Quotes about crush
page 2

“It's like I'm thirteen again and he's my crush. All I'm aware of in this entire roomful of people is him. Where he is, what he's doing, who he's talking to.”

Sophie Kinsella book Remember Me?

Source: Remember Me?

People

“The platform underneath the balloon fell on her as she was trying to escape," she explained. "She was crushed."
"I'd have been disappointed too.”

Anthony Horowitz book Scorpia

Source: Scorpia

Disappointment

“How memories lie to us. How time coats the ordinary with gold. How it breaks the heart to go back and attempt to re-live them. How crushed we are when we discover that the gold was merely gold-plating thinly coated over lead, chalk and peeling paint.”

Henry Rollins book Black Coffee Blues

Source: Black Coffee Blues

Lie, Memory, Time, Heart

“Great. Just great. One glimpse of his body and I have a full-blown crush.

I honestly thought I was a bit deeper than that.”

Sophie Kinsella book The Undomestic Goddess

Source: The Undomestic Goddess

“A home filled with nothing but yourself. It's heavy, that lightness. It's crushing, that emptiness.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Source: The Tent

Home, Light

“It isn't the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh—I really think that requires”

Jean Webster book Daddy-Long-Legs

Source: Daddy-Long-Legs

Life, Courage, Thinking

“Now, Max, I think we both know your parents aren't missionaries."
I opened my eyes wide. "No? Well, for God's sake, don't tell them. They'd be crushed. Thinking they're doing the
Lord's work and all.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

God, Thinking, Parent

“People have crushes on priests all the time, you know. It’s exciting to have to deal with God as a rival.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Purple Hibiscus

Source: Purple Hibiscus

God, People, Time

“Artistic talent is far more common than the talent toartistic talent. Any parent with a hard hand can crush it, but to nurture it is much more difficult.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Parent

“I don't know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us, or our endless ability to endure it.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

“Love is the one thing in this world that you should never have to go through alone… For unreciprocated love is the most soul crushing experience you will ever go through.”

Ben Mitchell (1978) New Zealand actor

Love, World, Soul

“This boy thinks I am not of his species, that I am some other kind of creature, one that can be crushed under the weight of a phone book.

The pain is not great, but the symbolism is disagreeable.”

Dave Eggers book What Is the What

Source: What Is the What

Pain, Books, Boy, Thinking

“I see enormous loves growing immense and finally crushing me.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Love

“There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.”

John Hersey book Hiroshima

Source: Hiroshima

Books, Age

“I'm only interested in stories that are about the crushing of the human heart.”

Richard Yates (1926–1992) Novelist, short story writer

Heart

“I'm very disturbed to find out that the leader of the Townies has a soul and I'm beginning to develop a bit of a crush on him.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

Soul

“You learn nothing about men by snubbing them and crushing their pride. You must ask them what it is they can do in this world, that they alone can do.”

Hilary Mantel book Wolf Hall

Source: Wolf Hall

Men, World, Learning

“He issued orders to us: demigods who come to us for aid are no longer to be tolerated. We are to crush your little mortal faces.'
There was an uncomfortable silence.
'That sounds… extreme,' Jason ventured.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Silence

“With my life comes my heart, yours now to crush or cherish as you will. It is my hope you will have a care in keeping both.”

Johanna Lindsey (1952–2019) American writer

Source: Keeper of the Heart

Life, Hope, Heart

“By the Angel, it just crushed Sophocles," noted Will. "Has no one respect for the classics these days?”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Angels

“The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails!”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff (Ch. XIV).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: I have no pity! I have no pity! The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething; and I grind with greater energy in proportion to the increase of pain.

“She'd secretly had a crush on him since they were twelve years old. Last summer, she'd fallen for him hard.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Summer

“We are all born sexual creatures, thank God, but it's a pity so many people despise and crush this natural gift.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

God, People, Nature, Beauty

“I am mountains that crush. I am waves that crash. I am storms that shatter. I am”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Hero of Ages

Mountain

“I will fight any battle for you, crush any adversity. Because you are mine, beautiful girl. I love you so madly that the past before you feels sane…”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Lothaire

Love, Beauty, Feeling, Girl

“It was the heaviest thing I'd ever felt, as if I were being crushed under a thousand trucks. I wanted to black out from the pain, but I breathed deeply.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Pain

“Pride and hope and desire like crushed herbs in his heart sent up vapours of maddening incense before the eyes of his mind.”

