Quotes about killing
page 21

Octavia E. Butler photo
Jesse Helms photo
Russell Brand photo
Paul Karl Feyerabend photo
Nathan Bedford Forrest photo

“War means fighting, and fighting means killing.”

Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–1877) Confederate Army general

As quoted in May I Quote You, General Forrest? by Randall Bedwell.
1860s

Cassandra Clare photo
Mike Malloy photo

“drunk driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it; s impossible to say if its bad or not”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762]
Tweets by year, 2014

“Animals that are killed for their flesh lead miserable lives. They are kept in disgusting conditions. The simplest little thing you can do not to hurt animals is just not eat them. I'm bringing my four children up vegetarian, and I know absolutely that I'm giving them the very best start in life.”

Sadie Frost (1965) English actress and producer

“Sadie Frost: Vegetarian Testimonial for PETA”, video ad for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (14 October 2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTkXMQSJOpI.

“I am in this same river. I can't much help it. I admit it: I'm racist. The other night I saw a group (or maybe a pack?) or white teenagers standing in a vacant lot, clustered around a 4x4, and I crossed the street to avoid them; had they been black, I probably would have taken another street entirely. And I'm misogynistic. I admit that, too. I'm a shitty cook, and a worse house cleaner, probably in great measure because I've internalized the notion that these are woman's work. Of course, I never admit that's why I don't do them: I always say I just don't much enjoy those activities (which is true enough; and it's true enough also that many women don't enjoy them either), and in any case, I've got better things to do, like write books and teach classes where I feel morally superior to pimps. And naturally I value money over life. Why else would I own a computer with a hard drive put together in Thailand by women dying of job-induced cancer? Why else would I own shirts made in a sweatshop in Bangladesh, and shoes put together in Mexico? The truth is that, although many of my best friends are people of color (as the cliche goes), and other of my best friends are women, I am part of this river: I benefit from the exploitation of others, and I do not much want to sacrifice this privilege. I am, after all, civilized, and have gained a taste for "comforts and elegancies" which can be gained only through the coercion of slavery. The truth is that like most others who benefit from this deep and broad river, I would probably rather die (and maybe even kill, or better, have someone kill for me) than trade places with the men, women, and children who made my computer, my shirt, my shoes.”

Source: The Culture of Make Believe (2003), p. 69

Pope John Paul II photo

“This inscription awakens the memory of people whose sons and daughters were destined for total extermination. This people draws its origin from Abraham, our Father in faith. The very people that received from God the commandment, thou shalt not kill, itself experienced in a special measure what is meant by killing. It is not permissible for anyone to pass by this inscription with indifference.”

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

About a Hebrew commemorative plaque in the homily during the Holy Mass at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi German concentration camp on 7 June 1979, during the pope's first apostolic journey to Poland
Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/1979/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19790607_polonia-brzezinka_it.html (Italian)

“Communist writers likewise maintain that the Judaic-Christian code of ethics is "class" morality. By this they mean that the Ten Commandments and the ethics of Christianity were created to protect private property and the property class. To show the lengths to which Communist writers have gone to defend this view we will mention several of their favorite interpretations of the Ten Commandments. They believe that "Honor thy Father and thy Mother" was created by the early Hebrews to emphasize to their children the fact that they were the private property of their parents. "Thou shalt not kill" was attributed to the belief of the dominant class that their bodies were private property and therefore they should be protected along with other property rights. "Thou shalt not commit adultery" and "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife" were said to have been created to implement the idea that a husband was the master of the home and the wife was strictly private property belonging to him. This last line of reasoning led to some catastrophic consequences when the Communists came into power in Russia. In their anxiety to make women "equal with men" and prevent them from becoming private property, they degraded womankind to the lowest and most primitive level. Some Communist leaders advocated complete libertinism and promiscuity to replace marriage and the family.”

The Naked Communist (1958)

Robert Fisk photo
Christopher Hitchens photo
Abu Musab Zarqawi photo

“These people who are using this prisoner as a playing card didn't know our religion very well. In true Islam, they don't kill women and young children.”

Abu Musab Zarqawi (1966–2006) Jordanian jihadist

Calling for the release of Irish Catholic charity worker Margaret Hassan. Zarqawi in his own words http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5058474.stm BBC News (November 2004)

Ben Bernanke photo

“Call me an extremist but killing a few hundred million people seems like the sort of method that might have unintended consequences.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[d45qug$pc5$1@reader1.panix.com, 2005]
2000s

Philip K. Dick photo
Jeffrey Montgomery photo

“America… You Kill Me! America kills all of us.”

