Quotes about outrage (335 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“We’re confident people will take to us, because although the camp image has already been established by people like Bowie and Bolan we are taking it to another level. The concept of Queen is to be regal and majestic. Glamour is part of us and we want to be dandy. We want to shock and be outrageous instantly.”

Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer

On Queen, in "Standing Up For Queen" (28 July 1973) http://www.queenarchives.com/index.php?title=Group_-_07-28-1973_-_Melody_Maker.

Self-confidence , Confidence , People , Parting

“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."
General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), pp. 293-294.”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist

Wisdom , Justice , Law , Idea

“As hatred is defined as intense dislike, what is wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion, if the activities or teachings of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human rights that they deserve to be intensely disliked?”

Rowan Atkinson (1955) English actor, comedian, and screenwriter

Religion

“Everyone is in favour of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

"The Coalmining Situation", Speech to the House of Commons (October 13, 1943)
The Second World War (1939–1945)
Source: Google books link https://books.google.com/books?id=hc8pAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT373&lpg=PT373&dq=%22if+anyone+says+anything+back+that+is+an+outrage%22&source=bl&ots=vQG7eKCVNO&sig=FgGJGUVc7MSNY3-hyQrYpC8tiOY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CFEQ6AEwDWoVChMI-J-rpoiWyQIVF9tjCh2cLAel#v=onepage&q=%22if%20anyone%20says%20anything%20back%20that%20is%20an%20outrage%22&f=false

People , Idea

“If any Jew has purchased and circumcised a Christian slave or one of any other sect than his own, he shall not keep the circumcised slave in servitude, but the man who has suffered this outrage shall be granted the rights of liberty.”

Constantine the Great (274–337) Roman emperor

page 30 of volume 30 of University of Kansas Publications: Humanistic studies https://books.google.ca/books?id=OfIM93M9wjMC&q=%22any+Jew+has+purchased%22 entitled "Persecution of the Jews in the Roman Empire" (see also translation below)

Suffering

“Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Notes on Nationalism (1945)

Change

“Today, America would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all people of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the world government.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

This is widely reported on many sites as coming from the Bilderberg Conference (1991) Evians, France, purportedly recorded by a Swiss diplomat, but no such recording has ever been provided.
Misattributed

People , World , Fear , Angels

“I believe in using words, not fists… I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

No known source; also attributed to Susan Sarandon.[citation needed]
Disputed

People , Food , Sex , Time

“Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable.”

Roald Dahl book Matilda

Source: Matilda said, "Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable...

“Untroubled, scornful, outrageous - that is how wisdom wants us to be: she is a woman and never loves anyone but a warrior.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Love , Wisdom

“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are. —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN”

Jodi Picoult book Small Great Things

Source: Small Great Things

Justice

“It has always seemed to me that my existence consisted purely and exclusively of nothing but the most outrageous nonsense.”

Thomas Ligotti book Teatro Grottesco

Source: Teatro Grottesco

“For nearly five years the present Ministers have harassed every trade, worried every profession, and assailed or menaced every class, institution, and species of property in the country. Occasionally they have varied this state of civil warfare by perpetrating some job which outraged public opinion, or by stumbling into mistakes which have been always discreditable, and sometimes ruinous. All this they call a policy, and seem quite proud of it; but the country has, I think, made up its mind to close this career of plundering and blundering.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to Lord Grey de Wilton (3 October 1873), cited in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, Vol. 5 (1920), p. 262.

Thinking , Country

“I keep having the same experience and keep resisting it every time. I do not want to believe it although it is palpable: the great majority of people lack an intellectual conscience. Indeed, it has often seemed to me as if anyone calling for an intellectual conscience were as lonely in the most densely populated cities as if he were in a desert. Everybody looks at you with strange eyes and goes right on handling his scales, calling this good and that evil. Nobody even blushes when you intimate that their weights are underweight; nor do people feel outraged; they merely laugh at your doubts. I mean: the great majority of people does not consider it contemptible to believe this or that and to live accordingly, without first having given themselves an account of the final and most certain reasons pro and con, and without even troubling themselves about such reasons afterward: the most gifted men and the noblest women still belong to this "great majority." But what is goodheartedness, refinement, or genius to me, when the person who has these virtues tolerates slack feelings in his faith and judgments and when he does not account the desire for certainty as his inmost craving and deepest distress--as that which separates the higher human beings from the lower.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Sec. 2
The Gay Science (1882)

Women , Men , People , Faith

“I don’t consider my own clothing to be outrageous… The truth is that people just don’t have the same references that I do. To me it’s very beautiful and it’s art, and to them it’s outrageous and crazy.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Lady Gaga, in V Magazine http://www.vmagazine.com/fashion_article.php?n=13327.