James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Hope, Heart

“You are not my high school crush, idiot.”
“Great. I can die happy, then.”

Rachel Caine book Glass Houses

Source: Glass Houses

Happiness, School

“She intended to swallow the world and he lived crushed by reality.”

Isabel Allende (1942) Chilean writer

Source: Island Beneath the Sea

World, Reality

“Sure. My ego's had enough time to recover a modicum of dignity. Let's make sure we crush it again before I mistake myself for a god. -Acheron”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

God, Time

“Many persons lead lives of crushing boredom.”

Elizabeth Peters The Serpent on the Crown

Source: The Serpent on the Crown

Personality

“Thoughts - even fears - were airy things, formless until you made them solid with your voice and once given that weight, they could crush you.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Firefly Lane

Fear

“Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Lectures on Philosophy

Feeling, Understanding, Personality

“I pushed my ragged mouth against the mirror. A thousand crushed bleeding lips pushed back at me…”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

“I am crushed by your poor opinion
But will endeavor to carry on.”

Jayne Ann Krentz (1948) American novelist

Source: Second Sight

“Some crushes just never went away. They built, instead, into something permanent, obsessive and all consuming.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Rush

“Each child’s story is worthy of telling. There shouldn’t be a sliding scale of death. The weight of it is crushing.”

Anderson Cooper (1967) journalist and author

Source: Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival

Death

“I wondered if this was the way old crushes died, with a whimper, slowly, and then, just like that—gone.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: The Summer I Turned Pretty

Way

“you said you were going to kill rukia with your own hands… you make me sick… show me your bankai and I will crush it… I will make me beg for forgiveness on you knees… I will never let you say those words to Rukia again…
~Ichigo Kurosaki”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Forgiveness

“I had a stupid crush on a guy who barely tolerated me most of the time. Was that the kind of girl I was? Pick the jerk over the nice guy?”

Kelley Armstrong The Reckoning

Source: The Reckoning

Stupidity, Jerk, Guy, Girl

“Secrets of the heart. We swallow hard against them every day, forcing them deep inside us. There they sit, growing heavier, festering. Given enough time, they cannot help but crush the heart that holds them.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Secret, Time, Help, Heart

“He had a crush on a blueberry bush once.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

“As for one-party rule, it was questioned neither by the Left Opposition nor by the Right [wing of the Communist party]. All were prisoners of their own doctrine and their own past: all had worked with a will to create the apparatus of violence that crushed them. Bukharin’ s hopeless attempt to form a league with Kamenev was no more than a pitiful epilogue to his career. In November 1929 the deviationists performed a public act of penance, but even this did not save them. Stalin’ s victory was complete; the collapse of the Bukharinite opposition meant the triumph of autocracy in the party and in the country. In December 1929 Stalin’ s fiftieth birthday was celebrated as a major historical event, and from this point we may date the "cult of personality". Trotsky’ s prophecy of 1903 had come true: party rule had become Central Committee rule, and this in turn had becorne the personal tyranny of a dictator.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

Source: Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume III: The Breakdown, pp. 42-3

Birthday, Question, Past, Victory

“The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it.”

H. G. Wells book A Modern Utopia

Appendix, Scepticism of the Instrument
A Modern Utopia (1905)

Truth

“She thought that most women make a great mistake in allowing dress to be the master instead of the servant of their good looks; many women were, she considered, entirely crushed and made insignificant by the beauty of their clothes.”

Ada Leverson (1862–1933) British writer

Source: Tenterhooks (1912), Chapter x.

Women, Beauty, Clothes

“On! ye patriots to the battle. Hear Fort Moultrie's canon rattle. Then away, then away, then away to the fight! Go meet those Southern Traitors with iron will and should your courage falter boys, remember Bunker Hill. Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! The stars and stripes forever! Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! As our fathers crushed oppression deal with those who breathe Secession. Then away, then away, then away to the fight. Though Beauregard and Wigfall. Their swords may whet. Just tell them Major Anderson. Has not surrendered yet. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! Is Virginia, too, seceeding? Washington's remains unheeding? Then away, then away, then away to the fight. Unfold our country's banner. In triumph there and let the rebels desecrate that banner if they dare. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! Volunteers, be up and doing. Still the good old path pursuing. Then away, then away, then away to the fight. Your sires, who fought before you have led the way. Then follow in their footsteps and be as brave as they. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! On! ye patriots to the battle. Hear Fort Moultrie's cannon rattle then away, then away, then away to the fight. The star that lights our Union shall never set! Though fierce may be the conflict we'll gain the victory yet. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever!”

