity of guarding his person. I am not now, and never have been, given to great emotions; but when I heard of Mr. Lincoln's cruel death I was completely unmanned. I went immediately to Washington and saw him as he lay in his grave-clothes; the same benevolent face was there, but the kindly smile had departed from his lips, and the soft, gentle eyes were closed for ever.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 319

Life, Death, Smile, Soul

“Recently the British people suffered a huge loss. It was a tragedy next to his barracks on the streets of London. A violent assassination, a very brutal killing of a British serviceman. Clearly the opposition is not composed all of this but many of them are exactly the same as the ones who perpetrated the killing in London. If we equip these people, if we arm them what is going to control and verify? who is going to have these weapons?, including in Europe as well. So we call all our partners, before making this dangerous step, think about it very carefully.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

In Enniskillen, 18 June 2013, g8-summit-politics-live-blog http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2013/jun/18/g8-summit-politics-live-blog, guardian.co.uk 2011 - 2015

People, Thinking, Suffering, Loss

“Had Abraham Lincoln died from any of the numerous ills to which flesh is heir; had he reached that good old age of which his vigorous constitution and his temperate habits gave promise; had he been permitted to see the end of his great work; had the solemn curtain of death come down but gradually, we should still have been smitten with a heavy grief, and treasured his name lovingly. But dying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate, for no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him, but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever. Fellow citizens, I end, as I began, with congratulations. We have done a good work for our race today. In doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honors to ourselves and those who come after us. We have been fastening ourselves to a name and fame imperishable and immortal; we have also been defending ourselves from a blighting scandal. When now it shall be said that the colored man is soulless, that he has no appreciation of benefits or benefactors; when the foul reproach of ingratitude is hurled at us, and it is attempted to scourge us beyond the range of human brotherhood, we may calmly point to the monument we have this day erected to the memory of Abraham Lincoln.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Death, Hate, Age, Color

“There's a plot in this country to enslave every man, woman, and child. Before I leave this high and noble office, I intend to expose this plot. - President John F. Kennedy 7 days before his assassination”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

a fake quote debunked on several websites, including metabunk.org https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-theres-a-plot-in-this-country-to-enslave-every-man-woman-and-child-jfk.t319/ Misattributed

Country

“When Nicholas II was crowned tsar of Russia in 1894, the country was seething with unrest. Brought up by private tutors, he had little training in the affairs of state. He was dull, reactionary, and an ineffective ruler who was easily influenced.
Although revolution was slowly brewing, Russia on the surface remained a prisoner of its feudal past. In order to maintain the appearance of stability, Nicholas II engaged ina policy of suppreission and later on supported pogroms against Jews.
Such anti-Semitic views were not new. Even before the assassination in 1881 of Alexander II (Nicholas II’s grandfather) the Romanov family had been convinced of p-lots against the tsar.
During his own reign, Nicholas II was easily swayed by strong opinions. He veered from one plan to another depending on the advice of the most articulate in his council. His most trusted adviser was Sergei Yulievich Witte, a clever but sometimes unpopular councilor who was known to have liberal modernistic views regarded as controversial by conservatives, who dominated the court.
Witte had two very resentful enemies…Gorymikine and Rachkobsky, who were associated with the secret police.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 21-23

Secret, Family, Support, Strong

“What can he do who lacks the necessary work, if he comes to be unemployed? He has nothing but to let himself die of hunger. Then a few phrases of pity will thrown on his cadaver. That's what I decided to leave to others. I preferred to make myself a black-marketer, forger, thief, murderer and assassin. I could have begged: it's degrading and cowardly and even punished by your laws that make a crime of poverty. If all those in need, instead of waiting, took wherever there was enough to be taken and by any means whatever, the satisfied would perhaps understand quicker that there is danger in trying to consecrate the current social condition, where worry is permanent and life threatened at every instant.”

Ravachol (1859–1892) French anarchist

Que peut-il faire celui qui manque du nécessaire en travaillant, s'il vient à chômer ? Il n'a qu'à se laisser mourir de faim. Alors on jettera quelques paroles de pitié sur son cadavre. C'est ce que j'ai voulu laisser à d'autres. J'ai préféré me faire contrebandier, faux-monnayeur, voleur, meurtrier et assassin. J'aurais pu mendier : c'est dégradant et lâche et même puni par vos lois qui font un délit de la misère. Si tous les nécessiteux, au lieu d'attendre, prenaient où il y a et par n'importe quel moyen, les satisfaits comprendraient peut-être plus vite qu'il y a danger à vouloir consacrer l'état social actuel, où l'inquiétude est permanente et la vie menacée à chaque instant.
Trial statement

Life, Hunger, Law, Understanding

“There,' I said to a friend, 'lies the best man I ever knew or ever expect to know; he was just to all men, and his heart was full to overflowing with kindness toward those who accomplished his death.' I have been satisfied that the persons who called at the Malvern were some of the assassins who would have killed him there if they could have got on board, and they could easily have escaped in the confusion by jumping overboard and swimming to the shore, which was not more than twenty yards distant. More-over, I do not think that the prime instigator of the deed was ever suspected, though I have my own opinion on the subject, as also had Senator Nye, that stanch old patriot who held, in the latter part of the war, a position somewhat analogous to that of a minister of police, or was in consultation, by the wish of President Lincoln, with the police authorities of our great cities. He picked up many interesting incidents in relation to the President's assassination which he talked about freely to me; but he was a prudent man, and a politician, and did not desire to raise questions which might affect his personal interests in the future.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), pp. 319–320

