Quotes about innocence (1050 quotes, page 8)

“The child begins with crude sex alone. It innocently indulges itself in sensual pleasures. It loves kissing and to be kissed, stroking and to be stroked, fondly contemplating its excretions. The civilized society into which it is born magnifies the importance of these insignificant local sensations, gives them intellectual depth. It creates a handsome receptacle, love, to contain the humours of this unnaturally enlarged instinct.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

"The Damned Thing", from Anarchism Is Not Enough (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928)

Love , Pleasure , Sex , Kiss

“I am convinced: people with pure hearts live better lives! Actually, one of the things I look for in a staff member is innocence. I love it when a person is not full of malice or unforgiveness or is not wrestling with secret sin. You can just tell by their countenance-they are wonderful people to be around.”

Ted Haggard (1956) American minister

[Haggard, Ted, Simple Prayers for a Powerful Life, Regal Books, September 2002, p. 109, ISBN 0830730559]

Love , People , Secret , Heart

“Out of the beliefs nourished by the agrarian myth there had arisen the notion that the city was a parasitical growth on the country. Bryan spoke for a people raised for generations on the idea that the farmer was a very special creature, blessed by God, and that in a country consisting largely of farmers the voice of the farmer was the voice of democracy and of virtue itself. The agrarian myth encouraged farmers to believe that they were not themselves an organic part of the whole order of business enterprise and speculation that flourished in the city, partaking of its character and sharing in its risks, but rather the innocent pastoral victims of a conspiracy hatched in the distance. The notion of an innocent and victimized populace colors the whole history of agrarian controversy, and indeed the whole history of the populistic mind.”

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

Source: The Age of Reform: from Bryan to F.D.R. (1955), Chapter I, part I, p. 35

God , People , Color , Democracy

“Admit it, it is your youth that you regret, more even than your crime; it is my youth you hate, even more than my innocence.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Electra to her mother Clytemnestra, Act 1
The Flies (1943)

Hate , Youth

“This is an historic moment. We have in this past year made great progress in ending the long era of conflict and cold war. We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order, a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations. When we are successful, and we will be, we have a real chance at this new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the U. N.'s founders. We have no argument with the people of Iraq. Indeed, for the innocents caught in this conflict, I pray for their safety.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

WAR IN THE GULF: THE PRESIDENT; Transcript of the Comments by Bush on the Air Strikes Against the Iraqis http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE2DF1F3AF934A25752C0A967958260 The New York Times. January 17, 1991 (NYT transcript of Bush speech from the Oval office January 16, 1991, (Eastern time) two hours after air strikes began in Iraq and Kuwait.)

War , People , World , Law

“In a criminal proceeding the question is not alone whether substantial justice has been done, but whether justice has been done according to law. All proceedings in poenam are, it need scarcely be observed, strictissimi juris; nor should it be forgotten that the formalities of law, though here and there they may lead to the escape of an offender, are intended on the whole to insure the safe administration of justice and the protection of innocence, and must be observed. A party accused has the right to insist on them as matter of right, of which he cannot be deprived against his will; and the Judge must see that they are followed.”

Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet (1802–1880) Lord Chief Justice

Martin v. Mackonochie (1878), L. R. 3 Q. B. 775.

Justice , Law , Question

““This is today’s puzzle,” he said. “If the act of denial can be taken as proof of the crime, how can an innocent man defend himself?”
The tithingmen caught him by the arms. “Come along now, Mr. Emerson, and don’t go trying any philosophy on us.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Waldo. “Philosophy would be wasted against such sturdy-headed men as you.”
“Glad you know it,” said the tithingman proudly. “Wouldn’t want you thinking we weren’t true Christians.””

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 9.

Men , Dreams , Thinking

“The Palestinians fight for their rights and their land using stones and catapults but the Israelis retaliate with disproportional and overwhelming power by using bullets and bombs thus killing so many innocent civilians”

Bernard Membe (1953) Tanzanian politician

during the annual International Day of solidarity with the Palestinian people; quoted in Tanzania touts Middle East peace http://dailynews.co.tz/home/?n=15012&cat=home Tha Daily News (2010=11-30)

Fight

“Didn't have a clue that the rapper was helping the rapers, raiders of the villages, the
pillagers of the school…. shooters of the innocents, tortures of the witnesses, burners
of the businesses.. and my bracelet was the fuel.”

Lupe Fiasco (1982) rapper

"Conflict Diamonds"
Mixtapes, Fahrenheit 1/15 Part II: Revenge of the Nerds (2006)

School , Business , Help

“I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.”

Judas Iscariot one of the twelve original apostles of Jesus Christ, known for betrayal of Jesus

Matthew 27:4 KJV

“I turned to Brecht and asked him why, if he felt the way he did about Jerome and the other American Communists, he kept on collaborating with them, particularly in view of their apparent approval or indifference to what was happening in the Soviet Union. […] Brecht shrugged his shoulders and kept on making invidious remarks about the American Communist Party and asserted that only the Soviet Union and its Communist Party mattered. […] But I argued… it was the Kremlin and above all Stalin himself who were responsible for the arrest and imprisonment of the opposition and their dependents. It was at this point that he said in words I have never forgotten, 'As for them, the more innocent they are, the more they deserve to be shot.' I was so taken aback that I thought I had misheard him. 'What are you saying?' I asked. He calmly repeated himself, 'The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to be shot.' […] I was stunned by his words. 'Why? Why?' I exclaimed. All he did was smile at me in a nervous sort of way. I waited, but he said nothing after I repeated my question. I got up, went into the next room, and fetched his hat and coat. When I returned, he was still sitting in his chair, holding a drink in his hand. When he saw me with his hat and coat, he looked surprised. He put his glass down, rose, and with a sickly smile took his hat and coat and left. Neither of us said a word. I never saw him again.”

Sidney Hook (1902–1989) American philosopher

Out of Step (1985)

Smile , Way , Drink , Question

“One of the astounding qualities of that family was their capacity to fill innocent bystanders with thoughts of murder.”

Tom Baker (1934) English actor

Describing one set of his in-laws.