Fanny J. Crosby (1820–1915) American poet, lyricist and composer

Dixie For The Union http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/dixie/lyrics.html#union. <br class="br">1860s

Way, Star, Boy, Courage

“India is yet another major victim of Islam. The day Muhammad bin Qasim, entered Sindh as a conqueror, must rank as the most ominous, odious and outrageous moment in the history of India, whose proud, pious and powerful traditions have been the torch-bearer of world civilisation. The Indians, used to enjoying the warmth of ahinsa, were stunned by the violence that the Arab raiders displayed in robbing the rich and seducing the indigenous damsels. Yet the irony was that they did all this in the name of the Most Compassionate and Just Allah, who counts these felonies as acts of fairness when they are committed to torture the unbelievers. Then, this land that had become indifferent to the vicissitudes of history owing to a very long period of prosperity and plentitude, was attracted by more Islamic predators, who rushed in through the Khaiber Pass to loot her wealth, dishonour her daughters and crush her ethos that had stood the test of time despite its proneness to physical comforts and spiritual mirages such as ahinsa.”

Anwar Shaikh (1928–2006) British Pakistani writer

Anwar Shaikh (1998). Anwar Shaikh's Islam, the Arab imperialism. Cardiff: Principality Publishers.

World, History, Time, Daughters

“Here are two opposite ideas, one containing truth, the other the lie. Truth-of which there can be but one-is sought. The question is put to a vote. One idea polls 10,000 votes, the other 10,050. Is it possible that 50 votes more or less determine or deny truth? Truth depends neither on majority nor minority; it has its own laws and it succeeds, as has been seen, against all majorities, even though they be crushing.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics

Truth, Lie, Law, Idea

“The embarrassing truth — the brontosaurus in the broom closet that nobody wants to talk about — is that the Republican Party was never the party of freedom. That Goldwater business in the 1960s was a fluke, immediately snuffed out by "older, wiser heads" in the GOP like those of Nelson Rockefeller, Weeping Willy Scranton, Henry Cabot Lodge, and George Romney. The Republican Party was created in the 1850s by northeastern mercantilists just like them, to crush the hopes of poor southerners for individual liberty and independence, and keep them bound in serfdom, paying 80 percent of all taxes collected in America.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"The Brontosaurus in the Broom Closet" http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle541-20091018-05.html 18 October 2009.

Truth, Hope, Business, Freedom

“Once capitalist classes learn to live with unions — which they generally do reluctantly, only after efforts to crush them have failed — they then attempt to co-opt organized labour. They do so by courting a "special relationship" with union leaders who, as their organizations become larger and more complex, typically assume the role of full time union functionaries.”

David McNally (1953) Canadian political scientist

Source: Another World Is Possible : Globalization and Anti-capitalism (2002), Chapter 6, Democracy Against Capitalism, p. 208

Effort, Learning, Time

“You cannot change the conclusion of the brain by torture; nor by social ostracism. But I will tell you what you can do by these, and what you have done. You can make hypocrites by the million. You can make a man say that he has changed his mind; but he remains of the same opinion still. Put fetters all over him; crush his feet in iron boots; stretch him to the last gasp upon the holy rack; burn him, if you please, but his ashes will be of the same opinion still.”

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

The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child (1877)

Change

“There is a contrast of primary significance between Augustine and Pelagius. The former crushes everything in order to rebuild it again. The other addresses himself to man as he is. The first system, therefore, in respect to Christianity, falls into three stages: creation – the fall and a consequent condition of death and impotence; a new creation – whereby man is placed in a position where he can choose; and then, if he chooses – Christianity. The other system addresses itself to man as he is (Christianity fits into the world). From this is seen the significance of the theory of inspiration for the first system; from this also is seen the relationship between the synergistic and the semipelagian conflict. It is the same question, only that the syngeristic struggle has its presupposition in the new creation of the Augustinian system.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Soren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, Volume 1 Hong translation 1967 p. 14-15 1 A 101 January 14, 1837
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s