Death, Men, War, Question

“You messed up with me, birdie. No? You don't know much about history. You don't know much about anything, you know? A great ignorance is what you've got. You are ignorant, Mr. Danger. You are an ignorant. You are a donkey, Mr. Danger … By that I mean, you know, to say it with all its letters, to Mr. George W. Bush. You are a donkey, Mr. Bush. I'm going to tell you something, Mr. Danger. You are a coward, you know? You are a coward. Why don't you go to Iraq and command your army? It's so easy to command an army from afar. If you ever come up with the crazy idea of invading Venezuela, I'll be waiting for you in this savanna, Mr. Danger. Come on here, Mr. Danger. Come on here. Come on here, Mr. Danger. Coward, assassin, genocidal… Genocidal, you are a genocidal. You are an alcoholic, a drunk.. A drunk, Mr. Danger. You are immoral, Mr. Danger… You are the worst ever, Mr. Danger … The worst of this planet, the very worst is called George W. Bush. God save the world from this menace. Because he is an assassin. A sick man, a psychologically ill man, I know it. Personally, he is a coward. But he has a lot of power. He has a lot of power. And look at what's happening in Iraq. Yesterday the world marched against the war… 70%, according to the surveys I've seen, of your own people, Mr. Danger, are against you, against the war. You are a liar, Mr. Danger. You are killing children, Mr. Danger, who aren't responsible for your illnesses, of your complexes. Your soldiers in Iraq are bombing cities. Just yesterday we were watching images of five children who were murdered by you soldiers. They're not the murderers. You are the murderer, coward!”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Message to George W. Bush, in a nationally televised speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2_lJbIyzT64 in March 2006. 2006

God, War, Children, People

“You have the charisma of a damp rag, and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk. And the question that I want to ask, […] that we're all going to ask, is "Who are you?" I'd never heard of you. Nobody in Europe had ever heard of you. I would like to ask you, President, who voted for you, and what mechanism … oh, I know democracy's not popular with you lot, and what mechanism do the people of Europe have to remove you? Is this European democracy? Well, I sense, I sense though that you are competent and capable and dangerous, and I have no doubt in your intention, to be the quiet assassin of European democracy, and of the European nation states. You appear to have a loathing for the very concept of the existence of nation states - perhaps that's because you come from Belgium, which of course is pretty much a non-country. But since you took over, we've seen Greece reduced to nothing more than a protectorate. Sir, you have no legitimacy in this job at all, and I can say with confidence that I speak on behalf of the majority of British people in saying: We don't know you, we don't want you, and the sooner you're put out to grass, the better.”

Nigel Farage (1964) British politician and former commodity broker

Speech in the European Parliament, 24 February 2010 - Ukip's Nigel Farage tells Van Rompuy: You have the charisma of a damp rag http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/25/nigel-farage-herman-van-rompuy-damp-rag, The Guardian, 24 February 2010. 2010

People, Democracy, Confidence, Question

“One cannot write about Robert E. Howard without writing about Texas. This is inevitable, and particularly so when discussing any aspect of Howard's biography. To ignore the presence of the Lone Star State in Robert E. Howard's life and writing invites, at the very least, a few wrongheaded conclusions, and at worst, abject character assassination. This doesn't keep people from plunging right in and getting it wrong every time.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

~ Mark Finn, 2006, p. 249, Blood and Thunder, ISBN 978-1-932265-21-7
About

Life, People, Star, Time

“Johnson: What do you think about this Vietnam thing? I’d like to hear you talk a little bit.
Russell: Well, frankly, Mr. President, it’s the damn worse mess that I ever saw, and I don’t like to brag and I never have been right many times in my life, but I knew that we were going to get into this sort of mess when we went in there. And I don’t see how we’re ever going to get out of it without fighting a major war with the Chinese and all of them down there in those rice paddies and jungles. I just don’t see it. I just don’t know what to do.
Johnson: Well, that’s the way I have been feeling for six months.
Russell: Our position is deteriorating and it looks like the more we try to do for them, the less they are willing to do for themselves. It is a mess and it’s going to get worse, and I don’t know how or what to do. I don’t think the American people are quite ready for us to send our troops in there to do the fighting. If I was going to get out, I’d get the same crowd that got rid of old Diem [the Vietnamese prime minister who was overthrown and assassinated in 1963] to get rid of these people and to get some fellow in there that said we wish to hell we would get out. That would give us a good excuse for getting out.
Johnson: How important is it to us?
Russell: It isn’t important a damn bit for all this new missile stuff.
Johnson: I guess it is important.
Russell: From a psychological standpoint. Other than the question of our word and saving face, that’s the reason that I said that I don’t think that anybody would expect us to stay in there. It’s going to be a headache to anybody that tries to fool with it. You’ve got all the brains in the country, Mr. President—you better get ahold of them. I don’t know what to do about this. I saw it all coming on, but that don’t do any good now, that’s water over the dam and under the bridge. And we are there.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Telephone call with Senator Richard Russell (May 27, 1964)

Life, War, People, Fools

“Now what in hell am I going to tell this boy Schaefer's parents? That a substitute nurse assassinated him because she couldn't tell the doctors from the patients on the floor?”

Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981) American playwright, screenwriter and novelist

Dr. Bock.
The Hospital (1971)

Boy, Hell, Parent

“When the enemy is demoralized from within… A single blow must destroy him. Aerial attacks, stupendous in their mass effect, surprise, terror, sabotage, assassinations from within, the murder of leading men… that is the war of the future.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: The Voice of Destruction (1940), p. 10

Men, War, Future

“The best compliment I ever got in my life came from Chairman Mao of China. When I went there, at a time when nobody wanted to touch China with a 10-foot pole, Mao told me that I'm beautiful because I'm a natural, and he said natural is perfection. So, no character assassination can diminish me and my perfection.”

Imelda Marcos (1929) Former First Lady of the Philippines

"Her Greatest Admirer" in TIME (2004)

Life, Beauty, Nature, Time

“The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the assassination of Allende drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the war in the Sinai Desert made people forget Allende, the Cambodian massacre made people forget Sinai, and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten.
In times when history still moved slowly, events were few and far between and easily committed to memory. They formed a commonly accepted backdrop for thrilling scenes of adventure in private life. Nowadays, history moves at a brisk clip. A historical event, though soon forgotten, sparkles the morning after with the dew of novelty. No longer a backdrop, it is now the adventure itself, an adventure enacted before the backdrop of the commonly accepted banality of private life.”

Milan Kundera book The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Part I: Lost Letters (p. 7)
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979)

Life, War, People, History

“I take my title from the name the Jews have traditionally given the Roman Empire. You may expect to meet all manner of wickedness in what follows - pork-eating, lechery, adultery, bigamy, sodomy, bestiality, the most ingenious varieties of cruelty, assassination, the worship of false gods and the sin of being uncircumcised.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985)

God, Falseness

“Iran took dozens of Americans hostage in Tehran, murdered hundreds of American soldiers, Marines, in Beirut, and was responsible for killing and maiming thousands of American service men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. Beyond the Middle East, Iran attacks America and its allies through its global terror network. It blew up the Jewish community center and the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. It helped al-Qaeda bomb U. S. embassies in Africa. It even attempted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador, right here in Washington, D. C. In the Middle East, Iran now dominates four Arab capitals, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa. And if Iran's aggression is left unchecked, more will surely follow. So, at a time when many hope that Iran will join the community of nations, Iran is busy gobbling up the nations. We must all stand together to stop Iran's march of conquest, subjugation and terror.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

2010s, 2015, Address to the United States Congress (March 2015)

Women, Men, Hope, Communication

“The man, whose head and heart had in a desperate emergency and amidst a despairing people paved the way for their deliverance, was no more, when it became possible to carry out his design. Whether his successor Hasdrubal forbore to make the attack because the proper moment seemed to him to have not yet come, or whether, more a statesman than a general, he believed himself unequal to the conduct of the enterprise, we are unable to determine. When, at the beginning of [221 B. C], he fell by the hand of an assassin, the Carthaginian officers of the Spanish army summoned to fill his place Hannibal, the eldest son of Hamilcar. He was still a young man--born in [247 B. C], and now, therefore, in his twenty-ninth year [221 B. C]; but his had already been a life of manifold experience. His first recollections pictured to him his father fighting in a distant land and conquering on Ercte; he had keenly shared that unconquered father's feelings on the Peace of Catulus (also see Treaty of Lutatius), on the bitter return home, and throughout the horrors of the Libyan war. While yet a boy, he had followed his father to the camp; and he soon distinguished himself. His light and firmly-knit frame made him an excellent runner and fencer, and a fearless rider at full speed; the privation of sleep did not affect him, and he knew like a soldier how to enjoy or to dispense with food. Although his youth had been spent in the camp, he possessed such culture as belonged to the Phoenicians of rank in his day; in Greek, apparently after he had become a general, he made such progress under the guidance of his confidant Sosilus of Sparta as to be able to compose state papers in that language. As he grew up, he entered the army of his father, to perform his first feats of arms under the paternal eye and to see him fall in battle by his side. Thereafter he had commanded the cavalry under his sister's husband, Hasdrubal, and distinguished himself by brilliant personal bravery as well as by his talents as a leader. The voice of his comrades now summoned him--the tried, although youthful general--to the chief command, and he could now execute the designs for which his father and his brother-in-law had lived and died. He took up the inheritance, and he was worthy of it. His contemporaries tried to cast stains of various sorts on his character; the Romans charged him with cruelty, the Carthaginians with covetousness; and it is true that he hated as only Oriental natures know how to hate, and that a general who never fell short of money and stores can hardly have been other than covetous. But though anger and envy and meanness have written his history, they have not been able to mar the pure and noble image which it presents. Laying aside wretched inventions which furnish their own refutation, and some things which his lieutenants, particularly Hannibal Monomachus and Mago the Sammite, were guilty of doing in his name, nothing occurs in the accounts regarding him which may not be justified under the circumstances, and according to the international law, of the times; and all agree in this, that he combined in rare perfection discretion and enthusiasm, caution and energy. He was peculiarly marked by that inventive craftiness, which forms one of the leading traits of the Phoenician character; he was fond of taking singular and unexpected routes; ambushes and stratagems of all sorts were familiar to him; and he studied the character of his antagonists with unprecedented care. By an unrivaled system of espionage--he had regular spies even in Rome--he kept himself informed of the projects of the enemy; he himself was frequently seen wearing disguises and false hair, in order to procure information on some point or other. Every page of the history of this period attests his genius in strategy; and his gifts as a statesman were, after the peace with Rome, no less conspicuously displayed in his reform of the Carthaginian constitution, and in the unparalleled influence which as a foreign exile he exercised in the cabinets of the eastern powers. The power which he wielded over men is shown by his incomparable control over an army of various nations and many tongues--an army which never in the worst times mutinied against him. He was a great man; wherever he went, he riveted the eyes of all.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