Jeffrey Montgomery (1953–2016) American LGBT rights activist and public relations executive

America...You Kill Me

Alan Clark photo

“John Pilger: I read that you were a vegetarian and you are seriously concerned about the way animals are killed.
Alan Clark: Yeah.
John Pilger: Doesn’t that concern extend to the way humans, albeit foreigners, are killed?
Alan Clark: Curiously not.”

Alan Clark (1928–1999) British politician

Interviewed by John Pilger in the documentary Death of a Nation, broadcast on ITV February 22, 1994.
The interview was transcribed in New Statesman and Society, February 18, 1994 http://www.hamline.edu/apakabar/basisdata/1994/02/21/0009.html.

“But so far as the Hindus are concerned, this period was a prolonged spell of darkness which ended only when the Marathas and the Jats and the Sikhs broke the back of Islamic imperialism in the middle of the 18th century. The situation of the Hindus under Muslim rule is summed up by the author of Tãrîkh-i-Wassãf in the following words: “The vein of the zeal of religion beat high for the subjection of infidelity and destruction of idols… The Mohammadan forces began to kill and slaughter, on the right and the left unmercifully, throughout the impure land, for the sake of Islãm, and blood flowed in torrents. They plundered gold and silver to an extent greater than can be conceived, and an immense number of precious stones as well as a great variety of cloths… They took captive a great number of handsome and elegant maidens and children of both sexes, more than pen can enumerate… In short, the Mohammadan army brought the country to utter ruin and destroyed the lives of the inhabitants and plundered the cities, and captured their off-springs, so that many temples were deserted and the idols were broken and trodden under foot, the largest of which was Somnãt. The fragments were conveyed to Dehlî and the entrance of the Jãmi‘ Masjid was paved with them so that people might remember and talk of this brilliant victory… Praise be to Allah the lord of the worlds.””

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Will Rogers photo

“There is only one thing that can kill the Movies, and that is education.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Source: The Autobiography of Will Rogers (1949), Ch. 6

Kent Hovind photo
Aurangzeb photo
Philip K. Dick photo
Sister Souljah photo
Bill Maher photo
William Hazlitt photo
Herman Kahn photo
Albert Einstein photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“To kill a relative of whom you are tired, is something; but to inherit his property afterwards — that is a real pleasure!”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Tuer un parent de qui l’on se plaint, c’est quelque chose; mais hériter de lui, c’est là un plaisir!
cousin Pons http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Le_Cousin_Pons_-_5#XLVI._Consultation_non_gratuiteLe (1847), translated by Ellen Marriage, ch. XLVI.

Abraham Davenport photo
Morarji Desai photo

“I would, therefore, say that for no reason whatsoever, except in self-defense, should one think of killing any animal.”

Morarji Desai (1896–1995) Former Indian Finance Minister, Freedom Fighters, Former prime minister

19th World Vegetarian Congress 1967

Sören Kierkegaard photo

“Christ calls it (O give heed!), He calls it “hypocrisy.” And not only that, but He says (now shudder!), He says that this guilt of hypocrisy is as great, precisely as great a crime as that of killing the prophets. … This then is the judgment, Christ's judgment upon "Christendom."”

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

Shudder; for if you do not, you are implicated in it.
Source: 1850s, Attack upon Christendom (1855), p. 122

Khaled Hosseini photo
Peter Singer photo
Ray Bradbury photo
Lewis Black photo

“This book is dedicated to all of my friends who helped me get to where I am today - you know who you are…. and when I find you I am going to kill you.”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

Nothing’s Sacred (2005)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo
Tony Abbott photo

“Cultures are not all equal. We should be ready to proclaim the clear superiority of our culture to one that justifies killing people in the name of God.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

2015, The religion of Islam must reform (December 9, 2015)

Dorothy L. Sayers photo
Emil M. Cioran photo
Sienna Guillory photo
Pat Condell photo
Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Mahmud of Ghazni photo
Osama bin Laden photo
John McCain photo

“Maybe that’s a way of killing them.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Making a wisecrack http://www.miamiherald.com/692/story/598054.html about the health impact of cigarette smoking on Iran's citizens, 8 July 2008
2000s, 2008