Death, World, Question

“The prophets were not religious individualists. …they always dealt with Israel and Judah as organic totalities. They conceived of their people as a gigantic personality which sinned as one and ought to repent as one. …it was only when the national life of Israel was crushed by foreign invaders that the prophets began to address themselves to the individual life and lost the large horizon of public life.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.1 The Historical Roots of Christianity the Hebrew Prophets, p. 8-9

Life, People, Personality

“Together, us gamers are strong. For too long we have been oppressed by all these groups; everyone is against us, but we are the toughest, most hard-working, most vigilant, most powerful group on the Internet! If we all together will rise up, we can defeat anything! We can take over the world! We can create the gaming utopia that we all wanted to live in! Cars are not cars - they are carmers; houses are not houses - they are gaming studios; roads are not roads - they are Candy Crush displays. Imagine it, just think of how good things would really be! Think about how bad we are now because we haven't risen up yet! The more we wait, the harder it will get, but now it is time for gamers to rise together!”

PewDiePie (1989) Swedish YouTuber and video game commentator

25 July 2018
2018, ONLY REAL GAMERS CAN WATCH THIS

World, Cars, Imagination, Game

“Khouri did not need to be told that Hades was a neutron star, any more than she needed to be told that there was no such thing as a safe close encounter with one. You either kept away or you died; those were the rules, and there was no force in the universe capable of negating them. Gravity ruled, and gravity did not take into account circumstances, or the unfairness of things, or listen to eleventh-hour petitions before reluctantly repealing its laws. Gravity crushed, and near the surface of a neutron star gravity crushed absolutely, until diamond flowed like water; until a mountain collapsed into a millionth of its height.”

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 37 (p. 554).

Law, Mountain, Star, Universe

“Since no example of Leninist socialism is other than totalitarian and bureaucratic, one wonders how the doctrinaire ideologists can dismiss so disdainfully those who point out that the promise of socialism in freedom, while surely praiseworthy, remains a promise only, not something experienced in reality. The utopia of socialism with a human face has been crushed everywhere even before it could be born. How distressing that becoming humane, which should be the least we could expect from a regime dedicated to liberating humanity, should present for socialism a problem as impossible as squaring the circle.”

Jean-François Revel (1924–2006) French writer and philosopher

Source: 2000s, Anti-Americanism (2003), p. 57

Problem, Reality, Freedom

“As they moved through the old barn, Adam felt Ronan's eyes glance off him and away, his disinterest practised but incomplete. Adam wondered if anyone else noticed. Part of him wished they did and immediately felt bad, because it was vanity, really: See, Adam Parrish is wantable, worthy of a crush, not just by anyone, someone like Ronan, who could want Gansey or anyone else and chose Adam for his hungry eyes”

Maggie Stiefvater (1981) American writer

pg 158
The Raven Cycle Series, Blue Lily, Lily Blue (2014)

Parting

“I have already mentioned that I was one of the persons who helped to form Umkhonto. I, and the others who started the organization, did so for two reasons. Firstly, we believed that as a result of Government policy, violence by the African people had become inevitable, and that unless responsible leadership was given to canalize and control the feelings of our people, there would be outbreaks of terrorism which would produce an intensity of bitterness and hostility between the various races of this country which is not produced even by war. Secondly, we felt that without violence there would be no way open to the African people to succeed in their struggle against the principle of white supremacy. All lawful modes of expressing opposition to this principle had been closed by legislation, and we were placed in a position in which we had either to accept a permanent state of inferiority, or to defy the Government. We chose to defy the law. We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and then the Government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence…”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1960s, I am Prepared to Die (1964)

Hostility, War, People, Law

“Every day I wake up determined to deliver for the people I have met all across this nation that have been neglected, ignored, and abandoned. I have visited the laid-off factory workers, and the communities crushed by our horrible and unfair trade deals. These are the forgotten men and women of our country, and they are forgotten, but they're not going to be forgotten long. These are people who work hard but no longer have a voice. I AM YOUR VOICE.”

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

2010s, 2016, July, (21 July 2016)

Women, Men, People, Communication

“People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to Charles James Fox (8 October 1777)
1770s

People, Law, Hope

“Many nights I stood on the bridge — and in the middle alone — lost — a defenseless prey to the surrounding swarming darkness — crushed by the mountainous black impenetrability of the skyscrapers — here and there lights resembling suspended falls of astral bodies or fantastic splendors of remote rites — shaken by the underground tumult of the trains in perpetual motion, like blood in the arteries—at times, ringing as alarm in a tempest, the shrill sulphurous voice of the trolley wires — now and then strange moanings of appeal from tugboats, guessed more than seen, through the infernal recesses below — I felt deeply moved, as if on the threshold of a new religion or in the presence of a new DIVINITY.”

