Quotes about killing
page 24

John Updike photo
Kent Hovind photo
Christopher Titus photo
Hippolytus of Rome photo
Osama bin Laden photo

“Just like you kill us, we will kill you.”

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

Audiotape aired on Al-Jazeera (12 November 2002) http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/world/0302/timeline.bin.laden.audio/content.11.html.
2000s, 2002

Ron Paul photo
Will Cuppy photo

“The Egyptians of the First Dynasty were already civilized in most respects. They had hieroglyphics, metal weapons for killing foreigners, numerous government officials, death, and taxes.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part I: It Seems There Were Two Egyptians, Cheops, or Khufu

Adolph Freiherr Knigge photo

“Compulsion kills all noble, freely given devotion.”

Zwang tötet alle edle, freiwillige Hingebung.
This is often shortened to "Zwang tötet": "Compulsion kills" or "Force kills".
Über den Umgang mit Menschen (1788)

“It wasn't a question of if I get killed, it was merely a question of when I get killed.”

Arnold Ridley (1896–1984) Playwright, actor

Biography on Spartacus

Edward Albee photo

“The only time I'll get good reviews is if I kill myself.”

Edward Albee (1928–2016) American playwright

As quoted in a review of "The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? in Broadway Yearbook 2001-2002 (2003) by Steven Suskin, p. 195

Herman Kahn photo
Gerard Manley Hopkins photo

“It kills me to be time’s eunuch and never to beget.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

Letter to Robert Bridges (1 September 1885)
Letters, etc

Fausto Cercignani photo

““Love the others and you will be loved!” is a saying that might sound as a terrible and unjust accusation against all the innocents that have been hated and perhaps even tortured and killed.”

Fausto Cercignani (1941) Italian scholar, essayist and poet

Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni

“It's not what you don't know that kills you but what you know that isn't so.”

Tom DeMarco (1940) American software engineer, author, and consultant

The Deadline (1997), p. 284.

Brett Velicovich photo
Bernard Cornwell photo

“"They'll bloody kill you." "Maybe they'll turn and run. "God save Ireland, and why would they do that?" "Because God wears a green jacket, of course."”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Sergeant Patrick Harper and Lieutenant Richard Sharpe, p. 29
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Havoc (2003)

Pete Doherty photo
George W. Bush photo
Charlie Huston photo
Rob Enderle photo
Newton Lee photo

“It is high time we treated drug abuse and terrorism as diseases instead of wars -- curing the patients rather than killing them.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

Bill O'Reilly photo
Glenn Beck photo
Eric Hoffer photo
Robin Williams photo
Ben Hecht photo

“During my nine days' stay at Dacca, I visited most of the riot-affected areas of the city and suburbs. … The news of the killing of hundreds of innocent Hindus in trains, on railway lines between Dacca and Narayanganj, and Dacca and Chittagong gave me the rudest shock. … I reached Barisal town and was astounded to know of the happenings in Barisal. In the District town, a number of Hindu houses were burnt and a large number of Hindus killed. I visited almost all riot-affected areas in the District. … At the Madhabpasha Zamindar's house, about 200 people were killed and 40 injured. A place, called Muladi, witnessed a dreadful hell. At Muladi Bandar alone, the number killed would total more than three hundred, as was reported to me by the local Muslims including some officers. I visited Muladi village also, where I found skeletons of dead bodies at some places. I found dogs and vultures eating corpses on he river-side. I got the information there that after the whole-scale killing of all adult males, all the young girls were distributed among the ringleaders of the miscreants. At a place called Kaibartakhali under P. S. Rajapur, 63 persons were killed. Hindu houses within a stone's throw distance from the said thana office were looted, burnt and inmates killed. All Hindu shops of Babuganj Bazar were looted and then burnt and a large number of Hindus were killed. From detailed information received, the conservative estimate of casualties was placed at 2,500 killed in the District of Barisal alone. Total casualties of Dacca and East Bengal riot were estimated to be in the neighbourhood of 10,000 killed. The lamentation of women and children who had lost their all including near and dear ones melted my heart. I only asked myself "What was coming to Pakistan in the name of Islam."”

Jogendra Nath Mandal (1904–1968) Pakistani politician

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

Philip K. Dick photo
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad photo
Jim Butcher photo
Simon Blackburn photo

“In the end, it is ideas for which people kill each other.”

Simon Blackburn (1944) British academic philosopher

Introduction, p. 11
Think (1999)

Pat Condell photo
Fritz Leiber photo

“I’ll have to learn to snowshoe. I had my first lesson this morning and cut a ludicrous figure. I’ll be virtually a prisoner until I learn my way around. But any price is worth paying to get away from the thought-destroying din and soul-killing routine of the city!”

Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction

“Diary in the Snow” (p. 203); originally published in the first edition of Night's Black Agents (1947)
Short Fiction, Night's Black Agents (1947)

Victor Villaseñor photo
Rudolph Rummel photo
Melanie Joy photo

“In you, humanity is precarious; and so, in dread and in shame, you kill the animal in you. And its slaughter poisons you.”

Source: Last Men in London (1932), Chapter I: The World of the Last Men.

Yusuf Qaradawi photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
James Frazer photo
Arthur Waley photo
Clayton M. Christensen photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Du Fu photo
Rose Wilder Lane photo
Rand Paul photo
Karl Pilkington photo

“Why is it alright to be going around, going mental with a gun, shooting all the monkeys and killing them? Because one day we're going to run out.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 1 Episode 3
On Monkeys

Charles Manson photo

“I wanna say this to every man that has a mind, to all the intelligent life forms that exist on this planet Earth. I wish the British would say this to the Scottish Rites and the Masons and all the people with minds who have degrees of knowledge, and who are aware of courts, laws, United Nations, governments.
In the 40s, we had a war, and all of our economies went towards this war effort. The war ended on one level, but we wouldn't let it end on the other levels. We kept buying and selling this war. I'm not locked in the penitentiary for crimes, I'm locked in the Second World War. I'm locked in the Second World War with this decision to bring to the World Court - there must be a One World Court, or we're all gonna be devoured by crime.
Crime, and the definition of crime comes from Nuremberg, when the judges decided that they wanted to call Second World War a crime. Honor and war is not a crime. Crime is bad. When you go to war and you're a soldier, and you fight for your God and your country, that's not criminal. That's honorable. That's what you must do to be a man. If you don't fight for your God and your country, you're not worth anything. If you have no honor, then you're not worth petty's pigs.
Truth is, we've got to overturn this decision that you made in the Second World War, or the Second World War will never end. Degrees of the war was written in Switzerland, in Geneva, at conferences that were made by the men at the tables, clearly stated that anyone in uniform would be given the respect of their rank and their uniforms. Then when the United States and got all the Germans in handcuffs, they started breaking their own rules. And they've been breaking their own rules ever since. War is not a crime, but if you judge war as a crime in a court room, then turn around: If 2 + 3 = 5, and 3 + 2 = 5; if you say war is a crime, then crime becomes your war. I am, by all standards, a prisoner of war.
I've been a prisoner of war since 1944 in Juvenile Hall, for setting a school building on fire in Indianapolis, Indiana. I've been locked up 45 years trying to figure out why I got to be a criminal. It matters not whether I want to be; you've got to keep criminals going to keep the war going because that's your economy, your whole economy is based on the war. You've got to get your dollar bills off the war, you've got your silver market sterling off of the war, you've got to take your gold and your diamonds off of the war - You've got to overturn that decision, that hung 6000 men by the neck.
You killed 6000 soldiers for obeying orders. It's wrong. And the world has got to accept that's wrong. When you accept you're wrong, and you say you're sorry for all the things you've done, then that will be a note on that court, and we'll have some harmony going on this planet Earth, now.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Interview with Bill Murphy (1994) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAjh_wOByoY

Toni Morrison photo
Paul Nuttall photo

“I have no interest sitting all day in Brussels committees enacting job-killing, democracy-destroying legislation inspired by the EU.”

Paul Nuttall (1976) British politician

Useless, toothless... we should pull out https://www.oldham-chronicle.co.uk/news-features/101/features/77347/useless-toothless-we-should-pull-out (February 1, 2013)

Penn Jillette photo
Bruce Springsteen photo
Saki photo
Agatha Christie photo
Philip Kapleau photo
Tommy Robinson photo
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo
Mohammad Khatami photo

“Terrorism, which means killing civilians in whatever name or title, lacks morality, and nobody who lacks such principle will go to heaven.”

Mohammad Khatami (1943) Iranian prominent reformist politician, scholar and shiite faqih.