People , Truth , Beauty , Art

“To build up a community, not upon Liberal opinions, which any man may fashion to his fancy, but upon popular principles, which assert equal rights, civil and religious; to uphold the institutions of the country because they are the embodiment of the wants and wishes of the nation, and protect us alike from individual tyranny and popular outrage; equally to resist democracy and oligarchy; and favour that principle of free aristocracy which is the only basis and security for constitutional government; to be vigilant to guard and prompt to vindicate the honour of the country, but to hold aloof from that turbulent diplomacy which only distracts the mind of a people from internal improvement; to lighten taxation; frugally but wisely to administer the public treasure; to favour popular education, because it is the best guarantee for public order; to defend local government; and to be as jealous of the rights of the working man as of the prerogatives of the Crown and the privileges of the Senate—these were once the principles which regulated Tory statesmen, and I for one have no wish that the Tory party should ever be in power unless they practise them.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1862/aug/01/the-administration-of-viscount in the House of Commons (1 August 1862).

People , Education , Democracy , Communication

“I was born undisciplined. Never, even as a child, could I be made to obey a set rule. What little I know I learned at home. School was always like a prison to me, I could never bring myself to stay there, even four hours a day, when the sun was shining and the sea was so tempting, and it was such fun scrambling over cliffs and paddling in the shallows. Such, to the great despair of my parents, was the unruly but healthy life I lived until I was fourteen or fifteen. In the meantime I somehow picked up the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic, with a smattering of spelling. And there my schooling ended. It never worried me very much because I always had plenty of amusements on the side. I doodled in the margins of my books, I decorated our blue copy paper with ultra-fantastic drawings, and I drew the faces and profiles of my schoolmasters as outrageously as I could, distorting them out of all recognition.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in Denis Rouart (1972) Claude Monet, p. 21 : About his youth
after Monet's death

Life , Books , School , Home

“Kings can tolerate everything but three practices– revealing a secret, an outrage on his harem, or a blow aimed at his power.”

Al-Mansur (714–775) the second Abbasid Caliph

History of the Caliphs, p.275

Secret

“I’m getting paid 10p per copy of every album I’m selling and they’re (EMI) selling it for 15 quid. That’s outrageous but it’s quite typical.”

Steve Hogarth (1956) English singer-songwriter and musician

BBC2 The Future Just Happened, 12th August 2001.

“I do oppose the extension of slavery, because my judgment and feelings so prompt me; and I am under no obligation to the contrary. If for this you and I must differ, differ we must. You say if you were President, you would send an army and hang the leaders of the Missouri outrages upon the Kansas elections; still, if Kansas fairly votes herself a slave state, she must be admitted, or the Union must be dissolved. But how if she votes herself a slave State unfairly — that is, by the very means for which you say you would hang men? Must she still be admitted, or the Union be dissolved? That will be the phase of the question when it first becomes a practical one. In your assumption that there may be a fair decision of the slavery question in Kansas, I plainly see you and I would differ about the Nebraska-law. I look upon that enactment not as a law, but as violence from the beginning. It was conceived in violence, passed in violence, is maintained in violence, and is being executed in violence. I say it was conceived in violence, because the destruction of the Missouri Compromise, under the circumstances, was nothing less than violence. It was passed in violence, because it could not have passed at all but for the votes of many members in violence of the known will of their constituents. It is maintained in violence because the elections since, clearly demand it's repeal, and this demand is openly disregarded. You say men ought to be hung for the way they are executing that law; and I say the way it is being executed is quite as good as any of its antecedents. It is being executed in the precise way which was intended from the first; else why does no Nebraska man express astonishment or condemnation? Poor Reeder is the only public man who has been silly enough to believe that any thing like fairness was ever intended; and he has been bravely undeceived.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, Letter to Joshua F. Speed (1855)

