Quotes about monster
page 6

Michael Franti photo
Doug McIlroy photo

“It's proof that open-source can breed monsters just like the commercial pros.”

Doug McIlroy (1932) American computer scientist, mathematician, engineer, and programmer

Doug McIlroy (2013). In their own words: Unix pioneers remember the good times http://www.networkworld.com/article/2168942/servers/in-their-own-words--unix-pioneers-remember-the-good-times.html
Context: I don't know the counts of Unix and Linux servers. I do know that my heart sinks whenever I look under the hood in Linux. It is has been so overfed by loving hands. Over 240 system calls! Gigabytes of source! A C compiler with a 250-page user manual (not counting the language definition)! A simple page turner, 'less,' has over 40 options and 60 commands! It's proof that open-source can breed monsters just like the commercial pros. Miraculously, though, this monster works.

Richard Wright photo
R. A. Lafferty photo

“I will set a Wednesday-term to the monster.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

On confronting the Siren-Zo of Sireneca, in Ch. 4
Space Chantey (1968)
Context: "'Monday and Tuesday and Monday and Tuesday and Monday and Tuesday,' so the poor slaves had to sing in their labor for the puca. And finally a great savior broke the charm. 'And Wednesday too' he said, and then it was all over with."
"Roadstrum is the great savior who breaks the charm," Roadstrum announced. "I will set a Wednesday-term to the monster. But there are other elements in this…"

“The State goes on without end in one form or another, built securely on the base of destruction. Nietzsche said: "The State is the coldest of all cold monsters," and the revolutions which destroy or weaken at least one monster bring to birth and growth another.”

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist

The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)
Context: They both spoke nobly at the end, they kept faith with their vows for each other. They left a great heritage of love, devotion, faith, and courage — all done with the sure intention that holy Anarchy should be glorified through their sacrifice and that the time would come that no human being should be humiliated or be made abject. Near the end of their ordeal Vanzetti said that if it had not been for "these thing" he might have lived out his life talking at street corners to scorning men. He might have died unmarked, unknown, a failure. "Now, we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by accident. Our words — our lives — our pains — nothing! The taking of our lives — lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler — all! That last moment belongs to us — that agony is our triumph."
This is not new — all the history of our world is pocked with it. It is very grand and noble in words and grand, noble souls have died for it — it is worth weeping for. But it doesn't work out so well. In order to annihilate the criminal State, they have become criminals. The State goes on without end in one form or another, built securely on the base of destruction. Nietzsche said: "The State is the coldest of all cold monsters," and the revolutions which destroy or weaken at least one monster bring to birth and growth another.

Leonard Cohen photo

“It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.”

Beautiful Losers (1966)
Context: What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.

Jesse Ventura photo

“I view the traditional two parties as in some ways very evil. They've become monsters that are out of control.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

I Ain't Got Time To Bleed (1999)
Context: I view the traditional two parties as in some ways very evil. They've become monsters that are out of control. The two parties don't have in mind what's best for Minnesota. The only things that are important to them are their own agendas and their pork. Government's become just a battle of power between the two parties. But now that Minnesota has a governor who truly comes from the private sector, a lot of light's going to be shed on how the system is unfair to people outside the two parties.

George F. Kennan photo

“We are, if territory and population be looked at together, one of the great countries of the world — a monster country, one might say”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

Around the Cragged Hill : A Personal and Political Philosophy (1994), p. 143
Context: We are, if territory and population be looked at together, one of the great countries of the world — a monster country, one might say, along with others such as China, India, the recent Soviet Union, and Brazil. And there is a real question as to whether "bigness" in a body politic is not an evil in itself, quite aside from the policies pursued in its name.

Margaret Atwood photo

“Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters,
or none that can be finally buried.
Finish one off, and circumstances
and the radio create another.
Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently
to God all night and meant it,
and been slaughtered anyway.”

Morning in the Burned House (1995), The Loneliness of the Military Historian
Context: Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters,
or none that can be finally buried.
Finish one off, and circumstances
and the radio create another.
Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently
to God all night and meant it,
and been slaughtered anyway.
Brutality wins frequently,
and large outcomes have turned on the invention
of a mechanical device, viz. radar.
True, valour sometimes counts for something,
as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right —
though ultimate virtue, by agreed tradition,
is decided by the winner.
Sometimes men throw themselves on grenades
and burst like paper bags of guts
to save their comrades.
I can admire that.
But rats and cholera have won many wars.
Those, and potatoes,
or the absence of them.

