Quotes about innocence (1050 quotes, page 9)

“Modern Imams must strive to ensure that no Muslim finds solace for terrorism in the Quran, they must cite the Quran as evidence that the murder of innocents is not permitted by good, believing Muslims, and must immediately refute all claims to the contrary.”

Mike Pompeo (1963) 70th United States Secretary of State, former Director of Central Intelligence Agency and former Congressman fro…

GOP lawmaker: US Muslim leaders 'complicit' in terrorist attacks http://thehill.com/video/house/304743-gop-lawmaker-silence-on-terror-attacks-makes-islamic-leaders-potentially-complicit (June 11, 2013)

“Constantius declares a curse on those who perform the magic arts and thereby “jeopardize the lives of innocent persons.””

Constantius II (317–361) Roman emperor

CT 9.16.5 released 4 December 356
Codex Theodosianus

Art , Personality

“How innocent, how beautiful thy sleep!
Sweet one, 'tis peace and joy to gaze on thee!”

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

Sleeping Child
The Fate of Adelaide (1821)

Peace , Beauty , Sleep , Joy

“Faith is cold as ice.
Why are little ones born only to suffer
for the want of immunity, or a bowl of rice?
Well, who would hold a price on the heads of the innocent children
if there's some immortal power to control the dice?
-- Roll The Bones (1991)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

Children , Faith , Suffering

“The sheer decibel level of unreason surrounding the issue of abortion in academic writing about animal rights tells us something interesting. It suggests that, contrary to what the utilitarians and feminists working this terrain wish, the dots between sympathy for animals and sympathy for unborn humans are in fact quite easy to connect—so easy, you might say, that a child could do it. … Since ethical vegetarianism as a practice appears commonly rooted in an a priori aversion to violence against living creatures, so does it often appear to begin in the young. … A sudden insight, igniting empathy on a scale that did not exist before and perhaps even a life-transforming realization—this reaction should indeed be thought through with care. It is not only the most commonly cited feature of the decision to become a vegetarian. It is also the most commonly cited denominator of what brings people to their convictions about the desperate need to protect unborn, innocent human life. … Despite those who act and write in their name, actual vegetarians and vegans are far more likely to be motivated by positive feelings for animals than by negative feelings for human beings. As a matter of theory, the line connecting the dots between “we should respect animal life” and “we should respect human life” is far straighter than the line connecting vegetarianism to antilife feminism or antihumanist utilitarianism.”

Mary Eberstadt American writer

"Pro-Animal, Pro-Life" https://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/06/pro-animal-pro-life, in First Things (June 2009).

Life , People , Feeling , Motivation

“No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death, but oh, thrice guilty is he who, for selfish gratification, heedless of her prayers, indifferent to her fate, drove her to the desperation that impelled her to the crime!”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Anonymous essay signed "A" in The Revolution, August 8, 1869. Often attributed to Susan B. Anthony, who was the owner of the newspaper. http://www.prolifequakers.org/susanb.htm Ann Dexter Gordon, PhD, leader of a research project at Rutgers University which has examined 14,000 documents related to Anthony and Stanton, writes that "no data exists that Anthony ... ever used that shorthand for herself" http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/05/sarah_palin_is_no_susan_b_anthony.html, and that the essay presents material which clashes with Anthony's "known beliefs". http://www.womensenews.org/story/abortion/061006/susan-b-anthonys-abortion-position-spurs-scuffle
Misattributed

Love , Life , Death , Fate

“After fifty-five years of dedicating his life and work to the story of ethical systems, Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal (sic) which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 4 (p. 292)

Life , Behavior , Universe , Evil

“It's tempting to wonder how many of the inventions of the past century we might have been better off without. Take the aeroplane for instance. It has transformed warfare from an event in which trained soldiers kill each other on distant battlefields to occasions when death is rained down indiscriminately on innocent civilians, while the professional fighters fly at a great height in comparative safety.”

John Mortimer (1923–2009) English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author

Source: Where There's a Will: Thoughts on the Good Life (2003), Ch. 28 : Inventions and the Decline of Language

Death , Distant , Past , Flying

“Yes, the investor is often his own worst enemy. Yes, the marketing colossus known as the mutual fund industry provides the weaponry which enables investors’ to indulge their suicidal instincts. No, the fund industry was hardly an innocent bystander in the market boom and the subsequent carnage. "We have met the enemy and he is us"… all of us.”

John Bogle (1929–2019)

Speech to Financial Analysts of Philadelphia, February 15, 2001 ( http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20010215.html)

Suicide

“My beloved brothers and sisters. On the globe, several incidents have occurred that make it necessary for us to speak about them, and guide the Muslims in their regard… It's important for us to know that as Muslims, we don't understand what part of Islam these people [terrorists] are following. In fact, we don't even understand what Islam they are following, because Islam is a totally different religion from what these people are practicing… As frustrated as we might be because of what might be happening on Muslim lands, it does not give us the right to go out and hurt people who are not at all involved… If you have a problem with someone, you may report them to the authorities. And then it will handled by the courts. You will either get justice at the courts or sometimes maybe the courts may find someone that you believe is guilty, innocent. In that case, you leave it for the day of judgment, when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will be judge. But you do not take it into your own hands, to say now because the court has found this person innocent, and according to me the person is guilty, "Let me harm them, let me kill them, let me hurt them, let me rob from them". That is absolutely incorrect and it is un-Islamic… Two wrongs do not make a right, remember this… If someone has murdered someone else, Subhan Allah, it does not give us the right to murder a third party altogether. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala protect us, and may Allah grant us guidance and ease. It's important we understand this. The world is bleeding today, and people are blaming the Muslims! Because from amongst us, some are being brainwashed. Brainwashed by what? They do not understand verses of the Quran. They don't understand the Asbab al-Nuzul, or reasons of the revelation of the verses of the Quran. They don't understand how to extract rules and regulations from verses of the Quran. They read something, someone shows them something and next thing they are prepared to give up their lives. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala grant us an understanding. We should be giving up our lives striving to earn the pleasure of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala through obedience, through Salah. Look at Muhammad sallā llāhu 'alay-hi wa-sallam when he went to Ta'if, look at his example. They beat him up personally, physically, he was bleeding and the angels came to him to say "If you want, we can crush these people between the mountains". What did he say? He said "I am sent as a mercy. We don't want that to happen. If they don't accept, perhaps their children will accept."”

Ismail ibn Musa Menk (1975) Muslim cleric and Grand Mufti of Zimbabwe.

Patience, Sabr... And we think that the non-Muslims are our enemies – the minute we think that, automatically we will not be able to call them towards Islam. And they will get the wrong image of Islam. My brothers and sisters, Islam, it means peace, it stands for peace, it promotes peace, it teaches peace, and everything that you will achieve is peace. In this world peace, in the next peace, in your grave peace, with your children peace, in your environment peace. That is Islam. Anything that destroys that in any way is not Islam. Remember this.
"Islam Condemns Terrorism - Powerful Reminder - Mufti Ismail Menk" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6O2anxz7CM, YouTube (2015)
Lectures

Children , People , Pleasure , World

“We face a brutal enemy who will kill the innocent for one purpose and that is to gain control of the Middle East and to use the leverage of oil to bring down the West, and to attack us again.”