The History of Rome, Volume 2 Translated by W.P. Dickson
On Hannibal the man and soldier
The History of Rome - Volume 2

Life, Men, Money, Hate

“There is and will be rousing language to keep citizens armed and arming; slaughtered and slaughtering in the malls, courthouses, post offices, playgrounds, bedrooms and boulevards; stirring, memorializing language to mask the pity and waste of needless death. There will be more diplomatic language to countenance rape, torture, assassination.”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)
Context: There is and will be rousing language to keep citizens armed and arming; slaughtered and slaughtering in the malls, courthouses, post offices, playgrounds, bedrooms and boulevards; stirring, memorializing language to mask the pity and waste of needless death. There will be more diplomatic language to countenance rape, torture, assassination. There is and will be more seductive, mutant language designed to throttle women, to pack their throats like paté-producing geese with their own unsayable, transgressive words; there will be more of the language of surveillance disguised as research; of politics and history calculated to render the suffering of millions mute; language glamorized to thrill the dissatisfied and bereft into assaulting their neighbors; arrogant pseudo-empirical language crafted to lock creative people into cages of inferiority and hopelessness.

Death, Memory

“One of its [James A. Garfield’s assassination] lessons, perhaps its most important lesson, is the folly, the wickedness, and the danger of the extreme and bitter partisanship which so largely prevails in our country.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Letter to Emile Kahn (1 October 1881)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Context: One of its [James A. Garfield’s assassination] lessons, perhaps its most important lesson, is the folly, the wickedness, and the danger of the extreme and bitter partisanship which so largely prevails in our country. This partisan bitterness is greatly aggravated by that system of appointments and removals which deals with public offices as rewards for services rendered to political parties or to party leaders. Hence crowds of importunate place-hunters of whose dregs Guiteau is the type. The required reform [of the civil service] will be accomplished whenever the people imperatively demand it, not only of their Executive, but also of their legislative officers. With it, the class to which the assassin belongs will lose their occupation, and the temptation to try “to administer government by assassination” will be taken away.

Country

“An insatiate lust of conquest transmutes manslaying into a virtue; and, amongst more races than one, implacable revenge has made assassination a duty. A clever theft was praiseworthy amongst the Spartans; and it is equally so amongst Christians, provided it be on a sufficiently large scale.”

Herbert Spencer book Social Statics

Pt. II, Ch. 16 : The Rights of Women
Social Statics (1851)
Context: Attila conceived himself to have a divine claim to the dominion of the earth: — the Spaniards subdued the Indians under plea of converting them to Christianity; hanging thirteen refractory ones in honour of Jesus Christ and his apostles: and we English justify our colonial aggressions by saying that the Creator intends the Anglo-Saxon race to people the world! An insatiate lust of conquest transmutes manslaying into a virtue; and, amongst more races than one, implacable revenge has made assassination a duty. A clever theft was praiseworthy amongst the Spartans; and it is equally so amongst Christians, provided it be on a sufficiently large scale. Piracy was heroism with Jason and his followers; was so also with the Norsemen; is so still with the Malays; and there is never wanting some golden fleece for a pretext. Amongst money-hunting people a man is commended in proportion to the number of hours he spends in business; in our day the rage for accumulation has apotheosized work; and even the miser is not without a code of morals by which to defend his parsimony. The ruling classes argue themselves into the belief that property should be represented rather than person — that the landed interest should preponderate. The pauper is thoroughly persuaded that he has a right to relief. The monks held printing to be an invention of the devil; and some of our modern sectaries regard their refractory brethren as under demoniacal possession. To the clergy nothing is more obvious than that a state-church is just, and essential to the maintenance of religion. The sinecurist thinks himself rightly indignant at any disregard of his vested interests. And so on throughout society.

Revenge

“No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet. No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

On the Mindless Menace of Violence (1968)
Context: What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet. No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason. Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily — whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence — whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