Family

“Finally, in the dim region where art, magic, and religion meet and overlap, human beings have evolved the “metaphor that is meant,” the flag which men will die to save, and the sacrament that is felt to be more than “an outward and visible sign, given unto us.” Here we can recognize an attempt to deny the difference between map and territory, and to get back to the absolute innocence of communication by means of pure mood-signs.”

Gregory Bateson book Steps to an Ecology of Mind

From Part 4, section 2: A Theory of Play and Fantasy
Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972)

Men , Religion , Art , Communication

“Had Adam tenderly reproved his wife, and endeavored to lead her to repentance instead of sharing in her guilt, I should be much more ready to accord to man that superiority which he claims; but as the facts stand disclosed by the sacred historian, it appears to me that to say the least, there was as much weakness exhibited by Adam as by Eve. They both fell from innocence, and consequently from happiness, but not from equality.”

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) American abolitionist

Letter 1 (July 11, 1837).
Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1837)

Appearance , Happiness

“…reports about very innocent people being thrown into detention where they could be held for years without any representation or charges is distressing.”

Dana Perino (1972) Former White House Press Secretary

Press Briefing, referring to jailing of protesters and Buddhist monks in Myanmar, October 1, 2007 http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/10/20071001-2.html

People

“No cause, ever, in the history of all mankind, has produced more cold-blooded tyrants, more slaughtered innocents, and more orphans than socialism with power. It surpassed, exponentially, all other systems of production in turning out the dead. The bodies are all around us. And here is the problem: No one talks about them. No one honors them. No one does penance for them. No one has committed suicide for having been an apologist for those who did this to them. No one pays for them. No one is hunted down to account for them. It is exactly what Solzhenitsyn foresaw in The Gulag Archipelago: "No, no one would have to answer. No one would be looked into."”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

As quoted in "Notable & Quotable: The Victims of Socialism" https://web.archive.org/web/20160217064704/http://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-the-victims-of-socialism-1455667462 (17 February 2016), The Wall Street Journal, A13
2000s, Can There Be an "After Socialism"? (2003)

History , Problem , Suicide , Dead

“Abu Ghraib is unbelievable in the innocent times of 1961. That we would torture people that way and on the instructions of the President of the United States and his highest legal advisers, torture is okay, they said. Go for it, fellas. If we can't renounce that and remove it from office, then the Constitution doesn't work anymore.”

Ramsey Clark (1927) United States Marine

People , Way , Time

“Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and if you speak, speak accordingly.”

Thomas Jackson (1824–1863) Confederate general

Misattributed, Jackson's personal book of maxims

Thinking , Hurt

“He drew himself up and said with dignity: “We administer justice, Mr. Courtenay. And an ancient, basic tenet of justice is: ‘Better that one thousand innocents suffer unjustly than one guilty person be permitted to escape.’””

Frederik Pohl book The Space Merchants

Source: The Space Merchants (1953), Chapter 16 (p. 186)

Justice , Suffering , Personality

“I recommend to you, in my last, an innocent piece of art: that of flattering people behind their backs, in presence of those who, to make their own court, much more than for your sake, will not fail to repeat, and even amplify, the praise to the party concerned. This is of all flattery the most pleasing, and consequently the most effectual.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

22 May 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

People , Art

“Unfortunately her portrait will cure no one of the addiction to loving sweetly smiling angels with dreamy looks, innocent faces, and a strong-box for a heart.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Malheureusement, ce portrait ne corrigera personne de la manie d’aimer de anges au doux sourire, à l’air rêveur, à figure candide, dont le cœur est un coffre-fort.
La cousine Bette http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Cousine_Bette_-_4#XXXVII._R.C3.A9flexions_morales_sur_l.E2.80.99immoralit.C3.A9 (1846), translated by Sylvia Raphael, ch. XXXVII: Moral reflections on immorality.

Love , Smile , Angels , Strong

“But what about the sufferings of the innocent? Worst of all is the hell that exists in the special psychiatric clinics in Dnieperopetrovsk, Sytshevk, Blagoveshensk, Kazan, Chernakovsk, Oriol, Leningrad, Tashkent, ….”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Nobel Peace Prize Speech (1975)

Hell , Suffering

“The task of instilling pathos into a creature that was, after all, an innocent victim of circumstances was something I had set myself from the outset, although I was restrained by the script… The Beast is a poor lost soul brought back to life by man and then destroyed by man. If it sounds familiar, it is. King Kong was a huge influence, as he would be in all the other creatures I would be father to.”

Ray Harryhausen (1920–2013) American animator

Source: An Animated Life (2003), p. 57

Life , Soul

“There is no punishment that would be hard enough to be applied to these Nazi beasts. Of course, in the case of retribution the innocent will have to suffer along with them. Ninety-nine percent of the German people, directly or indirectly, carry the guilt for the present situation. Therefore we can only say this: Those who travel together, hang together.”

Friedrich Kellner (1885–1970) German Justice inspector

October 28, 1941; Vol. 1, p. 192.
Diary (1939 - 1945)

People , Travel , Suffering

“Both these men are in love with Natasha, Count Rostov's younger daughter, and in her Tolstoy has created the most delightful girl in fiction. Nothing is so difficult as to portray a young girl who is at once charming and interesting. Generally the young girls of fiction are colorless (Amelia in Vanity Fair), priggish (Fanny in Mansfield Park), too clever by half (Constantia Durham in The Egoist), or little geese (Dora in David Copperfield), silly flirts or innocent beyound belief. It is understandable that they should be an awkward subject for the novelist to deal with, for at that tender age the personality is undeveloped. Similarly a painter can only make a face interesting when the vicissitudes of life, thought, love and suffering have given it character. In the portrait of a girl the best he can do is to represent the charm and beauty of youth. But Natasha is entirely natural. She is sweet, sensitive, and sympathetic, willful, childish, womanly already, idealistic, quick-tempered, warm-hearted, headstrong, capricious and in everything enchanting. Tolstoy created many women and they are wonderfully true to life, but never another who wins the affection of the reader as does Natasha.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

Leo Tolstoy and War and Peace
Great Novelists and Their Novels

Love , Life , Women , Men

“When happily ever after fails
And weve been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers dwell on small details
Since daddy had to fly
But I know a place where we can go
Thats still untouched by man
Well sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass wave in the wind.
You can lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me.
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence.”