Karl Rove (1950) American political consultant and policy advisor

‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Aug. 19, 2007, MSNBC http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20302351/page/2/,

“I'm always fascinated by the innocence of children and the baggage that we carry as adults which manipulates our decisions.”

A. R. Rahman (1966) Indian singer and composer

Infinite Love, 16 December 2013, Official website of ARRahman http://www.arrahman.com/infinitelove.aspx,

Children , Decision

“[I did] Some [reading to prep for Expelled]. I read one book cover to cover, From Darwin to Hitler, and that was a very interesting book--one of these rare books I wish had been even longer. It's about how Darwin's theory--supposedly concocted by this mild-mannered saintly man, with a flowing white beard like Santa Claus--led to the murder of millions of innocent people.”

Ben Stein (1944) actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist

Interviews: Ben Stein is Expelled! Christianity Today Movies, Christianity Today Movies: Interview with Ben Stein, 15 April 2008, 2008-04-18 http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/interviews/benstein.html,

People , Books , Reading

“There is no end to the war and death caused by man or to the tears shed by all the innocent victims of such tragedies. What were all these for? Only for conquering, establishing superiority and satisfying our greed for money and fame. Mankind has taken upon itself countless curses. In order to attain freedom from these curses, at least a hundred generations to come should wipe the tears of the suffering, striving to console them and alleviate their pain. At least now, as an atonement, shouldn’t we try to introspect?”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Compassion: The Only Way to Peace (2007)

Death , Money , Pain , War

“The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and injured and others were terrorised and displaced.
I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy. The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand a conversation that doesn't include a weapon? And the whole world saw and heard but it didn't respond. In those difficult moments many hard-to-describe ideas bubbled in my soul, but in the end they produced an intense feeling of rejection of tyranny, and gave birth to a strong resolve to punish the oppressors. And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children.
And that day, it was confirmed to me that oppression and the intentional killing of innocent women and children is a deliberate American policy. Destruction is freedom and democracy, while resistance is terrorism and intolerance.
This means the oppressing and embargoing to death of millions as Bush Sr did in Iraq in the greatest mass slaughter of children mankind has ever known, and it means the throwing of millions of pounds of bombs and explosives at millions of children - also in Iraq - as Bush Jr did, in order to remove an old agent and replace him with a new puppet to assist in the pilfering of Iraq's oil and other outrages.
So with these images and their like as their background, the events of September 11th came as a reply to those great wrongs, should a man be blamed for defending his sanctuary?”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

Full transcript of bin Ladin's speech http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2004/11/200849163336457223.html Aljazeera, (01 Nov 2004)
2000s, 2004

Death , Women , Children , World

“Most people in the West, certainly everyone in Israel, would agree that the Palestinian suicide bombers, who kill women and children, are terrorists. Not many people remember when Palestine, as the land of Israel was once called, was in that obscure state, a British Protectorate. Were the Jewish members of the Stern Gang, those who hanged a British sergeant with piano wire or organized the bomb in the King David Hotel with murderous results (the organization in which Prime Minister Begin started his political career), ‘freedom fighters’ or ‘terrorists’? What, looking at the matter from an entirely neutral standpoint, would we call them now?
A terrorist, the dictionary tells us, is ‘one who favours or uses terror-inspiring methods of governing or of coercing government or community’. This would certainly cover Russian activities in Chechnya and Israeli invasions into Palestinian territory, killing innocent men, women and children and even employees of the United Nations, in a prolonged attempt to fight ruthless terrorism with ruthless terrorism. The word ‘terrorist’ could certainly have been applied to Nelson Mandela before his trial. If it means the calculated mass killing of civilians to obtain an end, it must be applied to the destruction of Hamburg and Düsseldorf and, of course, to the dropping of H-bombs. So all these activities can be defined as ‘terrorism’ if they are committed by an enemy or ‘freedom-fighting’ if by a friend. If so, the conception of a ‘war’ against it calls for the most careful thought.”

John Mortimer (1923–2009) English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author

Source: Where There's a Will: Thoughts on the Good Life (2003), Ch. 15 : Interesting Times

Women , Men , War , Children

“On this planet there are people who are suffering beyond description. They are innocent people, they didn’t bring this upon themselves. They are the victims of the sins of other people. And while it’s hard to see, it’s important to understand that these people exist. I’m talking to you now because they can’t and I hope to be a voice for them. They need support.”

Mia Farrow (1945) American actress, singer, humanitarian and former fashion model

On human rights, quoted in MSNBC piece http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3080861/ns/community-msnbc_com_chat/t/mia-farrow/#.WPW1AlKZPu0 (August 28, 2013)

People , Hope , Understanding , Support

“The vast majority of lameness in the domestic horse world cannot be understood properly or completely without considering the effects of abuse. Although many might argue to the contrary, most lameness among horses is really more an issue of ignorance, violence, and complicity than is of veterinary medicine; veterinar scools, clinics, and slaughterhouses are simply the processing stations that have to deal with it. What is not an issue here are injuries that stem from unfortunate accidents, where the horse enthusiasts made an honest miscalculation or innocently followed the bad advice of someome they trusted. What is of concern is abuse that results from neglect and bad intent.”

Jaime Jackson (1947) Horse hoof care professional

The Natural Horse (1997)

World , Horse

“Look, I'm standing naked before you;
Don't you want more than my sex?
I can scream as loud as your last one,
But I can't claim innocence.”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

"Leather".
Songs

Sex

“When we journalists fail to get across the reality of events to our readers, we have not only failed in our job; we have also become a party to the bloody events that we are supposed to be reporting. If we cannot tell the truth about the shooting down of a civilian airliner - because this will harm 'our' side in a war or because it will cast one of our 'hate' countries in the role of victim or because it might upset the owner of our newspaper - then we contribute to the very prejudices that provoke wars in the first place. If we cannot blow the whistle on a navy that shoots civilians out of the sky, then we make future killings of the same kind as 'understandable' as Mrs Thatcher found this one. Delete the Americans' panic and incompetence - all of which would be revealed in the months to come - and pretend an innocent pilot is a suicidal maniac, and it's only a matter of time before we blow another airliner out of the sky. Journalism can be lethal.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

Source: The Great War for Civilization (2005), Chapter 8: Drinking the Poisoned Chalice (page 333)

Hate , War , Truth , Understanding

“The different pieces of evidence did not constitute so many neutral elements, until such time as they could be gathered together into a single body of evidence that would bring the final certainty of guilt. Each piece of evidence aroused a particular degree of abomination. Guilt did not begin when all the evidence was gathered together; piece by piece, it was constituted by each of the elements that made it possible to recognize a guilty person. Thus a semi-proof did not leave the suspect innocent until such time as it was completed; it made him semi-guilty; slight evidence of a serious crime marked someone as slightly criminal. In short, penal demonstration did not obey a dualistic system: true or false; but a principle of continuous gradation; a degree reached in the demonstration already formed a degree of guilt and consequently involved a degree of punishment.”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Source: Discipline and Punish (1977), Chapter One, The body of the condemned, pp.23

Time , Personality , Falseness

“When I was a kid and saw Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope for the first time, it blew my mind and around the same time, I had friends who were huge fans of Star Trek and I don’t know if I was smart enough to get it, or patient enough. What I loved about Star Wars was the visceral energy of it, the clarity of it, the kind of innocence and big heart of it. Star Trek always felt a little bit more sophisticated and philosophical, debating moral dilemmas and things that were theoretically interesting, but for some reason I couldn’t get on board. It really took working with all these guys and actually working on Star Trek for me to fall in love with that.”