“He had never seen a "Fallout," and he hoped he'd never see one. A consistent description of the monster had not survived, but Francis had heard the legends.”

Ch 1
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Homo
Context: He had never seen a "Fallout," and he hoped he'd never see one. A consistent description of the monster had not survived, but Francis had heard the legends. He crossed himself and backed away from the hole. Tradition told that the Beatus Leibowitz himself had encountered a Fallout, and had been possessed by it for many months before the exorcism which accompanied his Baptism drove the fiend away.
Brother Francis visualized a Fallout as half-salamander, because, according to tradition, the thing was born in the Flame Deluge, and as half-incubus who despoiled virgins in their sleep, for, were not the monsters of the world still called "children of the Fallout"? That the demon was capable of inflicting all the woes which descended upon Job was recorded fact, if not an article of creed.

Virgil photo

“An awful misshapen monster, huge, his eyelight lost.”
Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum.

Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book III, Line 658 (tr. Mandelbaum); of Polyphemus.

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“Oh, but he's my monster.”

Vorkosigan Saga, Barrayar (1991)

St. Vincent (musician) photo

“We're sleeping underneath the bed to scare
The monsters out”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

"The Bed"
Actor (2009)
Context: We're sleeping underneath the bed to scare
The monsters out
With our dear daddy's Smith and Wesson. We've got to teach them all a lesson.

Paul F. Tompkins photo

“This [the Chick-fil-A same-sex marriage controversy] is the perfect American conundrum because it's like: “Ah, you know, we should be moving forward as a country, but also— I want to eat just so much trash, like a garbage monster, as much as I can.””

Paul F. Tompkins (1968) American actor

Context: This [ the Chick-fil-A same-sex marriage controversy] is the perfect American conundrum because it's like: “Ah, you know, we should be moving forward as a country, but also— I want to eat just so much trash, like a garbage monster, as much as I can.”...
Now that you know this shit, don't eat that fuckin' sandwich anymore! It's that simple! You can't get it out of your mind, you know it, you know it, you'll always know it! You can't stop knowing it.
And really— don't fuckin' eat Chick-fil-A! What are you doing?— it's garbage! Treat yourself better. Even if you're not going to treat other people who don't have the same rights as you better, treat yourself better than that.

Brian W. Aldiss photo

“We must find out what's wrong here. Either we are victims of some ghastly experiment — or we're all monsters!”

Outside (1955)
Context: "There's a way outside. We're — we've got to find out what we are." His voice rose to an hysterical pitch. He was shaking Calvin again. "We must find out what's wrong here. Either we are victims of some ghastly experiment — or we're all monsters!"

Albert Camus photo

“Such a monster is not to be encountered in private life.”

Reflections on the Guillotine (1957)
Context: Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated, can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date on which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not to be encountered in private life.

Francisco De Goya photo

“The sleep of reason produces monsters.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

1790s

William Godwin photo
Lucy Parsons photo
Jack Kirby photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo
John Quincy Adams photo

“America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet on her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world; she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.... Her glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

Independence Day address (1821)

Donald J. Trump photo
Mao Zedong photo
Charles Stross photo
Samuel R. Delany photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo

“That I address you as a friend is no formality. I own no foes. My business in life has been for the past 33 years to enlist the friendship of the whole of humanity by befriending mankind, irrespective of race, colour or creed. … We have no doubt about your bravery or devotion to your fatherland, nor do we believe that you are the monster described by your opponents… But your own writings and pronouncements and those of your friends and admirers leave no room for doubt that many of your acts are monstrous and unbecoming of human dignity, especially in the estimation of men like me who believe in human friendliness. Such are your humiliation of Czechoslovakia, the rape of Poland and the swallowing of Denmark. I am aware that your view of life regards such spoliations as virtuous acts. But we have been taught from childhood to regard them as acts degrading humanity…Hence we cannot possibly wish success to your arms…. But ours is a unique position. We resist British imperialism no less than Nazism… If there is a difference, it is in degree. One-fifth of the human race has been brought under the British heel by means that will not bear scrutiny… Our resistance to it does not mean harm to the British people. We seek to convert them, not to defeat them on the battle-field… No spoliator can compass his end without a certain degree of co-operation, willing or unwilling, of the victim…. The rulers may have our land and bodies but not our souls…. We know what the British heel means for us and the non-European races of the world. But we would never wish to end the British rule with German aid… We have found in non-violence a force which, if organized, can without doubt match itself against a combination of all the most violent forces in the world… If not the British, some other power will certainly improve upon your method and beat you with your own weapon. You are leaving no legacy to your people of which they would feel proud.”