Joseph Stella (1877–1946) American artist

Source: "The Brooklyn Bridge (A page of my life)," 1929, p. 88; Cited in: Beth Venn, Adam D. Weinberg. Frames of Reference: Looking at American Art, 1900-1950 : Works from the Whitney Museum of American Art. University of California Press, 1999. p. 123

Religion, Mountain, Light, Time

“Your honoured letter regarding suppression of the Jats has arrived. Allah is merciful, and it is hoped that he will crush the enemy. You should rest assured… You should forge unity with Musa Khan and other Muslim groups, and put to use this friendship and unity for facing the enemies. I hope for sure that on account of this unity among Muslims and their nobility, victory will be achieved.
The reason for the rise of enemies and the fall of Muslims is nothing except that, led by their lower nature, Muslims have shared their (Muslims’) concerns with Hindus. It is obvious that Hindus will not tolerate the suppression of non-Muslims. Being farsighted and practising patience are praiseworthy things, but not to the extent that non-Muslims take possession of Muslim cities, and go on occupying one (such) city every day… This is no time for farsightedness and patience. This is the time for putting trust in Allah, for manifesting the might of the sword, and for arousing the Muslim sense of honour. If you will do that, it is possible that winds of favour will start blowing. Whatever this recluse knows is this that war with the Jats is a magic spell which appears fearful at first but which, if you depend fully on the power of Allah and draw His attention towards this (war), will turn out to be no more than a mere show. Let me hope that you will keep me informed of developments and the faring of your arms…”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

To Taj Muhammad Khan Baluch Translated from the Urdu version of K.A. Nizami, Shãh Walîullah Dehlvî ke Siyãsî Maktûbãt, Second Edition, Delhi, 1969, pp. 150-51.
From his letters

Friendship, War, Fear, Hope

“I think the music business will eventually crush me, but I [smiles]… I'm ready.”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

in Strange Parallel (1998).

Smile, Music, Business, Thinking

“Our jobs have moved overseas, Islamic terrorism has spread within our shores and an open border has crushed low-income workers and threatened our security. The issues we face here in America are similar to the issues faced in Britain during their referendum on membership in the EU. This is the movement known as Brexit”

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

2010s, 2016, August, Speech in Jackson, Mississippi (August 24, 2016)

“Mercifully, we stay our hand. Earth’s cities will not be bombed. The free citizens of Venus Republic have no wish to slaughter their cousins still on Terra. Our only purpose is to establish our own independence, to manage our own affairs, to throw off the crushing yoke of absentee ownership and taxation without representation which has bleed us poor.
In doing so, in so taking our stand as free men, we call on all oppressed and impoverished nations everywhere to follow our lead, accept our help. Look up into the sky! Swimming there above you is the very station from which I now address you. The fat and stupid rulers of the Federation have made of Circum-Terra an overseer’s whip. The threat of this military base in the sky has protected their empire from the just wrath of their victims for more then five score years.
We now crush it.
In a matter of minutes this scandal in the clean skies, this pistol pointed at the heads of men everywhere on your planet, will cease to exist. Step out of doors, watch the sky. Watch a new sun blaze briefly, and know that its light is the light of Liberty inviting all of Earth to free itself.
Subject peoples of Earth, we free men of the free Republic of Venus salute you with that sign!”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 6, “The Sign in the Sky” (p. 74) - Speech given before the destruction of the nuclear-armed satellite Circum-Terra.

Men, People, Stupidity, Light

“The rational elites, obsessed by structure, have become increasingly authoritarian in a modern, administrative way. The citizens feel insulted and isolated. They look for someone to throw stones on their behalf. Any old stone will do. The cruder the better to crush the self-assurance of the obscure men and their obscure methods. The New Right, with its parody of democratic values, has been a crude but devastating stone with which to punish the modern elites. The New Left, which will eventually succeed it, could easily turn out to be equally crude.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Voltaire's Bastards (1992)

Men, Way, Feeling

“What a son I’ve made. The midwives must have turned me in my labor so that I lay on your brain and crushed it.”

