Quotes about killing
page 28

Cornstalk photo
Billy Joel photo
Rudolph Rummel photo

“The Founders would be uniformly horrified to think that their treasured Constitution has been used to justify abortion. It is a great irony that leftwing justices, arguing that the Constitution is a “living document,” have turned it into a writ to kill.”

Steven W. Mosher (1948) American social scientist

The Abortion Movement Just Lost their War on the Unborn https://www.pop.org/content/abortion-movement-just-lost-their-war-unborn (November 9, 2016)

Noam Chomsky photo
Victor Villaseñor photo
Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo
Clarence Darrow photo
Willie Nelson photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Fred Phelps photo
Natalie Portman photo

“Everyone has to find what is right for them, and it is different for everyone. Eating for me is how you proclaim your beliefs three times a day. That is why all religions have rules about eating. Three times a day, I remind myself that I value life and do not want to cause pain to or kill other living beings. That is why I eat the way I do.”

Natalie Portman (1981) Israeli-American actress

On vegetarianism. Interview with The New Zealand Herald (5 May 2011), quoted in “Natalie Portman: 'Eating For Me Is How You Proclaim Your Beliefs'”, in ecorazzi.com http://www.ecorazzi.com/2011/05/05/natalie-portman-my-beliefs-are-reflected-in-how-i-eat/.

George Carlin photo
Howard F. Lyman photo
Joseph Heller photo
Dylan Moran photo
Saddam Hussein photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Rudolph Rummel photo

“Killing that is explicitly permitted is not democide.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Source: Death by Government (1994), p. 40

Annie Besant photo
Dashiell Hammett photo

“Spade pulled his hand out of hers. He no longer either smiled or grimaced. His wet yellow face was set hard and deeply lined. His eyes burned madly. He said: "Listen. This isn't a damned bit of good. You'll never understand me, but I'll try once more and then we'll give it up. Listen. When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. Then it happens we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. It's bad all around – bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere. Third, I'm a detective and expecting me to run criminals down and then let them go free is like asking a dog to catch a rabbit and let it go. It can be done, all right, and sometimes it is done, but it's not the natural thing. The only way I could have let you go was by letting Gutman and Cairo and the kid go. … Fourth, no matter what I wanted to do now it would be absolutely impossible for me to let you go without having myself dragged to the gallows with the others. Next, I've no reason in God's world to think I can trust you and if I did this and got away with it you'd have something on me that you could use whenever you happened to want to. That's five of them. The sixth would be that, since I've got something on you, I couldn't be sure you wouldn't decide to shoot a hole in *me* some day. Seventh, I don't even like the idea of thinking that there might be one chance in a hundred that you'd played me for a sucker. And eighth – but that's enough. All those on one side. Maybe some of them are unimportant. I won't argue about that. But look at the number of them. Now on the other side we've got what? All we've got is the fact that maybe you love me and maybe I love you." … "But suppose I do? What of it? Maybe next month I won't. I've been through it before – when it lasted that long. Then what? Then I'll think I played the sap. And if I did it and got sent over then I'd be sure I was the sap. Well, if I send you over I'll be sorry as hell – I'll have some rotten nights – but that'll pass. Listen." He took her by the shoulders and bent her back, leaning over her. "If that doesn't mean anything to you forget it and we'll make it this: I won't because all of me wants to – wants to say to hell with the consequences and do it -- and because – God damn you – you've counted on that with me the same as you counted on that with the others. … Don't be too sure I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be. That kind of reputation might be good business – bringing in high-priced jobs and making it easier to deal with the enemy. … Well, a lot of money would have been at least one more item on the other side of the scales."”