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

Letter to Hitler. 24 December 1940. Quoted from Koenraad Elst: Return of the Swastika (2007). (Also in https://web.archive.org/web/20100310135408/http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/fascism/gandhihitler.html)
1940s

Annie Dillard photo
Edmund Burke photo

“This day I heard from Laurence who has sent me papers confirming the portentous State of France—where the Elements which compose Human Society seem all to be dissolved, and a world of Monsters to be producd in the place of it—where Mirabeau presides as the Grand Anarch; and the late Grand Monarch makes a figure as ridiculous as pitiable.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to Richard Burke (c. 10 October 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 30
1780s

Johann Most photo
Anders Behring Breivik photo
Camille Pissarro photo

“I have just concluded my series of paintings, I look at them constantly. I who made them often find them horrible. I understand them only at rare moments, when I have forgotten all about them, on days when I feel kindly disposed and indulgent to their poor maker. Sometimes I am horribly afraid to turn round canvases which I have piled against the wall; I am constantly afraid of finding monsters where I believed there were precious gems!... Thus it does not astonish me that the critics in London relegate me to the lowest rank. Alas! I fear that they are only too justified!”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

However, at times I come across works of mine which are soundly done and really in my style, and at such moments I find great solace. But no more of that. Painting, art in general, enchants me. It is my life. What else matters?
Quote in a letter, 20 Nov. 1883; as quoted in Painting Outside the lines, Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art, ed. David W. Galenson, Harvard University Press, 30 Jun 2009, p. 84
1880's

Thiago Silva photo

“It is not blasphemous to compare Thiago Silva to Franco Baresi. With all due respect to Franco, who was a sacred monster, but Thiago Silva is just as phenomenal.”

Thiago Silva (1984) Brazilian footballer

Gennaro Gattuso, 2012 http://www.acmilan.com/pt/news/breaking_news_show/19502
From former and current footballers

Thomas Carlyle photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Bernard Cornwell photo
China Miéville photo
Liu Xiao Ling Tong photo

“I don't want to see children asking me how many monsters girlfriends does the Monkey King have anymore!”

Liu Xiao Ling Tong (1959) Chinese actor

(zh-CN) 我不希望下一次再有小朋友问我,孙悟空到底交了几个妖精女朋友。

Source: 六小龄童:不希望再被问孙悟空有几个妖精女友, 羊城晚报, 搜狐新闻, 2016-01-04, 2019-01-30 http://news.sohu.com/20160104/n433369454.shtml,

Liu Xiao Ling Tong photo

“How could Sun Wukong crush in female monsters? When you want to spoof something, spoof your grandparents rather than Journey to the West!”

Liu Xiao Ling Tong (1959) Chinese actor

(zh-CN) 孙悟空怎么能跟女妖谈恋爱呢?要恶搞,回去恶搞你爷爷奶奶去,别恶搞《西游记》!

Source: [六小龄童:要恶搞,就去恶搞你爷爷奶奶!, http://book.people.com.cn/GB/69360/5535778.html, People's Daily Online, 11 January 2019, 29 March 2007]

Francis Bacon photo

“The poets make Fame a monster. They describe her in part finely and elegantly, and in part gravely and sententiously. They say, look how many feathers she hath, so many eyes she hath underneath; so many tongues; so many voices; she pricks up so many ears.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1625), Of Fame

Ray Harryhausen photo
Georg Forster photo
Menotti Lerro photo
Ray Bradbury photo

“It’s a shame everyone is so afraid of sharks but we love our monsters.”

Source: Sean Daly Live at Shark Con-Julie Andersen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxL0X3uZIy0 (May 3, 2014)

John Wayne Gacy photo

“When they paint the image that I was this monster who picked up these alter boys along the street and swatted them like flies I said "this is ludicrous."”

John Wayne Gacy (1942–1994) American serial killer and torturer

Source: CBS 2 News interview (1992) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2EhSJM33HI

Sergio Mattarella photo

“War is a voracious monster, never satiated.”

Sergio Mattarella (1941) 12th President of Italy

[Speech by President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe], (Strasbourg, April 27, 2022)