Men , Law , Way , Feeling

“The people as a whole can be benefited morally and materially by a system which shall permit of ample reward for exceptional efficiency, but which shall nevertheless secure to the average man, who does his work faithfully and well, the reward to which he is entitled. Remember that I speak only of the man who does his work faithfully and well. The man who shirks his work, who is lazy or vicious, or even merely incompetent, deserves scant consideration; we may be sorry for his family, but it is folly to waste sympathy on the man himself; and it is also folly for sentimentalists to try to shift the burden of blame from such a man himself to “society” and it is an outrage to give him the reward given to his hard-working, upright, and efficient brother. Still less should we waste sympathy on the criminal; there are altogether too many honest men who need it; and one chief point in dealing with the criminal should be to make him understand that he will be in personal peril if he becomes a lawbreaker. I realize entirely that in the last analysis, with the nation as with the individual, it is private character that counts for most. It is because of this realization that I gladly lay myself open to the charge that I preach too much, and dwell too much upon moral commonplaces; for though I believe with all my heart in the nationalization of this Nation—in the collective use on behalf of the American people of the governmental powers which can be derived only from the American people as a whole—yet I believe even more in the practical application by the individual of those great fundamental moralities.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Men , People , Family , Understanding

“[Nasreddin had to don his finest clothes in order to be admitted to a fancy dinner party. ]
He reached over, took a piece of meat and stuffed it in his shirt. He poked the next piece into his cummerbund. Then he jammed one into each pocket of his pants. All eyes were on Nasreddin as he gathered the long sleeves of his cloak and soaked them in the bowl of hot gravy. A stunned guest jumped to his feet and demanded, Effendi! [Sir! ] What is the meaning of your outrageous behavior?" "Well," said Nasreddin Odjah, "when you find yourself in a place where clothes are more welcome than the person wearing them, you must feed the clothes first and the person afterward!"”

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

Flora Joy, Treasures from Europe: stories and classroom activities (2003), "Nasreddin Odjah's Clothes (Macedonia)", , p. 104

Behavior , Personality , Clothes

“As much in vain, perhaps, will they search ancient history for examples of the modern Slave-Trade. Too many nations enslaved the prisoners they took in war. But to go to nations with whom there is no war, who have no way provoked, without farther design of conquest, purely to catch inoffensive people, like wild beasts, for slaves, is an hight of outrage against Humanity and Justice, that seems left by Heathen nations to be practised by pretended Christians. How shameful are all attempts to colour and excuse it!”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)

War , People , Justice , Way

“The lieutenant-colonel realized for the first time what most people never realize about themselves—that he was not only a victim of outrageous fortune, but one of outrageous fortune’s cruelest agents as well.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 6 “A Deserter in Time of War” (p. 162)

People , Time

“Nothing we can do outrages Nature directly. Our acts of destruction give her new vigour and feed her energy, but none of our wreckings can weaken her power.”

Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) French novelist and philosopher

Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue (1787)

Nature

“Being a CEO is the nuts! A whole jumble of thoughts come to mind: Over the top. Wild. Fun. Outrageous. Crazy. Passion. Perpetual motion. The give-and-take. Meetings into the night. Incredible friendships. Fine wine. Celebrations. Great golf courses. Big decisions in the real game. Crises and pressure. Lots of swings. A few home runs. The thrill of winning. The pain of losing. It's as good as it gets! You get paid a lot, but the real payoff is in the fun.”

Jack Welch (1935) American executive: General Electric CEO

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 24.

Pain , Friendship , Home , Game

“Inconceivable events and conditions form a class apart from all other story elements, and cannot be made convincing by any mere process of casual narration. They have the handicap of incredibility to overcome; and this can be accomplished only through a careful realism in every other phase of the story, plus a gradual atmospheric or emotional build-up of the utmost subtlety. The emphasis, too, must be kept right—hovering always over the wonder of the central abnormality itself. It must be remembered that any violation of what we know as natural law is in itself a far more tremendous thing than any other event or feeling which could possibly affect a human being. Therefore in a story dealing with such a thing we cannot expect to create any sense of life or illusion of reality if we treat the wonder casually and have the characters moving about under ordinary motivations. The characters, though they must be natural, should be subordinated to the central marvel around which they are grouped. The true "hero" of a marvel tale is not any human being, but simply a set of phenomena. Over and above everything else should tower the stark, outrageous monstrousness of the one chosen departure from Nature. The characters should react to it as real people would react to such a thing if it were suddenly to confront them in daily life; displaying the almost soul-shattering amazement which anyone would naturally display instead of the mild, tame, quickly-passed-over emotions prescribed by cheap popular convention. Even when the wonder is one to which the characters are assumed to be used, the sense of awe, marvel, and strangeness which the reader would feel in the presence of such a thing must somehow be suggested by the author.... Atmosphere, not action, is the thing to cultivate in the wonder story. We cannot put stress on the bare events, since the unnatural extravagance of these events makes them sound hollow and absurd when thrown into too high relief. Such events, even when theoretically possible or conceivable in the future, have no counterpart or basis in existing life and human experience, hence can never form the groundwork of an adult tale. All that a marvel story can ever be, in a serious way, is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood. The moment it tries to be anything else it becomes cheap, puerile, and unconvincing. Therefore a fantastic author should see that his prime emphasis goes into subtle suggestion—the imperceptible hints and touches of selective and associative detail which express shadings of moods and build up a vague illusion of the strange reality of the unreal—instead of into bald catalogues of incredible happenings which can have no substance or meaning apart from a sustaining cloud of colour and mood-symbolism. A serious adult story must be true to something in life. Since marvel tales cannot be true to the events of life, they must shift their emphasis toward something to which they can be true; namely, certain wistful or restless moods of the human spirit, wherein it seeks to weave gossamer ladders of escape from the galling tyranny of time, space, and natural laws.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