Tanith Lee book The Storm Lord

Book 5, “The Serpent Wakes” Chapter 21 (p. 286)
The Storm Lord (1976)

“Nobody supports what happened last Saturday in London. But what about stopping it happening? As long as we are in Ireland, people will be letting off bombs in London. I can see that we are a colonial power holding down a colony. For the rest of the time violence will recur again and again as long as we are in Ireland. People in Northern Ireland see themselves as subject peoples. If they were just criminals or psychopaths they could be crushed. But they have a motive force which they think is good.”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Referring to the IRA's Chelsea Barracks bomb of 10 October 1981, in a speech to the Cambridge University Tory Reform Group (12 October 1981), quoted in The Times (13 October 1981).

People, Motivation, Support, Thinking

“This became Delacroix's theme: that the achievements of the spirit — all that a great library contained — were the result of a state of society so delicately balanced that at the least touch they would be crushed beneath an avalanche of pent-up animal forces.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Romantic Rebellion (1973), Ch. 8: Delacroix

Animals

“You see a Party system that crushes down anybody who [has] different opinions, who has different ideas in their mind. Simply to have different opinions can cost someone their life. They can be put in jail, they can be silenced, and they can [disappear]. And the other people would take it, not giving support.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei, interview by Christiane Amanpour, 2010

Life, People, Idea, Support

“I caught my wife in bed with another man and I was crushed. So I said, "Get off of me, you two!"”

Emo Philips (1956) American comedian

GQ Magazine - 75 Funniest Jokes of All Time (June 1999)

“Why should conservatives care? We have every interest in seeing rock culture destroyed and crushed.”

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

Source: "Die, Rock, Die!" by Jeffrey Tucker, The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, June 1997, UNZ.org, 2016-05-22 http://www.unz.org/Pub/RothbardRockwellReport-1997jun-00001,

“Militant Muslims want Islam and sharia law to dominate the West. Their goal is to subvert the U. S. Constitution and our way of life to the will of Allah. The word Islam means submission. What members of the American Left seem blind to is the fact that in countries where Islam dominates, their progressive ideas would be crushed and many of them would be thrown in jail simply because of their lifestyle choices. Yet, the American Left continues to serve as apologist-in-chief for fundamentalist Islam. Why? Because deep down American Leftists are terrified of Islamic fundamentali”

Chuck Hustmyre (1963) American journalist

2000s, 2009, The Left's love affair with Islam (2009)

Life, Law, Way, Idea

“Under the pressure of a war to the death, all that was best, all that was most human and gentle on each side was crushed out by military necessity. On the one side, the passion for a unified world, where every individual should live a free and full life in service of the world community, was overcome by the passion to punish spies, traitors, and heretics. On the other, vague and sadly misguided yearnings for a nobler, less materialistic life were cleverly transformed by the reactionary leaders into vindictiveness against the revolutionaries.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter V: Worlds Innumerable; 3. Nautiloids (p. 69)

Life, Death, War, World

“The Shah's vision of the ideal form of government was not so far removed from that of Mossadeq. In that ideal model one man, the king, prime minister or Pishva [Führer] would act as the guardian of the nation's highest interests. The Pishva, because he loves his people, could never do anything that might not be good for the people and the country. He might sacrifice the interests of the few for the benefit of the many. But he would never harm 'the people' or 'the nation' as a whole. Mossadeq's version of the same model envisaged a role for crowds, political groups - though not for political parties - and religious associations whose task was to support the Pishva by fighting his opponents and making him feel loved and cherished. In the Shah's model, the Pishva's decisions were to be carried out exclusively through the bureaucracy with the armed forces always ready to crush any opposition. All that was left for 'the nation' to do was applaud the Pishva and make him feel good. Mossadeq and the Shah advanced exactly the same argument in defence of their respective models: Iran, being constantly prey to the devilish appetite of the rapacious foreign powers, the influence of the ajnabi (foreigners), multiplying the centres of political power would allow the ajnabi to infiltrate the nation's structures. Neither man could invisage a situation in which different sections of the Iranian society might, for reasons of their own, oppose the Leader. They could conceive of no circumstances in which an opposition movement could emerge without foreign backing and intrigue.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

The Unknown Life of the Shah (1991)

Love, People, Feeling, Support

“In the end, leadership is a choice. Rank, authority, and even responsibility can be inherited or assigned, whether or not an individual desires or deserves them. Even the mantle of leadership occasionally falls to people who haven't sought it. But actually leading is different. A leader decides to accept responsibility for others in a way that assumes stewardship of their hopes, their dreams, and sometimes their very lives. It can be a crushing burden, but I found it an indescribable honor.”