Madness

“For this feeling there are many apologies, for there was never yet an error, however flagrant and hurtful, for which some plausible defense could not be framed. Chattel slavery, king craft, priest craft, pious frauds, intolerance, persecution, suicide, assassination, repudiation, and a thousand other errors and crimes have all had their defenses and apologies. Prejudice of race and color has been equally upheld. The two best arguments in the defense are, first, the worthlessness of the class against which it is directed; and, second, that the feeling itself is entirely natural. The way to overcome the first argument is to work for the elevation of those deemed worthless, and thus make them worthy of regard, and they will soon become worthy and not worthless. As to the natural argument, it may be said that nature has many sides. Many things are in a certain sense natural, which are neither wise nor best. It is natural to walk, but shall men therefore refuse to ride? It is natural to ride on horseback, shall men therefore refuse steam and rail?”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)
Context: I need not repeat here the multitude of reproachful epithets expressive of the same sentiment among ourselves. All who are not to the manor born have been made to feel the lash and sting of these reproachful names. For this feeling there are many apologies, for there was never yet an error, however flagrant and hurtful, for which some plausible defense could not be framed. Chattel slavery, king craft, priest craft, pious frauds, intolerance, persecution, suicide, assassination, repudiation, and a thousand other errors and crimes have all had their defenses and apologies. Prejudice of race and color has been equally upheld. The two best arguments in the defense are, first, the worthlessness of the class against which it is directed; and, second, that the feeling itself is entirely natural. The way to overcome the first argument is to work for the elevation of those deemed worthless, and thus make them worthy of regard, and they will soon become worthy and not worthless. As to the natural argument, it may be said that nature has many sides. Many things are in a certain sense natural, which are neither wise nor best. It is natural to walk, but shall men therefore refuse to ride? It is natural to ride on horseback, shall men therefore refuse steam and rail? Civilization is itself a constant war upon some forces in nature, shall we therefore abandon civilization and go back to savage life? Nature has two voices, the one high, the other low; one is in sweet accord with reason and justice, and the other apparently at war with both. The more men know of the essential nature of things, and of the true relation of mankind, the freer they are from prejudice of every kind. The child is afraid of the giant form of his own shadow. This is natural, but he will part with his fears when he is older and wiser. So ignorance is full of prejudice, but it will disappear with enlightenment. But I pass on.

Men, Color, Way, Error

“The philosophic historian, studying hereafter this present age, in which we are ourselves living, may say that it was a time of unexampled prosperity, luxury, and wealth; but catching at certain horrible murders which have lately disgraced our civilisation, may call us a nation of assassins. It is to invert the pyramid and stand it on its point.”

James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of Fraser's Magazine

The Influence of the Reformation on the Scottish Character (1865)
Context: The student running over the records of other times finds certain salient things standing out in frightful prominence. He concludes that the substance of those times was made up of the matters most dwelt on by the annalist. He forgets that the things most noticed are not those of every-day experience, but the abnormal, the extraordinary, the monstrous. The exceptions are noted down, the common and usual is passed over in silence. The philosophic historian, studying hereafter this present age, in which we are ourselves living, may say that it was a time of unexampled prosperity, luxury, and wealth; but catching at certain horrible murders which have lately disgraced our civilisation, may call us a nation of assassins. It is to invert the pyramid and stand it on its point. The same system of belief which produced the tragedy which I have described, in its proper province as the guide of ordinary life, has been the immediate cause of all that is best and greatest in Scottish character.

Age, Study, Time, Wealth

“He was not unamiable, but he could at any time have viewed the execution of a dog, or the assassination of an infant, with the liveliest satisfaction. Their habits were at variance with his love of order; and his love of order, was as powerful as his love of life.”

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) English writer and social critic and a Journalist

"A Dinner at Poplar Walk" (1833), later published as "Mr. Minns and his Cousin"
Context: There were two classes of created objects which he held in the deepest and most unmingled horror: they were, dogs and children. He was not unamiable, but he could at any time have viewed the execution of a dog, or the assassination of an infant, with the liveliest satisfaction. Their habits were at variance with his love of order; and his love of order, was as powerful as his love of life.

Love, Life, Dogs, Time

“You can't shame or humiliate modern celebrities. What used to be called shame and humiliation is now called publicity. And forget traditional character assassination; if you say a modern celebrity is an adulterer, a pervert and a drug addict, all it means is that you've read his autobiography.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Give War a Chance

Give War a Chance (1992)

Reading, Forgetting

“I fully understand the men behind Al Qaeda. They have tried to assassinate me twice before. The Pakistan Peoples Party and I represent everything they fear the most — moderation, democracy, equality for women, information, and technology.”

Benazir Bhutto (1953–2007) 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan

"Journeying to democracy" in The Boston Globe (18 October 2007) http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/10/18/journeying_to_democracy/ Context: I fully understand the men behind Al Qaeda. They have tried to assassinate me twice before. The Pakistan Peoples Party and I represent everything they fear the most — moderation, democracy, equality for women, information, and technology. We represent the future of a modern Pakistan, a future that has no place in it for ignorance, intolerance, and terrorism. The forces of moderation and democracy must, and will, prevail against extremism and dictatorship. I will not be intimidated. I will step out on the tarmac in Karachi not to complete a journey, but to begin one. Despite threats of death, I will not acquiesce to tyranny, but rather lead the fight against it.

Women, Men, People, Fear

“Surrounded by assassins!”

Jimmy Durante (1893–1980) American jazz singer, pianist, comedian and actor

As quoted in Current Biography : Who's News and Why (1946) by Anna Rothe, p. 168

“There is no crime that the Catholic Church did not commit,—no cruelty that it did not practice,—no form of treachery that it did not reward, and no virtue that it did not persecute. It was the greatest and most powerful enemy of human rights. It did all that organization, cunning, piety, self-denial, heroism, treachery, zeal and brute force could do to enslave the children of men. It was the enemy of intelligence, the assassin of liberty, and the destroyer of progress.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Rome, or Reason? A Reply to Cardinal Manning. Part I. The North American Review (1888)
Context: The people became convinced—being ignorant, stupid and credulous—that the church held the keys of heaven and hell. The foundation for the most terrible mental tyranny that has existed among men was in this way laid. The Catholic Church enslaved to the extent of its power. It resorted to every possible form of fraud; it perverted every good instinct of the human heart; it rewarded every vice; it resorted to every artifice that ingenuity could devise, to reach the highest round of power. It tortured the accused to make them confess; it tortured witnesses to compel the commission of perjury; it tortured children for the purpose of making them convict their parents; it compelled men to establish their own innocence; it imprisoned without limit; it had the malicious patience to wait; it left the accused without trial, and left them in dungeons until released by death. There is no crime that the Catholic Church did not commit,—no cruelty that it did not practice,—no form of treachery that it did not reward, and no virtue that it did not persecute. It was the greatest and most powerful enemy of human rights. It did all that organization, cunning, piety, self-denial, heroism, treachery, zeal and brute force could do to enslave the children of men. It was the enemy of intelligence, the assassin of liberty, and the destroyer of progress.