… Spade set the edges of his teeth together and said through them: "I won't play the sap for you."
Chap. 20, "If They Hang You"
spoken by the character "Sam Spade" to "Brigid O'Shaughnessy."
The Maltese Falcon (1930)

D.H. Lawrence photo
Aron Ra photo

“The original 1954 Japanese film, Gojira was iconic, and only made a couple mistakes of any significance. (1)They killed him in the end, and we saw his body turned to skeleton. Not the best way to begin 60 years worth of sequels. (2) Godzilla was depicted as a dinosaur, and was associated with living trilobites. Even if there was some sort of ‘realm that time forgot’ out in the Pacific somewhere, Trilobites were already extinct before the first dinosaurs, and Godzilla was clearly no dinosaur. The conceptual artists reportedly referenced illustrations of dinosaurs, but that’s not what they rendered. All bi-pedal dinosaurs [Therapods] were digigrade, walking on their toes, like birds, and usually only three or four digits. Godzilla was plantigrade and pentadactyle, (having five digits and walking on the whole foot) just like lizards. It even looks like a lizard, apart from the fact that no reptile has an actual nose or external ears. In a sense, what Toho pictures created was actually an oriental dragon. These tend to mix reptilian and mammalian traits. Amusingly in 1954, Toho made a giant lizard and called it a dinosaur. In 1998, Tristar re-designed Godzilla as a dinosaur, but called it a lizard. Of course that wasn’t the only thing Tristar did wrong. They tried to ruin the monster completely. They took away the only thing that worked in decades of sequels, the look of the monster itself. Then they took away everything that made Godzilla appealing to Kaiju fans, then they tied it down and shot it. Such disrespect. If you’re going to make a movie that already has a fan-base, and they are the ones who will decide whether your film will pay off, respect those fans and the story they’re paying to see.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Weighing in on Godzilla http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2014/06/08/weighing-in-on-godzilla/ (June 8, 2014)

“It is the duty of the humor of any given nation in time of high crisis to attack the catastrophe that faces it in such a manner as to cause the people to laugh at it in such a way that they cannot die before they are killed.”

Lord Buckley (1906–1960) American actor and comedian

Lord Buckley, "H-Bomb" (comic monologue), 1960. Reported in Stephen Holden, It's Comedy! From Skit To Song To Satire http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE7DB173EF934A15753C1A96F948260 (October 27, 1989) The New York Times.

Greg Bear photo
Edward St. Aubyn photo
David Irving photo

“The Nazis quite clearly killed millions of Jews…”

David Irving (1938) British writer and Holocaust denier

Interview with John Humphrys on The Today Program (23 December 2006)

Colin Powell photo

“Our strategy in going after this army is very simple. First we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it.”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

Remark made as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announcing the U.S. gulf war plan against Saddam Hussein's army. Pentagon press briefing (23 January 1991).
1990s

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo

“Religion must mainly be a matter of principles only. It cannot be a matter of rules. The moment it degenerates into rules, it ceases to be a religion, as it kills responsibility which is an essence of the true religious act.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

Radical Equality: Ambedkar, Gandhi, and the Risk of Democracy https://books.google.co.in/books?id=K3c-CQAAQBAJ&pg=PA303&lpg=PA303&dq=Religion+must+mainly+be+a+matter+of+principles+only.+It+cannot+be+a+matter+of+rules.+The+moment+it+degenerates+into+rules,+it+ceases+to+be+a+religion,&source=bl&ots=Z580zN8EaN&sig=pw39zHdZTHfmGbLTLRRVLNX-WwA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC4Q6AEwA2oVChMIxLm9qfeSyAIViAuOCh2Phg9p#v=onepage&q=Religion%20must%20mainly%20be%20a%20matter%20of%20principles%20only.%20It%20cannot%20be%20a%20matter%20of%20rules.%20The%20moment%20it%20degenerates%20into%20rules%2C%20it%20ceases%20to%20be%20a%20religion%2C&f=false

E.M. Forster photo
Carl Schmitt photo
Frédéric Bazille photo

“I have no intention of being killed, there's too much I still want to do with my life.”

Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870) French painter

Quote from a late letter of Bazille he wrote in 1870, shortly before he died in the Franco-Prussian War; Bazille joined General de Barrail's staff
1866 - 1870
Source: Les Impressionists autour de Paris: tableau de banlieu avec peintres, ed. Jean-Michel Puydebat – SEM Chateau d’Auvers, 1993, p. 16

Robert A. Heinlein photo
James O'Keefe photo
Tom Selleck photo

“You know, I understand how you feel. This is a really contentious issue. Probably as contentious, and potentially as troubling as the abortion issue in this country. All I can tell you is, rushes to pass legislation at a time of national crisis or mourning, I don't really think are proper. And more importantly, nothing in any of this legislation would have done anything to prevent that awful tragedy in Littleton.What I see in the work I've done with kids is, is troubling direction in our culture. And where I see consensus, which is I think we ought to concentrate on in our culture is… look… nobody argues anymore whether they're Conservatives or Liberal whether our society is going in the wrong direction. They may argue trying to quantify how far it's gone wrong or why it's gone that far wrong, whether it's guns, or television, or the Internet, or whatever. But there's consensus saying that something's happened. Guns were much more accessible 40 years ago. A kid could walk into a pawn shop or a hardware store and buy a high-capacity magazine weapon that could kill a lot of people and they didn't do it.The question we should be asking is… look… suicide is a tragedy. And it's a horrible thing. But 30 or 40 years ago, particularly men, and even young men, when they were suicidal, they went, and unfortunately, blew their brains out. In today's world, someone who is suicidal sits home, nurses their grievance, develops a rage, and is just a suicidal but they take 20 people with them. There's something changed in our culture.</p”

Tom Selleck (1945) American actor

On <i>The Rosie O'Donnell Show</i> on May 19th, 1999.

Óscar Romero photo
Samuel Beckett photo
Will Cuppy photo

“[Footnote:] Most people erroneously call this snake the Puff Adder, Beach Adder, or Blowing Viper. So, naturally, they kill it.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Hog-Nosed Snake
How to Become Extinct (1941)

Mahathir bin Mohamad photo
Roy Campbell (poet) photo
Kent Hovind photo

“Many believe that more Christians have already been killed in the last one hundred years than in the previous nineteen hundred years!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 51

TotalBiscuit photo

“Oh look, everybody instantly died again! What the hell was that? What killed me?”

TotalBiscuit (1984–2018) British game commentator

WTF Is…? series, Day One: Garry's Incident (October 1, 2013)

Kent Hovind photo
Stephen Crane photo

“Swift blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of slaughter,
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.”

Stephen Crane (1871–1900) American novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist

Do Not Weep, Maiden, For War is Kind, p. 4
War Is Kind and Other Lines (1899)

Robert Graves photo
Paul Hackett photo
Blake Schwarzenbach photo

“You don't know what I'm all about / Like killing cops and reading Kerouac”

Blake Schwarzenbach (1967) American singer

"Boxcar"
24 Hour Revenge Therapy (1993)

“I'm a humanist; I'd rather kill a man than a snake.”

"Serpents of Paradise", p. 18
Desert Solitaire (1968)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“The hour has come; kill the Hun.”

How Churchill said he would end his speech if Germany invaded Britain (John Colville's diary entry for January 25, 1941). In The Churchill War Papers : 1941 (1993), ed. Gilbert, W.W. Norton, pp. 132–133 ISBN 0393019594
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Théodore Rousseau photo
Kent Hovind photo
Leo Igwe photo
Lee Child photo
Alastair Reynolds photo
Robert T. Bakker photo
Bernie Sanders photo

“Anybody help me out here, because I don't remember the figures, but my recollection is over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right? I don't have it in my number… but I think it's over 10,000. My understanding is that a whole lot of apartment houses were leveled. Hospitals, I think, were bombed. So yeah, I do believe and I don't think I'm alone in believing that Israel's force was more indiscriminate than it should have been.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