Stanley A. McChrystal (1954) American general

Source: My Share Of The Task (2013), p. 394

People, Dreams, Hope, Way

“The sky was aquamarine, stroked with clouds. She could smell the grass and taste the scent of small, crushed flowers. She looked back up over her forehead at the gray-black wall towering behind her, and wondered if the castle had ever been attacked on days like this. Did the sky seem so limitless, the waters of the straits so fresh and clean, the flowers so bright and fragrant, when men fought and screamed, hacked and staggered and fell and watched their blood mat the grass?
Mists and dusk, rain and lowering cloud seemed the better background; clothes to cover the shame of battle.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Use of Weapons (1990), Chapter Two (pp. 50-51).

Men, Flowers, Grass, Water

“His eyes
All radiant with glad surprise,
Looked forward through the Centuries
And saw the seeds which sages cast
In the world’s soil in cycles past
Spring up and blossom at the last;
Saw how the souls of men had grown,
And where the scythes of Truth had mown
Clear space for Liberty’s white throne;
Saw how, by sorrow tried and proved,
The blackening stains had been removed
Forever from the land he loved;
Saw Treason crushed and Freedom crowned,
And clamorous Faction, gagged and bound,
Gasping its life out on the ground.”

Richard Realf (1832–1878) American poet

Apocalypse.

Love, Life, Men, Truth

“Either the State for ever, crushing individual and local life, taking over in all fields of human activity, bringing with it its wars and its domestic struggles for power, its palace revolutions which only replace one tyrant by another, and inevitably at the end of this development there is … death!
Or the destruction of States, and new life starting again in thousands of centers on the principle of the lively initiative of the individual and groups and that of free agreement.
The choice lies with you!”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

X, Closing lines
The State — Its Historic Role (1897)

Life, Death, War

“Even crushed against his brother in the Tube the average Englishman pretends desperately that he is alone.”

Germaine Greer book The Female Eunuch

Womanpower (p. 128)
The Female Eunuch (1970)

“My dad, Ron Brand, was an entrepreneurial Essex man, Del Boy’d up to the hilt on Thatcher’s creed. He was a self-made and self-destructive man and intermittently tumbled either side of the line. The prevailing mentality of the time, the eighties, was “every man for himself.” Unions were crushed, state interests were carved up and flogged, and council houses were sold back to the people whose efforts had built them. One of the great venture-capitalist heroes of this time, who epitomized this buccaneering spirit, was Sir James Goldsmith, Tory hero, Thatcher crush, scourge of Private Eye, and demon of the left. My dad and a lot of people from modest backgrounds admired him; there was something appealingly antiestablishment and daring in the aggressive and ingenious ways that James Goldsmith exploited the system.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

People, Way, Effort, Time

“The protracted struggle which dragged on in Egypt was not a conflict of visions, but the conflict between a vision of freedom, the "eternal" Platonic Idea of Freedom, and a blind clinging to power ready to use all means possible- terror, food deprivation, exhaustion, bribery- to crush the will to freedom.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

Source: Less Than Nothing (2012), Chapter One (The Drink Before), Vacillating The Semblances

Food, Idea, Freedom

“I am tired of constantly hearing how guilty the Afrikaner and the National Party are and the time has come that this myth be crushed.”

P. W. Botha (1916–2006) South African prime minister

As state president, at the annual conference of the Afrikaner Studentebond, Stellenbosch, 15 April 1985, as cited in PW Botha in his own words, Pieter-Dirk Uys, 1987, p. 32

Time

“Everything had been new and strange : the lean and ragged foot-soldiers who marched alongside of us, toughened, stained and blasés after months of service; the turmoil of encampment in the dark, with the shrill yells of black drivers, and the hassle and crush of crowding wagons, the twinkle of hosts of camp-fires, and the hot glow of a distant veldt-fire; and, finally the ghostly ride of two miles to water the horses….”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

"The H.A.C. in South Africa", by Erskine Childers and Basil Williams, Smith & Elder, (London, 1903), p. 72.
Literary Years and War (1900-1918)

Water, Distant, Horse

“To decide once every few years which members of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament — this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary- constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.”