Men, Children, Intelligence

“Unfortunately the wrong man was generally assassinated. The true criminal was an absentee, and his agent was shot instead of him.”

James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of Fraser's Magazine

"On the Uses of a Landed Gentry" address in Edinburgh (6 November 1876), published in Short Studies on Great Subjects, Vol. III (1893), p. 406
Context: The landlord may become a direct oppressor. He may care nothing for the people, and have no object but to squeeze the most that he can out of them fairly or unfairly. The Russian government has been called despotism tempered with assassination. In Ireland landlordism was tempered by assassination.
Unfortunately the wrong man was generally assassinated. The true criminal was an absentee, and his agent was shot instead of him. A noble lord living in England, two of whose agents had lost their lives already in his service, ordered the next to post a notice in his Barony that he intended to persevere in what he was doing, and if the tenants thought they would intimidate him by shooting his agents, they would find themselves mistaken.

“You make to die
You are the dead
You the assassin of yourself.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Christ, Old Student in a New School (1972)

Dead

“Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Address at the National Archives dedicating a shrine for the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights (15 December 1952) https://trumanlibrary.org/calendar/viewpapers.php?pid=2102 Context: Of course, there are dangers in religious freedom and freedom of opinion. But to deny these rights is worse than dangerous, it is absolutely fatal to liberty. The external threat to liberty should not drive us into suppressing liberty at home. Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination. All freedom-loving nations, not the United States alone, are facing a stern challenge from the Communist tyranny. In the circumstances, alarm is justified. The man who isn't alarmed simply doesn't understand the situation — or he is crazy. But alarm is one thing, and hysteria is another. Hysteria impels people to destroy the very thing they are struggling to preserve. Invasion and conquest by Communist armies would be a horror beyond our capacity to imagine. But invasion and conquest by Communist ideas of right and wrong would be just as bad. For us to embrace the methods and morals of communism in order to defeat Communist aggression would be a moral disaster worse than any physical catastrophe. If that should come to pass, then the Constitution and the Declaration would be utterly dead and what we are doing today would be the gloomiest burial in the history of the world.

Men, Suicide

“The logic of governmental efficiency, unchecked, runs straight on, not only to dictatorship, but also to torture, assassination, and other abominations.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Citizenship Papers (2003), A Citizen's Response
Context: Our Constitution, by its separation of powers and its system of checks and balances, acts as a restraint upon efficiency by denying exclusive power to any branch of government. The logic of governmental efficiency, unchecked, runs straight on, not only to dictatorship, but also to torture, assassination, and other abominations.

“So we’re withdrawing troops from the Middle East. GOOD! What’s the War on Terror death count by now, a half-million? How much have we spent, $5 trillion? Five-and-a-half? For that cost, we’ve destabilized the region to the point of abject chaos, inspired millions of Muslims to hate us, and torn up the Geneva Convention and half the Constitution in pursuit of policies like torture, kidnapping, assassination-by-robot and warrantless detention.”

Matt Taibbi (1970) author and journalist

War, Death, Hate

“If I am assassinated, there is only one person responsible: the president of the United States. If, by the hand of the devil, these perverse plans succeed...forget about Venezuelan oil, Mr Bush. I will not hide, I will walk in the streets with all of you...but I know I am condemned to death.”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Source: Hugo Chávez message to George Bush during his television/radio show ¡Aló Presidente! on February 20, 2005. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/feb/22/venezuela.julianborger

Forgetting, Death, Personality

“Comrades, in this country we are embarking upon a third epoch. The third epoch is a battle between armed revolution and armed counter-revolution, which are prepared for violence. Counter-revolution with its old and bloody violence, peace at the hands of bayonets, their damned wars that annihilate people in the prisons, schools, factories, in the countryside, and even assassinating children with hunger and misery in their maternal wombs.”

Abimael Guzmán (1934–2021) Peruvian communist

"We Are the Initiators" (1980)

School, Hunger, Peace, Country

“I defy the most scrupulous defender of property to contest these principles, short of declaring openly that he understands this word as the right to despoil and assassinate his fellows. So how have people been able to claim that any sort of restriction, or rather any regulation of the trade in wheat, was an attack on property, and disguise that barbaric system under the specious name of freedom of trade? Do the authors of this system not perceive that they are inevitably in contradiction with themselves?”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

On Subsistence, (2 December 1792)

People, Understanding, Freedom

“Emergency was declared. Sanjay Gandhi took over. He created an army of morally corrupt, foreign-educated intellectuals with no track record. Their biggest strength was their unconditional loyalty to the Gandhi family. This tradition has continued. Loyalty over merit. Scheming over competence. Loot over contribution. Corruption grew. Guilt grew. Fear grew. With every scam, the family started making the intellectual wall bigger and bigger. Today this wall is full of scammers, crooks, agents, brokers, pimps, lobbyists, character assassins, land sharks etc. disguised as lawyers, journalists, NGOs, feminists, advisors, professors, socialists etc. Simply put, beneficiaries of Congress’s largesse.”