During a speech at Council on American-Islamic Relations http://www.ghazali.net/archives2006/html/khatmi_blasts.html (dead link). (8 September 2006)
Attributed

Pablo Neruda photo

“Later on you will find buried near the coconut tree
the knife which I hid there for fear you would kill me,
and now suddenly I would be glad to smell its kitchen steel
used to the weight of your hand, the shine of your foot:
under the dampness of the ground, among the deaf roots,
in all the languages of the men only the poor will know your name,
and the dense earth does not understand your name
made of impenetrable divine substances.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Enterrado junto al cocotero hallarás más tarde
el cuchillo que escodí allí por temor de que me mataras,
y ahora repentinamente quisiera oler su acero de cocina
acostumbrado al peso de tu mano y al brillo de tu pie:
bajo la humedad de la tierra, entre las sordas raíces,
de los lenguajes humanos el pobre sólo sabría tu nombre,
y la espesa tierra no comprende tu nombre
hecho de impenetrables y substancias divinas.
Tango del Viudo (The Widower's Tango), Residencia I (Residence I), III, stanza 3.
Alternate translation by Donald D. Walsh:
Buried next to the coconut tree you will later find
the knife that I hid there for fear that you would kill me,
and now suddenly I should like to smell its kitchen steel
accustomed to the weight of your hand and the shine of your foot:
under the moisture of the earth, among the deaf roots,
of all human labguages the poor thing would know only your name,
and the thick earth does not understand your name
made of impenetrable and divine substances.
Residencia en la Tierra (Residence on Earth) (1933)

Bernie Sanders photo
Jens Stoltenberg photo

“Evil can kill a person, but never conquer a nation.”

Jens Stoltenberg (1959) Norwegian politician, 13th Secretary-General of NATO, 27th Prime Minister of Norway

The City Hall Square Speech, July 25, 2011 ( BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14285020).
2010s

Chelsea Manning photo

“As the late Howard Zinn once said, "There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."”

Chelsea Manning (1987) United States Army soldier and whistleblower

Letter to Barack Obama (2013)

Warren G. Harding photo

“Practically all we know is that thousands of native Haitians have been killed by American Marines, and that many of our own gallant men have sacrificed their lives at the behest of an Executive department in order to establish laws drafted by the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. … I will not empower an Assistant Secretary of the Navy to draft a constitution for helpless neighbors in the West Indies and jam it down their throats at the point of bayonets borne by U. S. Marines.”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

Speech during Warren Harding's 1920 presidental campaign, critizing Woodrow Wilson's Haitian policies; quoted in Democracy at the Point of Bayonets (1999) by Mark Penceny, p. 2. (The Assistant Secretary of the Navy he refers to is Franklin Roosevelt, who was the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 1920).
1920s

Hereward Carrington photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Arthur Hugh Clough photo
Thomas Jackson photo
Andrey Voznesensky photo

“Everything's sliding apart.
Yet, "Long live everything!"
For the art of creation
Is older than the art of killing.”

Andrey Voznesensky (1933–2010) Soviet poet

"Lines to Robert Lowell"; translation by Louis Simpson and Vera Dunham, from Vera Dunham and Max Hayward (eds.) Nostalgia for the Present (New York: Doubleday, 1978) p. 111.

Mahmud of Ghazni photo
Iain Banks photo
Warren Farrell photo

“Killing the criticizer, then, is part of our evolutionary past; listening in response to criticism is part of our evolutionary future.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 41.

Silvio Berlusconi photo

“Mussolini never killed anyone, he just sent dissenters abroad for vacation.”

Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician

As quoted in La voce di Rimini (11 September 2003)
Variant translation: He never killed anyone, he sent people on holiday to confine them.
"Did I say This? in The Observer (20 April 2008) http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/apr/20/italy
2003

Revilo P. Oliver photo
Ai Weiwei photo
Melanie Joy photo
Salman al-Ouda photo

“My brother Osama, how much blood has been spilt? How many innocent people, children, elderly, and women have been killed … in the name of Al Qaeda? Will you be happy to meet God Almighty carrying the burden of these hundreds of thousands or millions of victims on your back?”

Salman al-Ouda (1956) journalist

In 2007, around the sixth anniversary of September 11 attacks, Alodah addressed Osama bin Laden on MBC television network. http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=702bf6d5-a37a-4e3e-a491-fd72bf6a9da1&k=
2007

Kim Stanley Robinson photo
François Gautier photo

“Finally, Westernisation through television and advertisements, is sweeping across India, and this may be the greatest danger, as westernisation has killed the souls of many Asian countries.”

François Gautier (1959) French journalist

On westernisation, quoted from "Let all Hindus come together" http://www.newindianexpress.com/columns/article438933.ece, The New Indian Express (17 June 2010)

Marc Randazza photo
David Brin photo
S.L.A. Marshall photo

“Truly then, it is killing men with kindness not to insist upon physical standards during training which will give them maximum fitness for the extraordinary stresses of campaigning in war.”

S.L.A. Marshall (1900–1977) United States Army general and Military historian

The Aggressive Will. p. 174.
Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command (1947)

Clive Staples Lewis photo