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

Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 381–492.
Collected Works

People

“People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

According to Kenneth Owen Morgan (The Illustrated History of Britain (1984) p. 421) this was said by Macaulay in 1832. If so, he was quoting a letter written by Edmund Burke in 1777.
Attributed

People, Law, Hope

“I can relate to many of the emotions they describe…But personally I just like to get on with the job of playing chess. I understand that if I win, I'm probably crushing my opponent's ego but it's not like I do that with great satisfaction. So I don't really look for conflict around the game … It's true that someone like Kasparov has this sense of history, and I'm talking world history rather than chess history. He has a sense of himself being in it, which, for me, is very hard to understand or even relate to in any way.”

Viswanathan Anand (1969) Indian chess player

Game of thrones with world chess champion Viswanathan Anand

World, Way, History, Game

“Had I believed that there is a real chance of reaching an agreement, I would have recommended making an effort. But that is not the case. The choice we will be facing will be between less than a Geneva Accord—which means a return to the 1967 border, the crushing of Jerusalem, and a struggle to our last breath to ward off the international pressure to absorb hundreds of thousands of refugees into the shrinking State of Israel—and a comprehensive unilateral move, and I stress the word comprehensive. Through such a move we will define our borders, which under no circumstances will be identical to the Green Line and will include Jerusalem as a united city under our sovereignty.”

Ehud Olmert (1945) Israeli politician, prime minister of Israel

http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000128.htm

Effort, Chance

“We watched some of the movie. It was shocking. Sex is apparently hard labor. Various persons supported crushing weights in agonizing positions for what seemed like endless blocks of time. Exhausted men grunted and toiled like movers trying to get a refrigerator into a fifth floor walk-up.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"So This Is Depravity" (p.25)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

Men, Sex, Support, Time

“Stop this war! Shame on you Hobbits! Shame on you! This is a fictitious war! This Lord was not elected by the popular — [a computer-generated Oliphaunt steps on Moore, crushing him].”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

In a humorous sendup of Moore's previous acceptance speech for Best Documentary Feature at the 2003 Oscars. Moore himself delivered the lines in the opening act of the 2004 Oscars, while standing in front of a greenscreen which had the Battle of the Pelennor Fields scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King playing on it; a battle which was, itself, literally fictitious. (23 March 2004)
2004

War

“The sphinx atropos squeakes when hurt, nearly as loud as a mouse, which, when uttered in the most plaintive tone, naturally shocks the human heart, and makes it shudder at the thought of destroying inoffensive animals merely for the sake of curiosity. I cannot help reflecting on this tyranny, this wanton cruelty, exercised by thoughtless man, on many animals but especially in insects: 'tis certain, that every animal possessing life, has feeling; and, therefore, is as capable of suffering pain, as of enjoying pleasure; and, as Shakespeare humanely expresses “The poor beetle crushed beneath the foot, feels the pangs of death as great as when a monarch falls.””

James Barbut English painter and naturalist

Gentle reader, pardon this digression, my feelings commanded my pen.
The Genera Insectorum of Linnæus, Exemplified by Various Specimens English Insects drawn by Nature (1781)

Life, Death, Pain, Pleasure

“Ravens and crows. Rats. Mists and clouds. Insects and corruption. Strange events and odd occurences. The ordinary twisted and strange. Wonders. The dead are beginning to walk and some see them. Others do not, but more and more, we all fear the night. These have been our days. They rain upon us beneath a dead sky, crushing us with their fury, until as one, we beg, "Let it begin."”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Journal of the Unknown Scholar, entry for the Feast of Freia, 1000 NE
(27 October 2009)

Fear, Night, Dead

“But nobody did come, because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Pt. I, ch. IV
Jude the Obscure (1895)

World, Error

“If the Multiplicity of Religions prejudices the State, it proceeds from their not bearing with one another but on the contrary endeavouring each to crush and destroy the other by methods of Persecution. In a word, all the Mischief arises not from Toleration, but from the want of it.”

Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) French philosopher and writer

Quoted in: Joseph LoConte, "The Golden Rule of Toleration" http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/thepastinthepresent/historymatters/goldenrule.html, Christianity Today, Accessed 6 March 2011

Religion