Don Henley (1947) American singer, lyricist, producer and drummer

"The End of the Innocence" (co-written with Bruce Hornsby)
Song lyrics, The End of the Innocence (1989)

Grass , Flying

“Confession of our faults is the next thing to innocence.”
Proximum ab innocentia tenet locum verecunda peccati confessio.

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 1060
Sentences

“With the dried blood stiff on my temples I climbed the hill, cursing the satanic way of men, yet knowing myself vile, for they had not known what they were doing, but I betrayed an innocent; and the tears— weak, whiskey tears— would not wash from my brow the blood of a little brother.”

Henry Williamson (1895–1977) British ruralist and natural history writer

The Village Book (1930) – after a killing of a badger by villagers.

Men , Way , Tear

“At Gundar we conceive 'innocence' as a positive quality, not merely an insipid absence of guilt," stated the Nolde. "We are not the fools that certain untidy ruffians might suppose.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), Cugel's Saga (1983), Chapter 5, section 1, "The Seventeen Virgins"

Fools

“Nothing can justify crimes such as those of September 11, but we can think of the United States as an "innocent victim" only if we adopt the convenient path of ignoring the record of its actions and those of its allies, which are, after all, hardly a secret.”

Noam Chomsky book 9-11

9-11, 2001 https://web.archive.org/web/20061015103427/http://indymedia.org.nz/usermedia/application/2/9-11.pdf.
Quotes 2000s, 2001

Secret , Thinking

“Jihad is a religious means to a religious goal - to elevate the word of Allah. This is what Jihad for the sake of Allah, in the sense of fighting, means, although we accept that there is another meaning to Jihad…. we have two kinds of terrorism - commendable terrorism and reprehensible terrorism. Reprehensible terrorism is an attack on women, children, the peaceful, and the innocent….[Quran says, ] "Do not kill the soul which Allah has forbidden, except when required by justice." In other words, a Muslim carry out certain religious duties, so when he attacks the enemy attacked on its own land, some innocent people might consequently die, but they are not killed intentionally.”

Omar Bakri Muhammad (1958) Islamist militant leader

Islamic Scholars Debate the Meaning of Jihad http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/1414.htm March 2007.

Women , Children , People , Peace

“Only the soul that is naked and unashamed, can be pure and innocent, even as Adam was in the primal garden of humanity.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Karma

Soul

“A villain who shares one's guilt is inevitably more attractive than a hero convinced of one's innocence.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

Review of The Changeling, by Thomas Middleton (1961), p. 75
Tynan Right and Left (1967)

“Death is not "an eternal sleep!" Citizens! efface from the tomb that motto, graven by sacrilegious hands, which spreads over all nature a funereal crape, takes from oppressed innocence its support, and affronts the beneficent dispensation of death! Inscribe rather thereon these words: "Death is the commencement of immortality!"”

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

Last speech to the National Convention http://www.bartleby.com/268/7/24.html (26 July 1794)

Death , Support , Nature , Sleep

“Taking the knee' is like taking a pee. It's a waste. It speaks to the inward-looking, ego-driven, vain posturing of the Left and its perpetually seething, predatory racial coalition. They're bent on extracting something from innocent, ordinary Americans who owe them nothing.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

" The Tribalism of Kneelism http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/29/the-tribalism-of-kneelism/," The Daily Caller, September 29, 2017.
2010s, 2017

“Today's looting and acts of violence in Baltimore will not be tolerated. In response, I have put the Maryland National Guard on alert so they can be in position to deploy rapidly as needed. I strongly condemn the actions of the offenders who are engaged in direct attacks against innocent civilians, businesses and law enforcement officers. There is a significant difference between protesting and violence and those committing these acts will be prosecuted under the fullest extent of the law.My thoughts and prayers go out to the men and women in uniform who are actively working to stem this violence and several who been injured in the line of duty. These malicious attacks against law enforcement and local communities only betray the cause of peaceful citizens seeking answers and justice following the death of Freddie Gray.”

Larry Hogan (1956) American politician

" Statement From Governor Larry Hogan On Violence In Baltimore City http://governor.maryland.gov/2015/04/27/statement-from-governor-larry-hogan-on-violence-in-baltimore-city/" (27 April 2015).

Death , Women , Men , Peace

“The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people's fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That's why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.”

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

Source: 1980s, Trump: The Art of the Deal (1987), p. 58

People , Truth , Way , Thinking

“It may seem to be a long way from Blake's innocent talk of love and copulation to De Sade's need to inflict pain. And yet both are the outcome of a sexual mysticism that strives to transcend the everyday world. Simone de Beauvoir said penetratingly of De Sade's work that 'he is trying to communicate an experience whose distinguishing characteristic is, nevertheless its will to remain incommunicable'. De Sade's perversion may have sprung from his dislike of his mother or of other women, but its basis is a kind of distorted religious emotion.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: The Origins of the Sexual Impulse (1963), p. 90

Love , Women , Pain , World

“SSA Piro asked Hussein why Iraq was the only country to applaud the 9/11 attack, which Hussein immediately denied.… Hussein stated that he wrote editorials against the attack, but also spoke of the cause which led men to commit these acts. The cause was never reviewed which could create such hatred to kill innocent people.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

Conversation with FBI Senior Special Agent George L. Piro (28 June 2004); National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 279 http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB279/index.htm.
Attributed

Men , People , Country

“Our cause is just, and it continues. Our discoveries in Afghanistan confirmed our worst fears, and showed us the true scope of the task ahead. We have seen the depth of our enemies' hatred in videos, where they laugh about the loss of innocent life. And the depth of their hatred is equaled by the madness of the destruction they design. We have found diagrams of American nuclear power plants and public water facilities, detailed instructions for making chemical weapons, surveillance maps of American cities, and thorough descriptions of landmarks in America and throughout the world.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Life , World , Fear , Water

“History is not a web woven with innocent hands. Among all the causes which degrade and demoralize men, power is the most constant and the most active.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

As quoted in Essays on Freedom and Power, Introduction, p. xlvii (1949) https://mises.org/sites/default/files/Essays%20on%20Freedom%20and%20Power_3.pdf

Men , History

“A babe in the house is a well-spring of pleasure, a messenger of peace and love, a resting place for innocence on earth, a link between angels and men.”

Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889) English writer and poet

Of Education.
Proverbial Philosophy (1838-1849)

Love , Men , Pleasure , Peace

“Montag, you're looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going, a long time back. I said nothing. I'm one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the "guilty," but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

Way , Time

“American musician and activist Henry Rollins once said, "A coward hides behind freedom. A brave person stands in front of freedom and defends it for others." Murdering innocent people who are defenseless is a cowardly act. Standing up to difficult life circumstances and oppressive regimes is bravery.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015

Life , People , Freedom , Personality

“We must not turn away when we hear the cries of the hungry. We must not stand by when we see the killing and terrorizing of the innocent. We should not wait until hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of our fellow human beings have died as occurred in Afghanistan, before we act.”

Hamid Karzai (1957) President of Afghanistan

Commencement Address to Boston University Class of 2005 http://www.bu.edu/news/2005/05/22/transcript-of-president-hamid-karzais-commencement-address/ (May 22, 2005)
2005

Waiting

“As you watch the developments in Baghdad, it's important to understand that we will not be able to prevent every al Qaeda attack. When a terrorist is willing to kill himself to kill others, it's really hard to stop him. Yet, over time, the security operation in Baghdad is designed to shrink the areas where al Qaeda can operate, it's designed to bring out more intelligence about their presence, and designed to allow American and Iraqi forces to dismantle their network.We have a strategy to deal with al Qaeda in Iraq. But any time you say to a bunch of cold-blooded killers, success depends on no violence, all that does is hand them the opportunity to be successful. And it's hard. I know it's hard for the American people to turn on their TV screens and see the horrific violence. It speaks volumes about the American desire to protect lives of innocent people, America's deep concern about human rights and human dignity. It also speaks volumes about al Qaeda, that they're willing to take innocent life to achieve political objectives.The terrorists will continue to fight back. In other words, they understand what they're doing. And casualties are likely to stay high. Yet, day by day, block by block, we are steadfast in helping Iraqi leaders counter the terrorists, protect their people, and reclaim the capital. And if I didn't think it was necessary for the security of the country, I wouldn't put our kids in harm's way.…Either we'll succeed, or we won't succeed. And the definition of success as I described is sectarian violence down. Success is not, no violence. There are parts of our own country that have got a certain level of violence to it. But success is a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives. And that's what we're trying to achieve.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

President Bush Discusses War on Terror, Economy with Associated General Contractors of America http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070502-2.html (May 2, 2007)
2000s, 2007

Life , People , Way , Feeling

“I would advise all those who joined the Stock Protection to withdraw their money and give it to the poor of Greta where I have spent and will again spend many happy days fearless free and bold as it only aids the police to procure false witnesses to lag innocent men I would advise them to subscribe a sum and give it to the poor of their district.”

Ned Kelly (1855–1880) Australian bushranger

Jerilderie Letter (1879)

Men , Money , Falseness , Happiness

“Impulses of revenge lead to ressentiment the more they change into actual *vindictiveness*, the more their direction shifts toward indeterminate groups of objects which need only share one common characteristic, and the less they are satisfied by vengeance taken on a specific object. If the desire for revenge remains permanently unsatisfied, and especially if the feeling of “being right (lacking in an outburst of rage, but an integral part of revenge) is intensified into the idea of a “duty,” the individual may actually wither away and die. The vindictive person is instinctively and without a conscious act of volition drawn toward events which may give rise to vengefulness, or he tends to see injurious intentions in all kinds of perfectly innocent actions and remarks of others. Great touchiness is indeed frequently a symptom of a vengeful character. The vindictive person is always in search of objects, and in fact he attacks—in the belief that he is simply wreaking vengeance. This vengeance restores his damaged feeling of personal value, his injured “honor,” or it brings “satisfaction” for the wrongs he has endured. When it is repressed, vindictiveness leads to ressentiment, a process which is intensified when the *imagination* of vengeance, too, is repressed—and finally the very emotion of revenge itself. Only then does this *state of mind* become associated with the tendency to detract from the other person's value, which brings an illusory easing of the tension."”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Feeling , Imagination , Search , Idea

“May I make one point absolutely clear; the time we went there was a hunger strike on in the Maze, no-one has asked me, no-one in official authority or in high places has ever asked me to give political status to people who've been convicted of terrible crimes like murder, wounding, maming, causing explosions. That used to be asked. I think one of the reasons why we're not asked now is because we have got over our viewpoint and because everyone knows that this government will not budge on things which it regards as vital. There is no such thing as political murder. There is murder. There is no such things as causing explosions for political purposes and risking the lives of innocent men women and children. It is causing explosion, it is a crime, and they know that neither I, nor any member of my government will be moved on this. And we won through on that. And everyone knows it.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Radio Interview for BBC Radio 4 The World this Weekend (4 January 1981) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104477
First term as Prime Minister

Women , Men , Hunger , Children

“I am not addressing my own people, nor my fellow citizens of the holy Romans, but those who are now become citizens of demons by reason of their evil works. They have chosen, by their hostile deeds, to live in death; comrades of the Scotti and Picts and of all who behave like apostates, bloody men who have steeped themselves in the blood of innocent Christians. The very same people I have begotten for God; their number beyond count, I myself confirmed them in Christ.”

Saint Patrick (385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland

Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus (c.450?)