J. J. Abrams (1966) American film and television producer and director

Pirelli interview (2015)

Love , War , Hope , Guy

“The main difference between decapitations in Syria and Mexico is that Mexicans also behead women, children, and innocent bystanders. In addition to pioneering videotaped beheadings, Mexicans specialize in corpse desecration, burning people alive, rolling human heads onto packed nightclub dance floors, dissolving bodies in acid, and hanging mutilated bodies from bridges. Why are the media obsessed with ISIS’s beheadings but not the more frequent head-chopping right next door?”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2015, Adios, America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole (2015)

Women , Children , People , Dance

“It seems to me that today, if the artist wishes to be serious — to cut out a little original niche for himself, or at least preserve his own innocence of personality — he must once more sink himself in solitude. There is too much talk and gossip; pictures are apparently made, like stock-market prices, by competition of people eager for profit; in order to do anything at all we need (so to speak) the wit and ideas of our neighbors as much as the businessmen need the funds of others to win on the market. All this traffic sharpens our intelligence and falsifies our judgment.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote from Degas' Notebook entry c. 1860's; as quoted in Artists on Art: From the XIV to the XX Century, ed. Robert Goldwater (Pantheon, 1945)
1855 - 1875

People , Intelligence , Idea , Solitude

“Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Column, May 1, 2009, "Torture? No. Except …" http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer050109.php3 at jewishworldreview.com.
2000s, 2009

Life , Guy , Evil , Time

“…People who are atheists, they hate God, they hate the expression of God, and they are angry with the world, angry with themselves, angry with society and they take it out on innocent people who are worshiping God. And whether it's a Sikh temple, or a Baptist church, or a Catholic church, or a Muslim mosque – whatever it is – I just abhor this kind of violence, and it's the kind of thing that we should do something about. But what do you do?”

Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister

2012-08-06
The 700 Club
Television
CBN, quoted in * 2012-08-06
Quoted: Pat Robertson Links 'Hate' of God to Wis. Sikh Temple Shooting
CP U.S.
The Christian Post
http://www.christianpost.com/news/pat-robertson-links-hate-of-god-to-wis-sikh-temple-shooting-79559/

God , Hate , People , World

“There have been the most terrible, shocking events taking place in the United States of America within the last hour or so, including two hijacked planes being flown deliberately into the World Trade Center. I am afraid we can only imagine the terror and the carnage there and the many, many innocent people who will have lost their lives. I know that you would want to join with me in sending the deepest condolences to President Bush and to the American people on behalf of the British people at these terrible events.This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world today. It is perpetrated by fanatics who are utterly indifferent to the sanctity of human life and we, the democracies of this world, are going to have to come together to fight it together and eradicate this evil completely from our world.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Trades Union Congress http://www.tuc.org.uk/congress/tuc-3709-f0.cfm
Speech to the Trades Union Congress. 11 September 2001, shortly after the terrorist attacks of that day had begun.
2000s

Life , People , World , Democracy

“The merchants of malice continue to ply their wicked trade at every opportunity by maligning a whole race that is innocent of any wrongdoing against Fijian custom, tradition or their land.”

Vijay R. Singh (1931–2006) Fijian politician

Speaking Out (2006)

“I want Americans and all the world to know that coalition forces will make every effort to spare innocent civilians from harm. A campaign on the harsh terrain of a nation as large as California could be longer and more difficult than some predict. And helping Iraqis achieve a united, stable and free country will require our sustained commitment.”

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

2000s, 2003, Invasion of Iraq (March 2003)

World , Effort , Help , Country

“For fifty years Private Eye has pretty much in most issues exposed a miscarriage of justice, and a lot of them have been murders. Over the years, large numbers of these cases have been found to be entirely wrong, and the men convicted -- almost always men, there was a couple of women -- have been found innocent, so we would have killed those people, and in some of those very high profile cases which involved terrorism cases, we would have made very dangerous new martyrs by executing people who turned out not to have committed the murders involved. So on a purely practical basis, whatever you think it says about the civilised nature of your society or not, I think it would be incredibly dangerous to have capital punishment back.”

Ian Hislop (1960) Satirical comedian, Editor, Television and radio presenter

On capital punishment in the United Kingdom. Question Time, BBC, 22 September 2011.

Women , Men , People , Justice

“Let us consider first the view that it is always wrong to take an innocent human life. We may call this the “sanctity of life” view. People who take this view oppose abortion and euthanasia. They do not usually, however, oppose the killing of nonhuman animals—so perhaps it would be more accurate to describe this view as the “sanctity of human life” view. The belief that human life, and only human life, is sacrosanct is a form of speciesism.”

Peter Singer book Animal Liberation

Source: Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975), Ch. 1: All Animals Are Equal

Life , People , Animals

“I found it very offensive to my people. It makes the Negro childlike and innocent and is in the old plantation hallelujah shouter tradition… the same old story, the negro singing his way to glory.”

Paul Robeson (1898–1976) American singer and actor

Regarding the film Tales of Manhattan, as quoted in Paul Robeson (1989) by Martin Duberman, " The Discovery of Africa", p. 259

People , Way , Singing

“What people report is not properties of their image but of the objects they are imagining. Such properties as color, shape, size and so on are clearly properties of the objects that are being imagined. This distinction is crucial. The seemingly innocent scope slip that takes image of object X with property Pro mean (image of object X) with property P instead of the correct image of (object X with property P) is probably the most ubiquitous and damaging conclusion in the whole imagery literature.”

Zenon Pylyshyn (1937) Canadian philosopher

Pylyshyn (1981, 18-19), as cited in: Ken Clements, "Visual imagery and school mathematics." For the learning of mathematics 2.2 (1981): 2-9.

People , Color , Imagination , Literature

“Both the Oblation Board and the Specters of Indifference are bewitched by this truth about human beings: that innocence is different from experience. The Oblation Board fears and hates Dust, and the Specters feast on it, but it's Dust both of them are obsessed by.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Stanislaus Grumman to Lee Scoresby in Ch. 14 : Alamo Gulch
His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997)

Hate , Truth , Fear , Indifference

“Watching old movies is like spending an evening with those people next door. They bore us, and we wouldn't go out of our way to see them; we drop in on them because they're so close. If it took some effort to see old movies, we might try to find out which were the good ones, and if people saw only the good ones maybe they would still respect old movies. As it is, people sit and watch movies that audiences walked out on thirty years ago. Like Lot's wife, we are tempted to take another look, attracted not by evil but by something that seems much more shameful — our own innocence.”