Vivek Agnihotri (1973) director

Urban Naxals (2018)

Family, Fear, Education, Loyalty

“No God created the crime of murder, and no God created sorrow or pain... Again, because you believe that you can murder a man and end his consciousness forever, then murder exists within your reality and must be dealt with... The assassin of Dr. King believes that he has blotted out a living consciousness for all eternity... But your errors and mistakes, luckily enough, are not real and do not affect reality, for Dr. King still lives.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Seth Material (1970), p. 273

Error, God, Pain, Reality

“Last August 4th, I was a victim of a terrorist attack with drones that tried to kill me in a military event on one of the main avenues in Caracas. If it had been executed as planned, it would have been a massacre, an assassination of the institutional, political and military high command of our nation…. the terrorists… who attacked me… were captured by the security… agencies. The 28 perpetrators were captured…are convicted and sentenced. As I informed… different governments of the world, all the investigations about that terrorist attack indicate that it was prepared, financed and planned in the territory of United States of America… I would like to ask the United Nations system to appoint a special delegate of the Secretariat of the United Nations to conduct an independent investigation internationally about the implications and responsibilities of this terrorist attack.”

Nicolás Maduro (1962) 53rd President of Venezuela

President Maduro's speech at the United Nations General Assembly (excerpts), 26 September 2018

World

“Is murder stripped of its blackness by become a fine art? All assassination is practically instantaneous and painless, the assassination of men as as well as that of birds and quadrupeds. What would the author of such nonsense think if the assassination of his brother or mother blandly attempted to relieve himself of all guilt by means of the assurance that his victim had experienced no suffering? The crime of extermination does not consist in the creation of pain, but in the destruction of that precious and mysterious essence called life.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Debate with Laurence Gronlund, quoted by Karen Iacobbo and Michael Iacobbo in Vegetarian America: A History (2004), p. 121

Pain, Suffering, Art, Bird

“If I am assassinated, there is only one person responsible: the president of the United States. If, by the hand of the devil, these perverse plans succeed…forget about Venezuelan oil, Mr Bush. I will not hide, I will walk in the streets with all of you…but I know I am condemned to death.”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Hugo Chávez message to George Bush during his television/radio show ¡Aló Presidente! on Febraury 20, 2005. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/feb/22/venezuela.julianborger 2005

Personality, Death, Forgetting

“Four have pleaded not guilty while four are being tried in absentia. The Chief accused, Saeed Ramadan, is among those not in court and he is now living outside Egypt. Khattab said it was Ramadan who contacted him through agents to draw up the plans to assassinate President Nassor and carry out the acts of sabotage. He said he had pretended to agree in order to obtain as much money from Ramadan as he could. The prosecution has alleged Ramadan received money from the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) and sent it to Khattab in Alexandria.”

Said Ramadan (1926–1995) Egyptian political activist

1966, page 33 of Mideast Mirror, Volume 18 https://books.google.ca/books?id=7q8MAQAAMAAJ, from Arab News Agency About

Money, Drawing

“They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again. And then they use their ex-president to endorse the resistance. All to make them march, make them protest, make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia. To smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law-abiding until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness. And when that happens, they’ll use it as an excuse for their outrage. The only way we stop this, the only we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth. I’m the National Rifle Association of America, and I’m freedom’s safest place.”

Dana Loesch (1978) American conservative political commentator

April, 2017 in season 2 episode 2 of the NRATV series Freedom's Safest Place and June, 2017 excerpted as a video advertisement for the NRA ([Dana, Loesch, The Violence of Lies, NRATV, Freedom's Safest Place, April 2017, May 20, 2019, https://www.nratv.com/episodes/freedoms-safest-place-season-2-episode-2-the-violence-of-lies]; [N.R.A. Ad Condemning Protests Against Trump Raises Partisan Anger, Jonah, Engel Bromwich, June 29, 2017, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/us/nra-ad-trump-protests.html]; [Secrecy, Self-Dealing, and Greed at the N.R.A., Mike, Spies, April 17, 2019, The New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/secrecy-self-dealing-and-greed-at-the-nra]; [NRA advert calling on Americans to 'fight lies' called 'an open call to violence', Emily, Shugerman, June 29, 2017, The Independent, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/nra-advert-video-watch-guns-trump-fight-lies-violence-fist-truth-a7815231.html]; [NRA video declares war on liberals, critics say, William, Cummings, USA Today, June 29, 2017, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/06/30/controversial-nra-video/441506001/]; Live-Streaming the Apocalypse With NRATV, Parker, James, June 2018, The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/nratv-live-streaming-the-apocalypse/559139/,; [N.R.A. Ad Condemning Protests Against Trump Raises Partisan Anger, Bromwich, Jonah Engel, June 29, 2017, The New York Times, May 20, 2019, en-US, 0362-4331, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/us/nra-ad-trump-protests.html]; [The NRA recruitment video that is even upsetting gun owners, Peter, Holley, June 29, 2017, May 20, 2019, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/06/29/the-nra-recruitment-video-that-is-even-upsetting-gun-owners/]; [A Chilling National Rifle Association Ad Gaining Traction Online Appears to Be 'An Open Call to Violence', Business Insider, May 20, 2019, Natasha, Bertrand, June 29, 2017, http://www.businessinsider.com/national-rifle-association-ad-call-to-violence-2017-6]; [The NRA just released a violent, terrifying ad, Matthew, Rozsa, June 29, 2017, May 24, 2019, Salon, https://www.salon.com/2017/06/29/the-nra-just-released-a-violent-terrifying-ad/]; [How the N.R.A. Manipulates Gun Owners and the Media, Michael, Luo, w:Michael Luo, August 11, 2017, May 23, 2019, The New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-the-nra-manipulates-gun-owners-and-the-media]; [The NRA’s New Scare Tactics, Laura, Reston, October 3, 2017, The New Republic, https://newrepublic.com/article/145001/nra-new-scare-tactic-gun-lobby-remaking-itself-arm-alt-right])