Death , Men , God , Hostility

“That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a maxim that has been long and generally approved; never, that I know of, controverted.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Letter to Benjamin Vaughan https://books.google.de/books?id=d3UPAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA166&dq=maxim, on Blackstone's Ratio (14 March 1785).
Epistles

Suffering , Personality

“It is my considered opinion that the so called Kashmir problem, we have been facing, since 1947 has never been viewed in a historical perspective. That is why it has defied solution so far, and its end is not in sight in the near future. Politicians at the helm of affairs during this nearly half a century have been living from hand to mouth and are waiting for Pakistan to face them with a fait accompli. Once againg they are out to hand over Kashmir and its people to be butchers who have devastated this fair land and destroyed its rich eulture. … It is therefore high time that we renounce this ritual and have a look at the problem in a historical perspective. I should like to warn that histories of Kashmir written by Kashmiri Hindus in modern times are worse than useless for this purpose. I have read almost all of them, only to be left wondering at the piteous state to which the Hindu mind in Kashmir has been reduced. I am not taking these histories into account except for bits and pieces which fall into the broad pattern. … What distinguishes the Hindu rulers of Kashmir from Hindu rulers elsewhere is that they continued to recruit in their army Turks from Central Asia without realizing that the Turks had become Islamicized and as such were no longer mere wage earners. One of Kashmir's Hindu rulers Harsha (1089-1101 CE) was persuaded by his Muslim favourites to plunder temple properties and melt down icons made of precious metal. Apologists of Islam have been highlighting this isolated incident in order to cover up the iconoclastic record of Islam not only in Kashmir but also in the rest of Bharatvarsha. At the same time they conceal the fact that Kashmir passed under the heel of Islam not as a result of the labours of its missionaries but due to a coup staged by an Islamicised army. … Small wonder that balance of farces in Kashmir should have continued to tilt in favour of Islamic imperialism till the last Hindu has been hounded out of his ancestral homeland. Small wonder that the hoodlums strut around not only in the valley but in the capital city of Delhi with airs of injured innocence. Small wonder that the Marxist-Muslim combine of scribes who dominate the media blame Jagmohan for arranging an overnight and enmasse exodus of the Hindus from the valley. (They cannot forgive Jagmohan for bringing back Kashmir to India at a time when the combine was hoping that Pakistan would face India with an accomplished fact.) Small wonder that what Arun Shourie has aptly described as the "Formula Factory"”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

the Nayars, the Puris, the Kotharis, the Dhars, the Haksars, the Tarkundes - should be busy devising ways for handing over the Kashmir Hindus to their age-old oppressors.
Kashmir: The Problem is Muslim Extremism by Sita Ram Goel https://web.archive.org/web/20080220033606/http://www.kashmir-information.com/Miscellaneous/Goel1.html

People , Age , Hope , Way

“An instance of callous and cold-blooded brutality is furnished by the incident that took place on December 20, 1949 in Kalshira under P. S. Mollarhat in the District of Khulna. … The police constable entered into the house and assaulted the wife of Joydev Brahma whose cry attracted her husband and a few companions who escaped from the house. They became desperate, re-entered the house, found 4 constables with one gun only. That perhaps might have encouraged the young men who struck a blow on an armed constable who died on the spot. … the assailants fled and the intelligent neighbours also fled away. But the bulk of the villagers remained in their houses as they were absolutely innocent and failed to realise the consequence of the happening. Subsequently, the S. P., the military and armed police began to beat mercilessly the innocents of the entire village, encouraged the neighbouring Muslims to take away their properties. A number of persons were killed and men and women were forcibly converted. House-hold deities were broken and places of worship desecrated and destroyed. Several women were raped by the police, military and local Muslims. Thus a veritable hell was let loose not only in the village of Kalshira which is 1-1/2 miles in length with a large population, but also in a number of neighbouring Namahsudra villages.”

Jogendra Nath Mandal (1904–1968) Pakistani politician

Excerpted from the resignation letter of J. N. Mandal, Minister for Law and Labour, Government of Pakistan, October 8, 1950. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Resignation_letter_of_Jogendra_Nath_Mandal https://biblio.wiki/wiki/Resignation_letter_of_Jogendra_Nath_Mandal

Women , Men , Intelligence , Hell

“An age that melts in unperceiv'd decay,
And glides in modest innocence away.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Source: Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), Line 293

Age

“I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend my country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this time I realized that (in) our efforts to meet the risk posed to us by the enemy, we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability.”

Chelsea Manning (1987) United States Army soldier and whistleblower

Letter to Barack Obama (2013)

Life , Secret , Question , Effort

“What an age of innocence it was, the Watergate era… way back in the halcyon days when the US could be contrasted with totalitarian regimes on matters of surveillance.”

Barrett Brown (1981) American journalist, essayist and satirist

VICE, "Reading 'Born Again' in Jail" http://www.vice.com/read/reading-born-again-in-jail-by-barrett-brown-chuck-colson, 12 August 2013.

Age , Way

“Unfortunately, throughout the housing crisis we’ve seen innocent homeowners who have been victims of shady mortgage lenders and unscrupulous individuals who have used a down market to line their own pockets at the expense of others. This bill is designed to send a message by revising our laws to ensure criminals are brought to justice and that law enforcement has the tools to uncover these fraudulent schemes and go after the bad actors. Criminals should be put on notice that ripping off homeowners and taxpayers won’t be tolerated.”

Chuck Grassley (1933) American politician

Quoted in "Congress Targets Mortgage Fraud: Justice for Victims, Jail for the Guilty," http://tri-statedefenderonline.com/articlelive/articles/3561/1/Congress-Targets-Mortgage-Fraud-Justice-for-Victims-Jail-for-the-Guilty Tri-State Defender (2009-02-12)

Justice , Law , Housing

“The child race is fresh, eager, interested, innocent, imaginative, healthy and full of faith, where the adult race, more often than not, is stale, spiritually debauched, unimaginative, unhealthy, and without faith.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)

Faith , Imagination

“The prisoners who saved themselves were not the best, the predestined to good, the bearers of a message: what I had seen and experienced showed the exact opposite. Survived the worst of preference, the selfish, the violent, the insensitive, the collaborators of the 'gray area', the spies. It was not a certain rule (there were, nor are there in human affairs, certain rules), but was also a rule. I felt so innocent, but trooped among the saved, and therefore constantly looking for an excuse, before me and the others. Survived the worst, that is the most suitable; the best are all dead.”