Pauline Kael book Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

"Movies on Television".
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (1968)

People , Way , Effort , Evil

“Necessity can make a doubtful action innocent, but it cannot make it commendable.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“(He remarked) that anyone who truly wished to develop tolerance toward other human beings should start by casting aside any and all religious affiliation. When challenged by one of the other guests, he had asked innocently whether anyone could name a single person put to death or driven from his home by an atheist over theological matters.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 4 (pp. 72-73)

Death , Home , Personality

“One should make movies innocently — the way Adam and Eve named the animals, their first day in the garden…Learn from your own interior vision of things, as if there had never been a D. W. Griffith, or a Eisenstein, or a [John] Ford, or a [Jean] Renoir, or anybody.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Quoted in The Orson Welles Story.

Way , Learning , Animals

“Therefore, in the light of the Truth that God is love, and that Jesus came to make his love manifest in the world, we cannot believe it is his will for men to eat meat, or to do anything else that would cause suffering to the innocent and helpless.”

Charles Fillmore (1854–1948) American mystic

Source: Vegetarianism, Unity Magazine, June 1915. Quoted in Will Tuttle, The World Peace Diet (2005), ch. 3.

Love , Men , God , Truth

“Youth is frank, eager, and prone to believe in the good; it looks round, and it sees flowers; it looks up and sees stars; evil appears impossible, because it does not seem to be in ourselves. It remains for after and weary years to teach us, that even the young and the innocent may be led into crime by the strong influence of temptation. Passion first, and interest afterwards, lures the feet of men into dark and crooked paths, which none in earlier and holier hours deemed they could tread. We may have been often deceived, but it is not until we ourselves begin to deceive that we dread deceit.”

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

Literary Remains

Men , Youth , Star , Flowers

“As innocent as a new-laid egg.”

W. S. Gilbert Engaged

Engaged.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“I wish to say to you that I am innocent. I have never done a crime, some sins, but never any crime. I thank you for everything you have done for me. I am innocent of all crime, not only this one, but of all, all. I am an innocent man. I now wish to forgive some people for what they are doing to me.”

Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1888–1927) Italian American anarchist executed by Massachusetts

Last words http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0823.html (April 15, 1920)

People , Forgiveness

“Washington is right to be chastened after its scathing experience in Iraq this past decade. But it also ought to be motivated by that earlier disaster in Iraq, in which so many innocent Iraqis perished while the United States stood by and watched. Syria in 2012 is another Iraq of 1991 just waiting to happen. No one can say he did not know.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Intervention In Syria is a Moral and Human Imperative", New Republican (February 24, 2012)

Motivation , Waiting , Past

“Hearing has its own memory. It registers the dog whose sudden barking startled me as a child. The folk songs my nanny used to sing. The dadaism of a cabaret song from Berlin: ‘I tear out one of my eyelashes and stab you dead with it,’ innocently sung by my mother. Hitler conjuring up the Almighty. The crowing voice of little Goebbels. Alarm sirens, the roar of aircraft, the blast of bombs. Ljuba Welitsch being Salome. The sonorities of Edwin Fischer’s piano playing. María Casares as Lady Macbeth in Avignon. Ralph Kirkpatrick’s two Scarlatti recitals. Gré Brouwenstijn as Leonore in Fidelio. The epiphany of Ligeti’s Aventures et Nouvelles Aventures. The magic application of noise in Peter Brook’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. All sorts of laughter.”

Alfred Brendel (1931) Austrian pianist, poet, and author

quoted in Alan Rusbridger, "Music, Sense and Nonsense by Alfred Brendel review – a great pianist’s thoughts on his art", The Guardian, 24 September 2015

Dogs , Dreams , Tear , Laughter

“Some people hope for a miracle cure
Some people just accept the world as it is.
But I'm not willing to lay down and die
Because I am an innocent man.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

An Innocent Man.
Song lyrics, An Innocent Man (1983)

People , World , Hope

“Murder of non-Muslims is a merit : “The murder of infidels (even if they are innocent) is counted a merit in a Muslim. It is not necessary that he (Muslim) should have his own passion or mortify his flesh, it is not necessary for him to grow a rich growth of spirituality. He has only to slay a certain class of his fellow-beings (non-Muslims) or plunder their lands and wealth and this act is itself would raise his (Muslim’s) soul to Heaven. A religion where followers are taught to regard robbery and murder as a religious duty, is incompatible with the progress of manking or with the peace of the world.”

Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958) Indian historian

The History of Aurangazeb. Vol. 3, pp. 161-169 by Sir Jadunath Sarkar; published by Orient Longman 1972

World , Peace , Religion , Soul

“When I stand before the throne of God, I shall be judged innocent.”

Klaus Barbie (1913–1991) SS-Hauptsturmführer, soldier and Gestapo member

Statement at His Trial

God

“O happy earth,
Whereon thy innocent feet doe ever tread!”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 10, stanza 9
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I

Happiness

“The most minute directions were given as to the killing of these animals. Every priest became a butcher, every synagogue a slaughter-house. Nothing could be more utterly shocking to a refined soul, nothing better calculated to harden the heart, than the continual shedding of innocent blood. This terrible system culminated in the sacrifice of Christ. His blood took the place of all other. It is not necessary to shed any more. The law at last is satisfied, satiated, surfeited.”

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

Some Reasons Why (1881)

Law , Soul , Heart , Animals

“Ridiculous as the idea may have been for her bluestocking mother to send brother and sister over alone like this, the fact was that Judy was protected as much by her curiosity as by her innocence. And then there was this other thing about her, too. You know all that razzle-dazzle about people being born in Original Sin and all that rot? Well, maybe it’s rot and maybe it isn’t. I mean I wouldn’t slit my throat from ear to ear, just because I’d found out for sure that most people are. But she wasn’t. That was the thing. She simply wasn’t.”

Elaine Dundy (1921–2008) American journalist, actress

I’m positive of that.
Part One, Two
The Dud Avocado (1958)

People , Idea , Sister

“I support freedom of choice. My choice is to not support abortion, except in cases of a clear-cut choice between the lives of the mother and child. A child conceived through incest or rape is innocent and deserves the right to be born.”

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

"How I am a Roman Catholic" http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/how-i-am-a-roman-catholic Roger Ebert's Journal (1 March 2013)

Support , Freedom

“Since September 11, 2001, I have often thought that perhaps it was fortunate for the world that the attackers targeted the World Trade Center instead of the Statue of Liberty, for if they had destroyed our sacred symbol of democracy I fear we as Americans would have been unable to keep ourselves from indulging in paroxysms of revenge of a sort the world has never seen before. If that had happened, it would have befouled the meaning of the Statue of Liberty beyond any hope of subsequent redemption — if there were any people left to care. I have learned from my students that this upsetting thought of mine is subject to several unfortunate misconstruals, so let me expand on it to ward them off. The killing of thousands of innocents in the World Trade Center was a heinous crime, much more evil than the destruction of the Statue of Liberty would have been. And, yes, the World Trade Center was a much more appropriate symbol of al Qaeda's wrath than the Statue of Liberty would have been, but for that very reason it didn't mean as much, as a symbol, to us. It was Mammon and Plutocrats and Globalization, not Lady Liberty. I do suspect that the fury with which Americans would have responded to the unspeakable defilement of our cherished national symbol, the purest image of our aspirations as a democracy, would have made a sane and measured response extraordinarily difficult. This is the great danger of symbols — they can become too "sacred."”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