School, Law, Freedom, Country

“A fundamental part of guerrilla tactics is the treatment accorded the people of the zone. Even the treatment accorded the enemy is important; the norm to be followed should be an absolute inflexibility at the time of attack, an absolute inflexibility toward all the despicable elements that resort to informing and assassination, and clemency as absolute as possible toward the enemy soldiers who go into the fight performing or believing that they perform a military duty.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. I: 3. Guerrilla Tactics

Fight, Time, People, Parting

“When a bunch of known corrupt people unite against one man and spare no effort to ridicule him, blackmail him and attempt to assassinate his character, blindly follow that one man!”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

I, 17
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book I

People, Effort

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Fellow citizens, I end, as I began, with congratulations. We have done a good work for our race today. In doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honors to ourselves and those who come after us. We have been fastening ourselves to a name and fame imperishable and immortal; we have also been defending ourselves from a blighting scandal. When now it shall be said that the colored man is soulless, that he has no appreciation of benefits or benefactors; when the foul reproach of ingratitude is hurled at us, and it is attempted to scourge us beyond the range of human brotherhood, we may calmly point to the monument we have this day erected to the memory of Abraham Lincoln.
1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Hate, Personality, Memory, Age

“The Arya Samaj was the first Hindu movement to take up a bold stand in this context. Maharshi Dayanand himself had showed up Muhammad for the sort of man he was. Soon after, however, the Arya Samaj was silenced effectively by a series of murders, notably that of Pandit Lekhram and Swami Shraddhananda. The British were inclined to permit fair criticism, particularly that which was based on Islamic sources. But they could not prevent Muslim assassins from taking the law in their own hands.”

Pandit Lekh Ram (1858–1897) Hindu leader

Goel, Sita Ram (editor) (1998). Freedom of expression: Secular theocracy versus liberal democracy. https://web.archive.org/web/20171026023112/http://www.bharatvani.org:80/books/foe/index.htm Ch. 6

Silence, Law

“Like all great character assassination attempts, implication is much more effective than accusation.”

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

“We are now raring to die for our country's sake
Let's see how much of strength the assassin can display!
O traveller on the path of love, do not drop mid-way,
It is the distance of the goal that glorifies the chase.
It is the distance of the goal that glorifies the chase.
Standing by the gallows the hangman makes a call,
Come, if there be any, by the martyr's zeal enthralled.
We'll tell you all, O sky, wait till he time arrives,
How can we at this stage, our secret plans unveil?
O martyrs in the nation's cause, kudos to your sacrifice,
Even in the enemy they talk of you with praise.
Fired by patriotic fervour, many a maddened youth.
Has gathered at the crossing, itching for the cross.
Why are they mute and silent? no whisper, no talk,
Everyone that I see has got his lips locked.”

Ram Prasad Bismil (1897–1927) revolutionary, poet & writer

Masterpieces of Patriotic Urdu Poetry, p. 109
Poetry, Desire for Self-sacrifice (Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna)

Time, Waiting, Country, Secret

“Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch.”

Rodrigo Duterte (1945) Filipino politician and the 16th President of the Philippines

Duterte endorses killing corrupt journalists https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/788543/duterte-endorses-killing-corrupt-journalists

Bitch

“Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch. Freedom of expression cannot help you if you have done something wrong...The constitution can no longer help you if you disrespect a person.”

Rodrigo Duterte (1945) Filipino politician and the 16th President of the Philippines

Duterte endorses killing corrupt journalists https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/788543/duterte-endorses-killing-corrupt-journalists(June 1, 2016) Duterte says killing of corrupt Philippines journalists justified https://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/31/asia/philippines-duterte-journalists/index.html(June 1, 2016)

Personality, Bitch, Help, Freedom

“I was thinking of going into the assassination business. You know what a dreamer I am. Would it be too much of a hit and myth operation, do you think?”

Michael Moorcock The Cornelius Quartet

The Cornelius Quartet, The Condition of Muzak (1977)
Source: Harlequin Invisible: or, the Emperor of China’s Court (p. 761)

Business, Thinking

“Is there anything sadder, I wonder, than an assassin with nobody left to kill?”

Michael Moorcock The Cornelius Quartet

The Cornelius Quartet, The English Assassin (1972)
Source: The Alternative Apocalypse 1 (p. 399)

Quotes about assassination page 2

Quotes about assassination
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