Roald Dahl photo
Roger Waters photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“The excursus upon the origin of Odysseus’ scar is not basically different from the many passages in which a newly introduced character, or even a newly appearing object or implement, though it be in the thick of a battle, is described as to its nature and origin; or in which, upon the appearance of a god, we are told where he last was, what he was doing there, and by what road he reached the scene; indeed, even the Homeric epithets seem to me in the final analysis to be traceable to the same need for an externalization of phenomena in terms perceptible to the senses. Here is the scar, which comes up in the course of the narrative; and Homer’s feeling simply will not permit him to see it appear out of the darkness of an unilluminated past; it must be set in full light, and with it a portion of the hero’s boyhood. … To be sure, the aesthetic effect thus produced was soon noticed and thereafter consciously sought; but the more original cause must have lain in the basic impulse of the Homeric style: to represent phenomena in a fully externalized form, visible and palpable in all their parts, and completely fixed in their spatial and temporal relations. Nor do psychological processes receive any other treatment: here too nothing must remain hidden and unexpressed. With the utmost fullness, with an orderliness which even passion does not disturb, Homer’s personages vent their inmost hearts in speech; what they do not say to others, they speak in their own minds, so that the reader is informed of it. Much that is terrible takes place in the Homeric poems, but it seldom takes place wordlessly: Polyphemus talks to Odysseus; Odysseus talks to the suitors when he begins to kill them; Hector and Achilles talk at length, before battle and after; and no speech is so filled with anger or scorn that the particles which express logical and grammatical connections are lacking or out of place.”

Source: Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946), p. 5

Cindy Sheehan photo

“George, it has been seven months today since your reckless and wanton foreign policies killed my son, my big boy, my hero, my best-friend: Casey.”

Cindy Sheehan (1957) American antiwar activist

Cindy Sheehan An Open Letter to George W. Bush from Cindy Sheehan http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1461879/posts Free Republic, November 4, 2004
2004

Peter Greenaway photo

“No Albert -- it's not God -- it's Michael. My lover. You vowed you would kill him -- and you did. And you vowed you would eat him. Now eat him.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Georgina
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Tommy Franks photo

“Another hallway led to a green steel door. "This is the execution chamber," the officer said. "The day of the execution, we take the man through this door." He opened the green door, and we blinked at the bright lights inside. A big chair filled the room. I could smell leather. "All right, boys," he said. "Line up." The kids made a straight line that led out the green door, then moved ahead, one at a time, to sit in the big wooden chair. "This is the electric chair, Tommy Ray," my dad explained. "It's where murderers are executed." The boys inched forward. Some sat longer in the chair than others. Executed meant killed, that much I knew. "This is the ultimate consequence for the ultimate act of evil," my father told the troop. When all the boys had sat in the chair, it was my turn. I reached up and felt the smooth wood, the leather straps with cold metal buckles. There was a black steel cap dangling up there like a lamp without a bulb. "Up you go, Tommy Ray," Dad said, hoisting me into the chair. The boys were staring at me. But I wasn't even a little bit afraid. My father stood right beside me. I could feel his warm hand next to the cool metal buckle. As the school bus rumbled out of the prison parking lot that afternoon, I stared back at the high walls. I had learned another important lesson. A consequence was what followed what you did. If you did good things, you'd be rewarded with further good things. If you broke the law, you'd have to pay the price. I have never forgotten that lesson.”

Tommy Franks (1945) United States Army general

Source: American Soldier (2004), p. 8

Daniel Tosh photo
Bertolt Brecht photo

“General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"General, Your Tank Is a Powerful Vehicle", in "From a German War Primer", part of the Svendborg Poems (1939); as translated by Lee Baxandall in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 289
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

John Flavel photo

“God kills thy comforts from no other design but to kill thy corruptions; wants are ordained to kill wantonness, poverty is appointed to kill pride, reproaches are permitted to destroy ambition.”

John Flavel (1627–1691) English Presbyterian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 7.

Wendy Liebman photo

“"My mother is a ventriloquist – but not professionally. For ten years I thought the dog was telling me to kill my father." Waiting a beat, Liebman adds, "I got my brother to do it."”