An important task for religious people of all faiths in the twenty-first century will be spreading the conviction that there are no acts more dishonorable than harming "infidels" of one stripe or another for "disrespecting" a flag, a cross, a holy text.
Breaking the Spell (2006)

People , World , Fear , Faith

“Andrew Holland was prosecuted in the UK for possessing "extreme pornography", a term which appears to mean porn that judges and prosecutors consider shocking. He had received a video showing a tiger having sex with a woman, or at least apparently so.
He was found innocent because the video he received was a joke. I am glad he was not punished, but this law is nonetheless a threat to other people. If Mr Holland had had a serious video depicting a tiger having sex with a woman, he still would not deserve to go to prison. … I've read that male dolphins try to have sex with humans, and female apes solicit sex from humans. What is wrong with giving them what they want, if that's what turns you on, or even just to gratify them?
But this law is not concerned with protecting animals, since it does not care whether the animal really had sex, or really existed at all. It only panders to the prejudice of censors.
A parrot once had sex with me. I did not recognize the act as sex until it was explained to me afterward, but being stroked on the hand by his soft belly feathers was so pleasurable that I yearn for another chance. I have a photo of that act; should I go to prison for it?
Perhaps I am spared because this photo isn't "disgusting", but "disgusting" is a subjective matter; we must not imprison people merely because someone feels disgusted. I find the sight of wounds disgusting; fortunately surgeons do not. Maybe there is someone who considers it disgusting for a parrot to have sex with a human. Or for a dolphin or tiger to have sex with a human. So what? Others feel that all sex is disgusting. There are prejudiced people that want to ban all depiction of sex, and force all women to cover their faces. This law and the laws they want are the same in spirit.
Threatening people with death or injury is a very bad thing, but violence is no less bad for being nonsexual. Is it worse to shoot someone while stroking that person's genitals than to shoot someone from a few feet away? If I were going to be the victim, and I were invited to choose one or the other, I would choose whichever one gave me the best chance to escape.
Images of violence can be painful to see, but they are no better for being nonsexual. I saw images of gruesome bodily harm in the movie Pulp Fiction. I do not want to see anything like that again, sex or no sex. That is no reason to censor these works, and would still not be a reason even if most people reacted to them as I do.
Since the law doesn't care whether a real human was really threatened with harm, it is not really concerned about our safety from violence, any more than it is concerned with avoiding suffering for corpses or animals. It is only prejudice, taking a form that can ruin people's lives.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"Extreme Pornography Law in the UK" (2010) http://stallman.org/articles/extreme.html
2010s

Death , Women , Pain , People

“Time won't fly, it's like I'm paralyzed by it.
I'd like to be my old self again, but I'm still trying to find it.
After plaid shirt days and nights when you made me your own,
Now you mail back my things and I walk home alone.But you keep my old scarf from that very first week,
'Cause it reminds you of innocence and it smells like me.
You can't get rid of it 'cause you remember it all too well, yeah.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

All Too Well, written by Taylor Swift and Liz Rose.
Song lyrics, Red (2012)

Home , Time , Flying , Night

“If we can't or won't define the enemy, the cost to fight such a war will be endless. How many American troops are we prepared to lose? How much money are we prepared to spend? How many innocent civilians, in our nation and others, are we willing to see killed? How many American civilians will we jeopardize? How much of our civil liberties are we prepared to give up? How much prosperity will we sacrifice? […] I support President Bush and voted for the authority and the money to carry out his responsibility to defend this country, but the degree of death and destruction and chances of escalation must be carefully taken into consideration.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

U.S. House of Representatives, September 25, 2001 http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2001/cr092501.htm
2000s, 2001-2005

Death , Money , War , Support

“What fascinates me about Van Gogh is that his sun dries up everything. Maybe he was melodramatic but my point really is.... if you are a painter you have to face that self-consciousness. You get dirty and pathetic; very miserable. It makes me self-conscious to talk about it. There is something corrupt on art. Nothing do with any 'ism' but a thing in nature loses its innocence and becomes a grotesque thing.... maybe this difficulty is personal with me, and maybe it is something that other painters have in common. Perhaps it is also something of today.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

in conversation with W.C. Seitz
Quote from Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 121.
1980's

Art , Nature , Sun , Personality

“Tea! Thou soft, thou sober, sage, and venerable liquid, thou innocent pretence for bringing the wicked of both sexes together in a morning; thou female tongue-running, smile-smoothing, heart- opening, wink-tipping cordial, to whose glorious insipidity I owe the happiest moment of my life, let me fall prostrate thus, and … adore thee.”

Colley Cibber (1671–1757) British poet laureate

The Lady's Last Stake (1707), Act I, sc. i.

Life , Smile , Sex , Heart

“"Overwrite — put down everything that comes to your mind," I was told.
"Be explicit, elaborate. Judicious pruning will be done later. Don't be afraid to name names. Lawyers will tooth-comb the book before it gets into print and protect you from libel suits. Don't be afraid to shock people. Be daring. Be spicy. Tell all!"
I did.
I followed everybody's advice. About seven hundred thirty pages were judiciously pruned in order to protect the innocent, to make it possible for the book to be sent through the U. S. mails, and to prevent me from spending the twilight years of my life in jail for criminal libel.
What's left is here.
PLEASE LIKE IT.”

Walter Slezak (1902–1983) actor

Preface, p. viii
What Time's the Next Swan? (1962)

Life , People , Books

“Until socialism—like Nazism or fascism confronted by the death camps and the slaughter of innocents—is confronted with its lived reality, the greatest atrocities of all recorded human life, we will not live "after socialism."”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2000s, Can There Be an "After Socialism"? (2003)

Life , Death , Reality

“Has anyone ever known a school to organize a field trip to a slaughterhouse? Never. Why? Where does this sense of shame come from that obliges us to keep silent in front of our children about the fate that we impose on animals? Throat-cutting, electrocution, and evisceration—are these scenes that would be obscene in the eyes of innocents? The answer is yes.”

Aymeric Caron (1971) French journalist

No steak (2013); as quoted in A Plea for the Animals by Matthieu Ricard, trans. Sherab Chödzin Kohn (Shambhala Publications, 2016), p. 44 https://books.google.it/books?id=bTLuDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA44.

Fate , Children , School , Sense

“Now, you think it's a coincidence that on September 11, 2001, we were struck by terrorists an evil that has at its heart the disregard of innocent human life? We who have for several decades killed not thousands but scores of millions of our own children, in disregard of the principle of innocent human life — I don't think that's a coincidence, I think that's a warning. I don't think that's a coincidence, I think that's a shot across the bow. I think that's a way of Providence telling us, "I love you all; I'd like to give you a chance. Wake up! Would you please wake up?"”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Reaping the Fruits of the Moral Crisis, May 7, 2004. http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/04_05_07hellewell.htm.
2009

Love , Life , Children , Way

“That phrase, "loss of innocence," has become stale with overuse and diminishing returns; no other culture is so addicted to this narcissistic impression of itself as having any innocence to lose in the first place.”