As quoted in "Massively inflating toll, Sanders suggests Israel killed ‘over 10,000 innocents’ in Gaza" http://www.timesofisrael.com/massively-inflating-death-toll-sanders-says-israel-killed-over-10000-innocents-in-gaza/ by Eric Cortellessa, The Times of Israel (5 April 2016)
"Sanders' estimate far exceeds even Palestinian sources, which estimate that 1,462 Palestinians were killed out of the 2,251 Gaza War fatalities in 2014. Israeli figures are lower." Ariel Cohen, "Sanders: Israel 'indiscriminately' killed '10,000' Palestinians" http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/sanders-israel-indiscriminately-killed-10000-palestinians/article/2587752 Washington Examiner (5 April 2016)
2010s, 2016

Donald J. Trump photo
Curtis LeMay photo

“Killing, imprisoning or denying the rights of a human being is not injustice against one person; it enchains and kills a whole society.”

Narges Mohammadi (1972) Iranian human rights activist

Similar to Quran 5:32, as quoted in 1,000 Days in Prison: Narges Mohammadi Condemns Iranian Judiciary’s “Subservience” to Security Agencies https://www.iranhumanrights.org/2018/02/1000-days-in-prison-narges-mohammadi-condemns-iranian-judiciarys-subservience-to-security-agencies/ (February 21, 2018), Center for Human Rights in Iran.

Edgar Bergen photo

“Charlie McCarthy: I can't take this schoolwork any more - it's driving me nuts.
Edgar Bergen: Well Charlie, I'm sorry, but hard work never killed anyone.
Charlie McCarthy: Still, there's no use in taking chances.”

Edgar Bergen (1903–1978) American actor, radio performer, comedian and ventriloquist

Quoted in Todd Harris Goldman, Teachers: Jokes, Quotes, and Anecdotes (2001) p. 136

David Bowie photo

“Making love with his ego Ziggy sucked up into his mind
Like a leper messiah.
When the kids had killed the man I had to break up the band.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Ziggy Stardust
Song lyrics, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)

Osama bin Laden photo
Isaac Leib Peretz photo

“Many refined people will not kill a fly, but eat an ox.”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

Taanis Gedanken, 1896. Alle Verk, xii. 77.

Kerry McCarthy photo
Adolf Eichmann photo
Michael Mullen photo

“We cannot kill our way to victory.”

Michael Mullen (1946) U.S. Navy admiral and 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

On NATO in Afghanistan, Washington, D.C., 11 September 2008 http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2008/09/2008910163836871959.html.

Stella McCartney photo
Joe Strummer photo
Emily Brontë photo
Robert Spencer photo
Olavo de Carvalho photo
Thom Yorke photo

“Routines and schedules
A drug that'll kill you”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

Little by Little
Lyrics, The King of Limbs (2011)

Julius Malema photo

“We are worse [off] than we were during the times of apartheid. We are being killed by our own people. We are being oppressed by our own government. … Every mine has a politician inside. They give them money every month, they call it shares. But it is a protection fee to protect whites against the workers.”

Julius Malema (1981) South African political activist

To a workers rally at the Aurora mine, East Rand, as quoted in "Malema: Apartheid was better" http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2012/08/31/malema-apartheid-was-better, in Times Live (31 August 2012)

Ron White photo
Cyril Connolly photo

“There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.”

Part II: Te Palinure Petens (p. 62)
The Unquiet Grave (1944)

Lois Duncan photo

“Killing Mr. Griffin doesn't encourage violence in schools any more than the story of Cain and Able encourages children to kill their younger brothers.”

Lois Duncan (1934–2016) American young-adult and children's writer

On violence in her novels, interview in Absolute Write (2002)
1990–2002

Emil M. Cioran photo
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo

“We will kill in ourselves a world in order to build another, a higher one reaching to the heavens.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

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

Ernest Hemingway photo
Alan Charles Kors photo
Zach Braff photo

“This bow I held had killed many men, and it had power, dread power, in its ebony stock.”

ibid
Drenai series, Waylander II: In the Realm of the Wolf

Ray Comfort photo

“You know that the law of gravity will kill you when you jump.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

“Oh! My proscenium is killing me!”

Radio From Hell (October 21, 2006)

Manis Friedman photo
Bernard Chazelle photo