Primo Levi book The Drowned and the Saved

The Drowned and the Saved (1986)

Selfishness , Dead

“She gave me a wide-eyed, innocent smile that looked as out of place on her as it would have on a desert scorpion.”

George Alec Effinger book A Fire in the Sun

Source: A Fire in the Sun (1989), Chapter 7 (p. 95).

Smile

“He who is a legend in his own time is ruled by that legend. It may begin in absolute innocence, but, to cover up flaws and maintain the myth of Divine Power, one must employ desperate measures.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Attributed to Hugo in Old Gods Almost Dead : The 40-year Odyssey of the Rolling Stones (2001), by Stephen Davis, p. 557; but sourced to Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud in Jaco : The Extraordinary and Tragic Life of Jaco Pastorius (2006) by Bill Milkowski, p. iii
Disputed

Time

“People know what's going on with other people. So, we are wise if we live our lives as if there are no secrets. If we have nothing to hide, then there's nothing for people to discover, and we're clean. Living as if there is no such thing as a secret will keep you from all kinds of pain and suffering, and it will open the door for you to receive God's love more fully. Live as if there is nothing to hide and you will maintain innocence.”

Ted Haggard (1956) American minister

[Haggard, Ted, Letters from Home, Regal Books, March 2003, p. 18, ISBN 0830730583]

Love , God , Pain , People

“Officious, innocent, sincere,
Of every friendless name the friend.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Stanza 2
Elegy on the Death of Mr. Robert Levet, A Practiser in Physic (1783)

Sincerity

“God forbid that the rights of the innocent should be lost and destroyed by the offence of individuals.”

John Eardley Wilmot (1709–1792) English judge

Mayor, &c. of Colchester v. Seaber (1765), 3 Burr. Part IV. 1871.

God

“The left-wing Democrats will represent the party of total hedonism, total exhibitionism, total bizarreness, total weirdness, and the total right to cripple innocent people in the name of letting hooligans loose.”

Newt Gingrich (1943) Professor, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

1989-07-27
John
Harwood
Newt Gingrich: GOP's Bare-Knuckles Battler
St. Petersburg Times
1A, quoted in [2002-03-05, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-conservative, David, Brock, Crown, 1st, 66-67, 9780812930993]; [2010, Stuck in the Sixties: Conservatives and Legacies of the 1960s, George, Rising, Xlibris, 9781456804848, 2010916124, 130, http://books.google.com/books?id=tnhQ_MJCTtQC&pg=PA130]
1980s

People

“The bombs I dropped on Germany between 1940 and 1944 maybe killed a Rilke or a Goethe or a Hölderin in his cradle. And yes, of course, if it had to be done over, I would do it again. Hitler had condemned us to kill. Not even the most just causes are ever innocent.”

Romain Gary (1914–1980) French writer and diplomat

As quoted in Hope and Memory: Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2003) by Tzvetan Todorov, p. 217

“Even nowadays an archaic sense of love-innocence recurs, however briefly, among most young men and women. Some few of these, who become poets, remain in love for the rest of their lives, watching the world with a detachment unknown to lawyers, politicians, financiers, and all other ministers of that blind and irresponsible successor to matriarchy and patriarchy — the mechanarchy.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

Introduction Poems about Love (1969).
General sources

Love , Women , Men , World

“But the most lasting agony of this war was suffered, not by the defeated, but by the victors. For when their passion had cooled the Americans could not easily disguise from themselves that they had committed murder. They were not at heart a brutal folk, but rather a kindly. They liked to think of the world as a place of innocent pleasure-seeking, and of themselves as the main purveyors of delight. Yet they had been somehow drawn into this fantastic crime; and henceforth an all-pervading sense of collective guilt warped the American mind. They had ever been vainglorious and intolerant; but now these qualities in them became extravagant even to insanity. Both as individuals and collectively, they became increasingly frightened of criticism, increasingly prone to blame and hate, increasingly self-righteous, increasingly hostile to the critical intelligence, increasingly superstitious.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter II: Europe’s Downfall; Section 3, “Europe Murdered” (p. 41)

Hate , Hostility , War , Pleasure

“The main trouble with avant-garde art and literature, from the point of view of fascists and Stalinists, is not that they are too critical, but that they are too "innocent," that it is too difficult to inject effective propaganda, that kitsch is more pliable to this end.”

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

"Avant-Garde and Kitsch" http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/kitsch.html (1939), p. 19
1960s, Art and Culture: Critical Essays, (1961)

Art , Literature

“Tonight when I listen to our voices in this strange calm which is touched with the presence of death, even though the breeze is rustling so innocently at the door and the roof, I feel as if we were two gods on the clouds of heaven, with mankind dying between us.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Ólafur
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Three: The House of the Poet

Feeling , God , Death

“I don't follow any particular one [religion]. Ultimately I think I'm sort of a freethinker and kind of open. So many bad things–as well as good things–have happened based on people just sort of blindly following religion that I kind of feel like I want to stay away from any type of specific denomination or any religion period. If for no other reason than just that. I don't want to be involved with anything or condone any school of thought that at some point and in some way causes the death of innocent people, or tragedies where initial fantastic ideas [are] distorted. Like the life, for example, of Jesus is well-documented. It's corroborated by different people, who had different backgrounds, and different levels of education. And they wrote about it. We know that this guy existed, and we know pretty much what he said, and it's pretty simple. Everything from that point on in terms of wars and fighting over land and territories and religious things, none of that was even included in anything he said. His message was pretty simple, be really nice to each other and everything will be okay.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Talking about religions ** THE STANDARD chris cornell#2, YouTube, 30 March 2008 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGtbjYezJ8g&feature=youtu.be&t=4m3s,
On religion

Life , Death , War , People

“And only we few who remain unstripped of fur,
untorn from bone, unplucked of soaring feathers,
esteemed in all our quills, scales, tusks, and horns,
and in whatever else that ingenious protein
has seen fit to clothe us with,
we, my lord, are your dream,
which finds you innocent for now.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

"Tarsier"
Poems New and Collected (1998), No End of Fun (1967)