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

"The Road to West Egg" (2000).
2000s, 2000, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere (2000)

Loss

“Oh some I know! I have embalmed the days,
Even the sacred moments when we played,
All innocent of passion, uncorrupt,
At noon and evening in the flame-heart’s shade.”

Claude McKay (1889–1948) Jamaican American writer, poet

Flame-Heart, l. 26-29

Passion , Heart

“In these days little need exists for extolling the blessings of our Federal Union. Its benefits are known and recognized by all its citizens who are worthy of serious attention. No one thinks now of attempting to destroy the Union by armed force. No one seriously considers withdrawing from it. But it is not enough that it should be free from attack — it must be approved and supported by a national spirit. Our prime allegiance must be to the whole country. A sentiment of sectionalism is not harmless because it is unarmed. Resistance to the righteous authority of Federal law is not innocent because it is not accompanied by secession. We need a more definite realization that all of our country must stand or fall together, and that it is the duty of the Government to promote the welfare of each part and the duty of the citizen to remember that he must be first of all an American.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Law , Support , Thinking , Parting

“The innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,
Moves all the labouring surges of the world.”

Francis Thompson (1859–1907) British poet

Sister Songs http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/ssngs10.txt, Pt. II (1908).

World

“Whoever climbed the Lord's mountain had to possess clean hands and an innocent heart; otherwise the Summit would kill him. Today the doorway is deserted. Soiled hands and sinful hearts are able to pass by without fear, for the Summit kills no longer.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Report to Greco

"The Desert. Sinai.", Ch. 21, p. 277
Report to Greco (1965)

Fear , Mountain , Heart

“Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem, but you sow the seeds for another.
…
One has to try to develop one's inner feelings, which can be done simply by training one's mind. This is a priceless human asset and one you don't have to pay income tax on!
…
First one must change. I first watch myself, check myself, then expect changes from others.
…
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.
…
I myself feel, and also tell other Buddhists that the question of Nirvana will come later.
There is not much hurry.
If in day to day life you lead a good life, honesty, with love,
with compassion, with less selfishness,
then automatically it will lead to Nirvana.
…
The universe that we inhabit and our shared perception of it are the results of a common karma. Likewise, the places that we will experience in future rebirths will be the outcome of the karma that we share with the other beings living there. The actions of each of us, human or nonhuman, have contributed to the world in which we live. We all have a common responsibility for our world and are connected with everything in it.
…
If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue.
…
It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.
…
Whenever Buddhism has taken root in a new land, there has been a certain variation in the style in which it is observed. The Buddha himself taught differently according to the place, the occasion and the situation of those who were listening to him.
…
Samsara - our conditioned existence in the perpetual cycle of habitual tendencies and nirvana - genuine freedom from such an existence- are nothing but different manifestations of a basic continuum. So this continuity of consciousness us always present. This is the meaning of tantra.
…
According to Buddhist practice, there are three stages or steps. The initial stage is to reduce attachment towards life.
The second stage is the elimination of desire and attachment to this samsara. Then in the third stage, self-cherishing is eliminated.
…
The creatures that inhabit this earth-be they human beings or animals-are here to contribute, each in its own particular way, to the beauty and prosperity of the world.
…
To develop genuine devotion, you must know the meaning of teachings. The main emphasis in Buddhism is to transform the mind, and this transformation depends upon meditation. in order to meditate correctly, you must have knowledge.
…
Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned.
…
The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.
…
From one point of view we can say that we have human bodies and are practicing the Buddha's teachings and are thus much better than insects. But we can also say that insects are innocent and free from guile, where as we often lie and misrepresent ourselves in devious ways in order to achieve our ends or better ourselves. From this perspective, we are much worse than insects.
…
When the days become longer and there is more sunshine, the grass becomes fresh and, consequently, we feel very happy. On the other hand, in autumn, one leaf falls down and another leaf falls down. The beautiful plants become as if dead and we do not feel very happy. Why? I think it is because deep down our human nature likes construction, and does not like destruction. Naturally, every action which is destructive is against human nature. Constructiveness is the human way. Therefore, I think that in terms of basic human feeling, violence is not good. Non-violence is the only way.
…
We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.
…
The fundamental philosophical principle of Buddhism is that all our suffering comes about as a result of an undisciplined mind, and this untamed mind itself comes about because of ignorance and negative emotions. For the Buddhist practitioner then, regardless of whether he or she follows the approach of the Fundamental Vehicle, Mahayana or Vajrayana, negative emotions are always the true enemy, a factor that has to be overcome and eliminated. And it is only by applying methods for training the mind that these negative emotions can be dispelled and eliminated. This is why in Buddhist writings and teachings we find such an extensive explanation of the mind and its different processes and functions. Since these negative emotions are states of mind, the method or technique for overcoming them must be developed from within. There is no alternative. They cannot be removed by some external technique, like a surgical operation."”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection, Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, 2004

Love , Life , War , Lie

“There was a time when people of the rich nations of the world regarded poverty as a "natural condition" for those living in the poor nations of the world. … Today we have largely been stripped of this pseudo-innocence. We know that the poor are so poor because the rich are so rich, that the causes of poverty can be traced to deliberate decisions and deliberate economic and political policies designed to benefit the rich and powerful. We know that poverty and unemployment are not just accidents of history but deliberate, even indispensable, components of capitalism as an economic system.”

Allan Boesak (1946) South African anti-apartheid activist

Source: Comfort and Protest (1987), p. 67

People , World , History , Nature

“Bad company is as instructive as licentiousness. One makes up for the loss of one’s innocence with the loss of one’s prejudices.”

Denis Diderot book Rameau's Nephew

Rameau's Nephew (1762)

Loss

“When it is stated in Genesis that God said to Adam, “Only from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you must not eat,” it follows as a matter of course that Adam really has not understood this word, for how could he understand the difference between good and evil when this distinction would follow as a consequence of the enjoyment of the fruit. When it is assumed that the prohibition awakens the desire one acquires knowledge instead of ignorance, and in that case Adam must have had knowledge of freedom, because the desire was to use it. The explanation is therefore subsequent. The prohibition induces in him anxiety, for the prohibition awakens in him freedom’s possibility. What passed by innocence as the nothing of anxiety has now entered into Adam, and here again it is a nothing-the anxious possibility of being able. He has no conception of what he is able to do; otherwise-and this it what usually happens-that which comes later, the difference between good and evil, would have to be presupposed. Only the possibility of being able is present as a higher form of ignorance, as a higher expression of anxiety, because in a higher sense it both is and is not, because in a higher sense he both loves it and flees from it.”

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

Source: 1840s, The Concept of Anxiety (1844), p. 44-45

Love , God , Understanding , Knowledge

“You can't indict a government and its organizations as criminal. The conception of the Reich government is a hundred years old. The general staff is several hundreds of years old. The case of the SS is another matter, because it was started with the party and by the party. But it's quite impossible to indict or convict an organization as criminal if it has in its membership millions of innocent people.”

Hans Frank (1900–1946) German war criminal

To Leon Goldensohn, July 20, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

People

“My proximity to the sheep, cattle, and geese who are now my neighbors in the country is what has finally turned me into a vegetarian. I talk to these animals when I walk. Sometimes I am lucky enough to make physical contact with them, and as I look into their eyes I see not only the innocence, but also the clear fact that those eyes are no less complicated in their structure than my own. Don't we now have enough tasty things to eat from the garden and all the delicious ways to prepare them?”