Wendy Liebman (1961) American comedian

Wendy Liebman page http://delafont.com/comedians/wendy-liebman.htm Richard De La Font Agency, Inc. web site. (url accessed on October 22, 2008)

Mahatma Gandhi photo

“Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs. As it is, they succumbed anyway in their millions.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Mahatma Gandhi, June 1946, in an interview with Louis Fischer. Rabbi Stephen Pearce, Torah Offers Ethics, rules, so all is fair in love and war, September 2000, http://www.jewishsf.com/bk000901/torah.shtml . Quoted from Hinduism and Judaism compilation https://web.archive.org/web/20060423090103/http://www.nhsf.org.uk/images/stories/HinduDharma/Interfaith/hinduzion.pdf The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (1950) by Louis Fischer. The quote is in the context of Gandhi's argument to his biographer that collective suicide would have been a heroic response that would have "aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler's violence".
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)

Conrad Aiken photo
Lenny Bruce photo
Mengistu Haile Mariam photo
Daniel Abraham photo

“This was the kind of man who’d killed Julie, Miller thought. Stupid. Shortsighted. A man born with a sense for raw opportunity where his soul should have been.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 28 (p. 281)

Julie Taymor photo

“Better be killed than frightened to death.”

Robert Smith Surtees (1805–1864) English writer

Mr. Facey Romford's Hounds (1865) ch. 39

Michael Hayden (general) photo

“We kill people based on metadata.”

Michael Hayden (general) (1945) United States Air Force four-star general

Quoted in: David Cole " We Kill People Based on Metadata http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/may/10/we-kill-people-based-metadata/" at nybooks.com/blogs, May 10, 2014

Harriet Tubman photo
George Lucas photo
Qutb al-Din Aibak photo

“Ibn Asir only says that Qutbuddin Aibak made ‘war against the provinces of Hind… He killed many, and returned with prisoners and booty.” In Banaras, according to the same author, “the slaughter of the Hindus was immense, none was spared except women and children,”16 who would have been enslaved as per practice.”

Qutb al-Din Aibak (1150–1210) Turkic peoples king of Northwest India

No wonder that slaves began to fill the households of every Turk from the very beginning of Muslim rule in India. Fakhr-i-Mudabbir informs us that as a result of the Muslim achievements under Muhammad Ghauri and Qutbuddin Aibak, “even a poor householder (or soldier) who did not possess a single slave before became the owner of numerous slaves of all description …” Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7 (quoting Kamil-ut-Tawarikh, E and D, II, p. 250-1; Tarikh-i-Fakhruddin Mubarak Shah, p. 20.)

Stephen R. Donaldson photo
Tommy Robinson photo
Jared Diamond photo
Bell Hooks photo

“You do realise, doctor, that you have killed her?”

John Bodkin Adams (1899–1983) general practitionar, fraudster and suspected serial killer

A nurse working with Adams, when a patient passed away after an injection.
About

African Spir photo
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad photo
George S. Patton photo

“It is a popular idea that a man is a hero just because he was killed in action. Rather, I think, a man is frequently a fool when he gets killed.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Speech at the Hatch Memorial Shell, Boston, Massachusetts (7 June 1945), quoted in The Last Days of Patton (1981), p. 85, by Ladislas Farago and The Patton Papers: 1940-1945 (1974), p. 721, edited by Martin Blumenson.

Benjamin Spock photo
Peter Rhee photo

“It’s a perfect killing machine…A handgun [wound] is simply a stabbing with a bullet. It goes in like a nail…[With the high-velocity rounds of the AR-15 style rifle] it's as if you shot somebody with a Coke can.”

Peter Rhee (1961) American surgeon

[February 22, 2018, All-American Killer: How the AR-15 Became Mass Shooters’ Weapon of Choice, w:Tim Dickinson, Tim, Dickinson, Rolling Stone, September 4, 2018, https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/all-american-killer-how-the-ar-15-became-mass-shooters-weapon-of-choice-107819/]

Jonas Salk photo
Jair Bolsonaro photo

“This case is all about creating a public sob story. There is no homophobic behaviour in Brazil. Those who die, 90% of homosexual deaths, they die in drug related situations, in prostitution, or even killed by their own partners. I went into battle with the gays because the government proposed anti-homophobia classes for the junior grades, but that would actively stimulate homosexuality in children from 6 years old. This is not normal.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

About the kidnapping and murder of the teenager Alexandre Ivo by skinheads in 2010, in an interview to Stephen Fry in October 2013. Jair Bolsonaro provoca polêmica em documentário do ator Stephen Fry sobre homofobia https://vejasp.abril.com.br/blog/pop/jair-bolsonaro-provoca-polemica-em-documentario-do-ator-stephen-fry-sobre-homofobia/. Veja SP (23 October 2013).

John Lancaster Spalding photo
Jay Samit photo
Michael Savage photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo
Jean Meslier photo
Sienna Guillory photo