Dreams , Clothes

“I am speaking of the religion whose earliest dogmas contain a condemnation of the flesh, and which not merely grants the spirit superiority over the flesh but also deliberately mortifies the flesh in order to glorify the spirit. I am speaking of the religion whose unnatural mission actually introduced sin and hypocrisy into the world, since just because of the condemnation of the flesh the most innocent pleasures of the senses became a sin and just because of the impossibility of our being wholly spirit hypocrisy inevitably developed.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Ich spreche von jener Religion, in deren ersten Dogmen eine Verdammnis alles Fleisches enthalten ist, und die dem Geiste nicht bloß eine Obermacht über das Fleisch zugesteht, sondern auch dieses abtöten will, um den Geist zu verherrlichen; ich spreche von jener Religion, durch deren unnatürliche Aufgabe ganz eigentlich die Sünde und die Hypokrisie in die Welt gekommen, indem eben durch die Verdammnis des Fleisches die unschuldigsten Sinnenfreuden eine Sünde geworden und durch die Unmöglichkeit, ganz Geist zu sein, die Hypokrisie sich ausbilden mußte.
Source: The Romantic School (1836), p. 3

Pleasure , World , Religion , Sense

“It is the strangest problem of humanity — one too, for which the closest investigation can never quite account — to trace the progress by which innocence becomes guilt, and how those who formerly trembled to think of crime, are led on to commit that at which they once shuddered.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Problem , Thinking

“The purpose of writing is both to keep up with life and to run ahead of it. I am little comfort to myself, although I am the only comfort I have, excepting perhaps streets, clouds, the sun, the faces and voices of kids and the aged, and similar accidents of beauty, innocence, truth and loneliness.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)

Life , Truth , Age , Beauty

“It made me wonder if perhaps our ancestors' crimes were not in fact far more terrible than they claimed. After all, the only histories we possessed told their version of what happened, and in their accounts they were completely innocent.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Treason (1988)

History

“The enemy in Iraq believes America will run, that's why they're willing to kill innocent civilians, relief workers, coalition troops. America will never run. America will do what is necessary to make our country more secure.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Speech in Birmingham, Alabama, November 3, 2003 http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/11/20031103-7.html http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70914FA35540C778CDDA80994DB404482
2000s, 2003

Country

“It is just that, in so terrible a day, and in the last moments of my life, I should discover all the iniquity of falsehood, and make the truth triumph. I declare, then, in the face of heaven and earth, and acknowledge, though to my eternal shame, that I have committed the greatest crimes but it has been the acknowledging of those which have been so foully charged on the order. I attest - and truth obliges me to attest - that it is innocent! I made the contrary declaration only to suspend the excessive pains of torture, and to mollify those who made me endure them. I know the punishments which have been inflicted on all the knights who had the courage to revoke a similar confession; but the dreadful spectacle which is presented to me is not able to make me confirm one lie by another. The life offered me on such infamous terms I abandon without regret.”

Jacques de Molay (1243–1314) Grand Master of the Knights Templar

One of the foremost Templar scholars records of Jacques DeMolay's dying words.

Life , Pain , Truth , Lie

“I want to talk about the internet, the impact it is having on the innocence of our children, how online pornography is corroding childhood and how, in the darkest corners of the internet, there are things going on that are a direct danger to our children, and that must be stamped out.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech: The internet and pornography: Prime Minister calls for action https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-internet-and-pornography-prime-minister-calls-for-action (22 July 2013).
2010s, 2013

Children , Childhood

“We [the American Abstract-expressionist artists of the 1940's] were formed by the Depression [1930's], when the American dream lay in pieces on the floor. The possibility of making money was inconceivable to us. America was innocent in relation to modern art, and no one cared. The reigning painters in America were very parochial in relation to the international tradition... What held us together was our ambition to use the standards of international modernism as a gauge, not those of Thomas Hart Benton or Grant Wood or Guy Pene du Bois. We did have a terrible struggle, but not for success. It was to make painting that would stand up under international scrutiny, and all the rest was a byproduct.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

as cited by Grace Glueck, in 'Robert Motherwell, Master of Abstract, Dies', by Grace Glueck, 'New York Times, 18 July 1991 https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/18/obituaries/robert-motherwell-master-of-abstract-dies.html
Undated

Money , Dreams , Art , Guy

“I apologize for the insensitivity of my remarks with respect to the mayor or his family, however I think it is important to note that this decision involves potential risk to innocent people.”

John Shadegg (1949) American politician

Referring to previous statement on Michael Bloomberg's comments on trying terrorists in criminal courts in NYC.
Quoted in [Rachel, Slajda, http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/shadegg-apologizes-for-saying-nyc-mayors-daughter-could-get-kidnapped.php, Shadegg Apologizes For Saying NYC Mayor's Daughter Could Get Kidnapped, Talking Points Memo, November 17, 2009, 2009-11-17]
Terrorism

People , Family , Thinking , Decision

“This time, there was no punishment from above. Sighing, Hamilton almost wished there had been; the capricious personality element infuriated him. There was just too little relationship between deed and punishment; the lightning was probably cutting down some totally innocent Cheyennite, on the far side of town.”

Philip K. Dick book Eye in the Sky

Source: Eye in the Sky (1957), Chapter 7 (p. 92)

Time , Personality

“The hills look over on the South,
And Southward dreams the sea;
And with the sea-breeze hand in hand,
Came innocence and she.”

Francis Thompson (1859–1907) British poet

Daisy http://www.bartleby.com/103/26.html (1893), st. 2.

Dreams , Sea

“The virtues chose Modesty to be their queen.
"I did not know that I was a virtue," she said. "Why did you not choose Innocence?"
"Because of her ignorance," they replied. "She knows nothing but that she is a virtue."”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: Epigrams, p. 358

“Leiderman thought it was not enough that the government dropped charges. He wanted the criminal justice system to recognize Gonzalez’s innocence affirmatively. There is such a thing as a declaration of factual innocence, he explained to Gonzalez. A judge can grant it. It is exceedingly rare – so rare that many cops and lawyers go a career without seeing one. It means not just that prosecutors couldn’t make a case against you, but that you didn’t do the crime. The case remained on the docket of Ventura County Superior Court Judge Patricia Murphy, who had earlier ordered Gonzalez held without bail. Leiderman petitioned the judge, trying not to get his client’s hopes up. He laid out the case, pointing out the holes in West’s story and the numerous alibi witnesses. Prosecutors did not want Gonzalez declared innocent. They knew a jury wouldn’t convict him but said they couldn’t be positive of his innocence. [ ] Ventura County’s chief assistant district attorney, later explained their reasoning: The attack West described was “improbable, but it wasn’t physically impossible.””