Mary Tyler Moore (1936–2017) American actress, television producer

After All https://books.google.it/books?id=siBPpd0BdeQC (New York: Putnam, 1995), p. 27

Way , Animals , Country

“All judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer than that one guilty should escape.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Victor Frankenstein of Justine Moritz in Ch. 8
Frankenstein (1818)

Suffering

“Even in childhood's innocence of pleasure
Lives that destroying spirit which in time
Will waste, then want, the best of happiness.”

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

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Pleasure , Time , Childhood , Happiness

“Violence and terrorism has no place in any civilized society much less in India which is home of ahimsa. The perpetration of violent acts, especially on innocent victims, therefore, causes the greatest sorrow to us. But wisdom lies: in refusing to let the acts of a few provoke us into any form of rancor or ill will between communities or regions. The people of India have a deep faith in a peaceful, democratic order. This faith of our people must be zealously protected and strengthened.”

R. Venkataraman (1910–2009) seventh Vice-President of India and the 8th President of India

In his pre-Republic day Speech in:p.178.
Commissions and Omissions by Indian Presidents and Their Conflicts with the Prime Ministers Under the Constitution: 1977-2001

Wisdom , People , Peace , Faith

“I think the idea of white privilege is absolutely reprehensible. And it's not because white people aren't privileged. You know, we have all sorts of privileges, and most people have privileges of all sorts, and you should be grateful for your privileges and work to deserve them, I would say. But, the idea that you can target an ethnic group with a collective crime, regardless of the specific innocence or guilt of the constituent elements of that group, there is absolutely nothing that's more racist than that. It's absolutely abhorrent.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Strengthen the Individual: Q & A Parts I & II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UL-SdOhwek&t=52m14s
Other

People , Idea , Thinking

“My friend returned to the gallery, looked once more at the adorable imprint of the most innocent, the most passionate of caresses. A mirror hung near by, where he could compare his present with his former face, the man he was with the man he had been. He never told me and I never asked what his feelings were at that moment. Did he feel that he was too culpable to have inspired a passion in a young girl whom he would have been a fool, almost a criminal, to marry? Did he comprehend that through his age which was so apparent, it was his youth which this child loved? Did he remember, with a keenness that was all too sad, that other, who had never given him a kiss like that at a time when he might have returned it? I only know that he left the same day, determined never again to see one whom he could no longer love as he had loved the other, with the hope, the purity, the soul of a man of twenty.”

Paul Bourget (1852–1935) French writer

Pierre Fauchery, as quoted by the character "Jules Labarthe"
The Age for Love

Love , Youth , Age , Sadness

“On the September 11 attacks: "In these surreal days, there is one truth. Nothing justified the killing of innocent people in America last week and nothing justifies the killing of innocent people anywhere else."”

John Pilger (1939) Australian journalist

John Pilger, "Blair has made Britain a target" 21 September 2001 http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,555452,00.html

People , Truth

“You got innocent men in jail, your insane asylums are filled.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Slow Train Coming (1979), When You Gonna Wake Up

Men

“Every naturalism begins as involuntary naïveté. Initially, we cannot help thinking that the “order of things” is an objective order. For the first glance falls on the things and not on the “eyeglasses.” In the work of enlightenment, this first innocence becomes irretrievably lost. Enlightenment leads to the loss of naïveté and it furthers the collapse of objectivism through a gain in self-experience. It effects an irreversible awakening and, expressed pictorially, executes the turn to the eyeglasses, i. e., to one’s own rational apparatus. Once this consciousness of the eyeglasses has been awakened in a culture, the old naïveté loses its charm, becomes defensive, and is transformed into narrow-mindedness, which is intent on remaining as it is. The mythology of the Greeks is still enchanting; that of fascism is only stale and shameless. In the first myth, a step toward an interpretation of the world was taken; in simulated naïveté, an artful stupefaction (Verdummung) is at work—the predominant method of self-integration in advanced social orders.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 59

World , Art , Nature , Thinking

“In England a man is presoomed to be innocent till he's proved guilty an' they take it f 'r granted he's guilty. In this counthry a man is presoomed to be guilty ontil he's proved guilty an' afther that he's presoomed to be innocent.”

Finley Peter Dunne (1867–1936) author

Mr. Dooley's opinions (1901), p. 212.

“While early American society was an agrarian society, it was fast becoming more commercial, and commercial goals made their way among its agricultural classes almost as rapidly as elsewhere. The more commercial society became, however, the more reason it found to cling in imagination to the noncommercial agrarian values. The more farming as a self-sufficient way of life was abandoned for farming as a business, the more merit men found in what was being left behind. And the more rapidly the farmers' sons moved into the towns, the more nostalgic the whole culture became about its rural past. The American mind was raised upon a sentimental attachment to rural living and upon a series of notions about rural people and rural life that I have chosen to designate as the agrarian myth. The agrarian myth represents a kind of homage that Americans have paid to the fancied innocence of their origins.
Like any complex of ideas, the agrarian myth cannot be defined in a phrase, but its component themes form a clear pattern. Its hero was the yeoman farmer, its central conception the notion that he is the ideal man and the ideal citizen.”

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

Source: The Age of Reform: from Bryan to F.D.R. (1955), Chapter I, part I, p. 23

Life , Men , People , Way

“I do not need your loving words
or hurried kiss
as night comes down
in the place where we once lived
innocent as children,
and happier.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Red Winged Birds (1917)

Love , Children , Kiss , Night

“There are no innocent people in the Gaza Strip. Everyone has a connection to Hamas. Everyone receives a salary from Hamas. Those who are trying to challenge us at the border and breach it belong to Hamas’s military wing.”

Avigdor Lieberman (1958) Israeli politician

As quoted in 'There are no innocents in Gaza,' says Israeli defense minister http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/There-are-no-innocents-in-Gaza-says-Israeli-defense-minister-549173 (April 8, 2018), The Jerusalem Post

People

“We don't want teenagers to write violent poems, horrifying stories, explicit lyrics and rhymes; they're ugly, in precisely the way that we are ugly, and out of protectiveness and hypocrisy, even out of pity and love and tenderness, we try to force young people to be innocent of everything but the effects of that ugliness.So we censor the art they consume and produce, and prosecute and suspend and expel them, and when, once in a great while, a teenager reaches for an easy gun and shoots somebody or himself, we tell ourselves that if we had only censored his journals and curtailed his music and video games, that awful burst of final ugliness could surely have been prevented. As if art caused the ugliness, when of course all it can ever do is reflect and, perhaps, attempt to explain it.Let teenagers languish, therefore, in their sense of isolation, without outlet or nourishment, bereft of the only thing that makes it all bearable: knowing that somebody else has felt the way that you feel, has faced it, run from it, rued it, lamented it and transformed it into art; has been there, and returned, and lived, for the only good reason we have: to tell the tale.How confident we shall be, once we have done this, of never encountering the ugliness again! How happy our children will be, and how brave, and how safe!”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Nanny Nation

Love , Children , People , Art

“I question your innocence!
Help this blackbird!
She's a witch!
There's a stone around my leg.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Hounds of Love (1985), The Ninth Wave

Question , Help

“The problem, if anything, was precisely the opposite. I had too much to write: too many fine and miserable buildings to construct and streets to name and clock towers to set chiming, too many characters to raise up from the dirt like flowers whose petals I peeled down to the intricate frail organs within, too many terrible genetic and fiduciary secrets to dig up and bury and dig up again, too many divorces to grant, heirs to disinherit, trysts to arrange, letters to misdirect into evil hands, innocent children to slay with rheumatic fever, women to leave unfulfilled and hopeless, men to drive to adultery and theft, fires to ignite at the hearts of ancient houses.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Women , Men , Children , Secret

“I am simply painting concrete representation of abstract emotions such as innocent love, ordinary happiness. I do want an emotional response. And I paint about emotions, not about lines. The truth is that it's not the lines that express the emotion. It's the scale of the composition. You know, if you go into a room that has perfect scale, you feel it... If the painting has perfect scale, it moves you. And you have different scale to show different emotions. It's the space between the lines that counts.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

after 2000, Agnes Martin: Between the Lines', 2002

Love , Truth , Feeling , Painting

“Rapine, avarice, expense
This is idolatry; and these we adore:
Plain living and high thinking are no more:
The homely beauty of the good old cause
Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence,
And pure religion breathing household laws.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Written in London, September 1802, l. 9 (1802).

Fear , Peace , Religion , Law

“Poetry is not a branch of analytical philosophy. It is a primal, holistic kind of human communication. A poet needs innocence as much as knowledge, emotion as much as intelligence, vulnerability as much as rigor. A poet can become too smart for his or her own good and forget the childlike pleasures of sound and story, sense, and sensuality that poetry should provide. The challenge for a writer is to master the medium of poetry without losing that inner innocence.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"Paradigms Lost," interview with Gloria Brame, ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum (Spring 1995)
Interviews

Pleasure , Intelligence , Communication , Knowledge

“And yet I find in the majority judgement a fatal innocence… The judgement quotes the proclamations from the Rig, Yajur and Atharva Vedas - about all human beings being one, about their being the children of the same Mother-Earth, about the yearnings that all of use be friends. But it does not note that less than a mile from its building volumes upon volumes of fatwas are being sold and distributed which exhort Muslims never to trust Kafirs, never to allow them into their confidence; which tell them that their first duty and allegiance is to their religion and not to sundry laws… It is not Gandhiji who needs to be convinced that Ishwar and Allah ar one. It is not Guru Gobind Singh who needs to be convinced that mandir and masjid, Puran and Quran are one. The ones who need to be convinced that they are one - say, the ulema, or the Shahi Iman…”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

have it as an article of faith that they are not one.
Arun Shourie in: India., & Dasgupta, S. (1995). The Ayodhya reference: The Supreme Court judgement and commentaries. p. 171-3

Children , Faith , Religion , Law

“Every man ought to have the fullest opportunity of establishing his innocence if he can.”

Henry Hawkins, 1st Baron Brampton (1817–1907) British judge

Queen v. Dennis (1894), L. R. 2 Q. B. D. [1894], p. 480.

“Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase
Are fruits of innocence and blessedness.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) American romantic poet and journalist

Mutation. A Sonnet

“The sheer waste of human potential that was the New Republic’s raison d’être offended her sensibilities as badly as a public book-burning, or a massacre of innocents.”

Charles Stross book Singularity Sky

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 2, “Preparations for Departure” (p. 33)

Books

“It is a myth that the Patriot Act empowers the government to be overly intrusive, giving it power that could someday be used to pry into innocent Americans’ personal lives. The fact is that the Patriot Act was born of a well-established criminal justice and national security structure as well as vibrant bi-partisan debate in Congress, both upon its establishment and its renewal. The Act was written to help the law enforcement and intelligence communities to protect Americans and fight the war on terror. It, in fact, answered the call of career, rank and file law enforcement to update our laws to match law-enforcement tools with modern technology. The Patriot Act simply ensures that law enforcement and national security personnel have the tools they need to keep us safe from terrorism — and in many cases those tools were already available to law enforcement in other contexts — while also ensuring that those tools are consistent with the Constitution and include appropriate safeguards against government over-reaching.”

Alberto Gonzales (1955) 80th United States Attorney General

Speech regarding Civil Liberties and the War on Terrorism (November 20, 2006)

War , Justice , Law , Intelligence

“So what, then, is the use of art — our art, Black art? Black art must expose the enemy, praise the people and support the revolution.… We do not need pictures of oranges in a bowl or trees standing innocently in the midst of a wasteland. If we must paint oranges and trees, let our guerrillas be eating those oranges for strength and using those trees for cover.”

Maulana Karenga (1941) Political activist

"Black Cultural Nationalism" in The Black Aesthetic (1971)

People , Art , Support , Tree

“The Government which attacks its own innocent subjects has no claim to be called a civilised government. Bear in mind, such a government does not survive long. I declare that the blows struck at me will be the last nails in the coffin of the British rule in India.”

Lala Lajpat Rai (1865–1928) Indian author and politician

As quoted in [Under the Shadow of Gallows, Gulab Singh, Rup Chand, 1963, 12 February 2012, 40, Naujawan Bharat Sabha] Said by Lala Lajpat Rai at a public meeting in Lahore on the evening of 20 October, 1928 after protesters (including Lala Lajpat Rai) heading towards the Lahore railway station to greet the Simon Commission with protests were lathi-charged earlier on the same day.

“Nothing. She is innocent and blameless. She has lived as Rama’s queen ten thousand years; before that Rama saved her from great danger by wondrous and incredible deeds. And now behold one of the terrors of kingship, that Rama let her go because his people talk against her. Get up, save her life with you and your companions; and make in measured words the song of Rama, and teach it to Rama’s two sons.”

Vālmīki Ramayana

In p. 6.
Narada to Valmiki
Ramayana

Life , People

“Why, even when I was innocent her hatred of me hurt a good deal. Now that I'm guilty, her belief in me would hurt even more.”

Garrett Fort (1900–1945) screenwriter

The Devil-Doll, talking to Toto at the end of the movie (1936).

Hurt

“So there is a sort of national wink, everyone goes forward, and the individual, in his turn, takes up lying as a patriotic duty. In the low standard of morality which prevails in war-time, such a practice appears almost innocent.”

Arthur Ponsonby (1871–1946) British Liberal and later Labour politician and pacifist

Falsehood in Wartime (1928), Introduction
Context: War being established as a recognized institution to be resorted to when Governments quarrel, the people are more or less prepared. They quite willingly delude themselves in order to justify their own actions. They are anxious to find an excuse for displaying their patriotism, or they are disposed to seize the opportunity for the excitement and new life of adventure which war opens out to them. So there is a sort of national wink, everyone goes forward, and the individual, in his turn, takes up lying as a patriotic duty. In the low standard of morality which prevails in war-time, such a practice appears almost innocent.

War , Lying , Appearance , Time

Quotes about innocence page 9

Quotes about innocence
page 9