Jay Leiderman (1971) lawyer

In January 2009, nearly a year after Gonzalez’s arrest, Leiderman called him excitedly: The judge had sided with them. Gonzalez was soon holding a certified copy of the judge’s order declaring him factually innocent.
As stated in, A Man Falsely Accused of Rape and Kidnap. http://jayleiderman.com/blog/jay-leiderman-quoted-part-5/

Justice , Hope

“We live in a culture in which intelligence is denied relevance altogether, in a search for radical innocence, or is defended as an instrument of authority and repression. In my view, the only intelligence worth defending is critical, dialectical, skeptical, desimplifying.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

"Women, the Arts, & the Politics of Culture: An Interview with Susan Sontag" in Salmagundi, No. 31-32 (Fall/Winter 1975), p. 29; later published in Conversations with Susan Sontag (1995) edited by Leland A. Poague, p. 77

Search , Intelligence

“No Man ought to be looked upon as guilty, before he has received his judicial Sentence; nor can the Laws deprive him of their Protection, before it is proved that he has forfeited all Right to it. What Right therefore can Power give to any to inflict Punishment upon a Citizen at a Time, when it is yet dubious, whether he is Innocent or guilty?”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

Item 194.1
Proposals for a New Law Code (1768)

Law , Time

“In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

According to Frederic Prokosch, in his Voices: A Memoir (1983), this was once said to him by Housman.
Attributed

“Speak gently to the erring:
For is it not enough
That innocence and peace have gone,
Without thy censure rough?”

Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney (1823–1908) American writer

"The Erring" (1844).

Peace

“We may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries: "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did"; and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.”

Izaak Walton book The Compleat Angler

Part I, ch. 5. Referring to William Butler, styled by Dr. Fuller in his "Worthies" (Suffolk) the "Æsculapius of our age." He died in 1621. This first appeared in the second edition of "The Angler," 1655. Roger Williams, in his "Key into the Language of America," 1643, p. 98, says: "One of the chiefest doctors of England was wont to say, that God could have made, but God never did make, a better berry".
The Compleat Angler (1653-1655)

God

“Lookin' so innocent,
I might believe you if I didn't know.
Could'a loved you all my life,
If you hadn't left me waiting in the cold.
And you got your share of secrets,
And I'm tired of being last to know.
And now you're asking me to listen
'Cause it's worked each time before.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

You're Not Sorry.
Song lyrics, Fearless (2008)

Love , Life , Secret , Time

“White and shining virgin of all human virtues, ark of the covenant between earth and heaven, tender and strong companion partaking of the lion and of the lamb, Prayer! Prayer will give you the key of heaven! Bold and pure as innocence, strong, like all that is single and simple, this glorious, invincible Queen rests, nevertheless, on the material world; she takes possession of it; like the sun, she clasps it in a circle of light.”

Honoré de Balzac book Séraphîta

Source: Seraphita (1835), Ch. 6: The Road to Heaven.

World , Light , Strong , Sun

“At sixty I look back on a life of deep disappointments, of withered hopes, of unlooked for suffering, of severe discipline. Yet I have sometimes tasted exquisite joy and have found solace for many a woe in the innocence and earnest love of Theodore's children. But for this my life would have little to record of mundane pleasures.”

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) American abolitionist

Letter to Harriot Hunt (1853), as quoted in The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Pioneers for Woman's [sic] Rights and Abolition, p. 241, by Gerda Lerner. Editorial Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0195106032.

Love , Life , Children , Pleasure

“I was shamed into helping the unborn after 12 years of silence, in 1986. Since then, my only client has been the unborn. I don't work for a movement. I don't work for a party. I don't work for candidates. I work for the unborn, and I don't give a flying flick about what people want to do on paper with bylaws, and all that kind of stuff, because it's just like the Pharisees, who had all their rules about the Sabbath, but they didn't know that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath! I will stand for the unborn, and I will not relent! I don't know Mr. Clymer, but Howard Phillips has lost ALL of my respect, because he stands for people who want to kill ONE, only ONE, innocent child, and that's all that counts! If you want ONE innocent child, GO with this man, but I'll tell you what- I've got my paperwork filled out. All it lacks is my signature, and my wife's signature, and we're the hell out of here, if you vote to stay with a national party that will put up with ONE dead baby, much less many thousands of dead babies. And you sir [pointing at Jim Clymer] need to repent! Because the blood will be on your hands when you stand before God. You won't be able to argue about procedural votes, and keeping the party together before God! You'll be standing there quaking in your boots, wishing you'd washed yourself in the blood of the Lamb. That's all I've got to say…The only thing that matters to me is doing my job to stop the killing of the unborn.”

Paul deParrie (1949–2006) American activist

The Last Words of Paul deParrie http://www.constitutionpartyoregon.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=111&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

God , People , Hell , Silence

“There were two times in my life that inspired me the most. The first was when I was a kid, probably the most emotionally influential time, when you’re naïve and innocent. I went to movie theaters and fell in love with genre films in the 1950s, when there was a big wave of monster movies. My passion came from the young guy who was watching The Fly back in 1958. Then, going to USC I began to watch movies in a different way and was exposed to different kinds of movies, foreign films. We had directors like Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks and John Ford come down and lecture us. It was unbelievable!”

John Carpenter (1948) American film director, screenwriter and producer

John Carpenter Q&A: Why ‘Halloween’ Didn’t Need Sequels & What Scares The Master Of Horror http://deadline.com/2014/10/john-carpenter-qa-halloween-sequels-michael-myers-861942/ (October 31, 2014)

Love , Life , Way , Guy