"Some Notes on Interplanetary Fiction", Californian 3, No. 3 (Winter 1935): 39-42. Published in Collected Essays, Volume 2: Literary Criticism edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 178
Non-Fiction

Life , People , Law , Way

“Once again, we've seen an outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians. This is an attack not just on Paris, it's an attack not just on the people of France, but this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Statement by the President on the Situation in Paris https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/11/13/statement-president-situation-paris (November 13, 2015)
2015

People , Universe

“The danger at such a moment is that designing politicians may take advantage of such sublime sentiments and may apply them for the furtherance of their sinister ends. I do not think there is any language which can denounce too strongly conduct of this description. He who at such a moment would avail himself of such a commanding sentiment in order to obtain his own individual ends, suggesting a course which he may know to be injurious to the interests of the country, and not favourable to the welfare of mankind, is a man whose conduct no language can too strongly condemn. He outrages the principle of patriotism, which is the soul of free communities. He does more—he influences in the most injurious manner the common welfare of humanity. Such conduct, if it be pursued by any man at this moment, ought to be indignantly reprobated by the people of England; for, in the general havoc and ruin which it may bring about, it may, I think, be fairly described as worse than any of those Bulgarian atrocities which now occupy attention.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech to the annual meeting of the Royal and Central Bucks Agricultural Association in Aylesbury (20 September 1876), quoted in 'Lord Beaconsfield At Aylesbury', The Times (21 September 1876), p. 6.

People , Soul , Communication , Thinking

“Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana, they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former nor the burning suns of the latter; they are not the creature of climate, neither are they confined to the slaveholding or the non-slaveholding States. Alike they spring up among the pleasure-hunting masters of Southern slaves, and the order-loving citizens of the land of steady habits. Whatever then their cause may be, it is common to the whole country. […] Such are the effects of mob law, and such are the scenes becoming more and more frequent in this land so lately famed for love of law and order, and the stories of which have even now grown too familiar to attract anything more than an idle remark. But you are perhaps ready to ask, "What has this to do with the perpetuation of our political institutions?" I answer, "It has much to do with it."”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Its direct consequences are, comparatively speaking, but a small evil, and much of its danger consists in the proneness of our minds to regard its direct as its only consequences.
1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)

Love , Pleasure , Law , Spring

“The inevitable hypocrisy, which is associated with the all the collective activities of the human race, springs chiefly from this source: that individuals have a moral code which makes the actions of collective man an outrage to their conscience.”

Reinhold Niebuhr book Moral Man and Immoral Society

Source: Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), pp. 8-9
Context: The inevitable hypocrisy, which is associated with the all the collective activities of the human race, springs chiefly from this source: that individuals have a moral code which makes the actions of collective man an outrage to their conscience. They therefore invent romantic and moral interpretations of the real facts, preferring to obscure rather than reveal the true character of their collective behavior. Sometimes they are as anxious to offer moral justifications for the brutalities from which they suffer as for those which they commit. The fact that the hypocrisy of man's group behavior... expresses itself not only in terms of self-justification but in terms of moral justification of human behavior in general, symbolizes one of the tragedies of the human spirit: its inability to conform its collective life to its individual ideals. As individuals, men believe they ought to love and serve each other and establish justice between each other. As racial, economic and national groups they take for themselves, whatever their power can command.

Spring

“It ought to concern every person, because it is a debasement of our common humanity. It ought to concern every community, because it tears at our social fabric. It ought to concern every business, because it distorts markets. It ought to concern every nation, because it endangers public health and fuels violence and organized crime. I’m talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name -- modern slavery.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2012, Remarks at Clinton Global Initiative (September 2012)
Context: As Bill mentioned, I’ve come to CGI every year that I’ve been President, and I’ve talked with you about how we need to sustain the economic recovery, how we need to create more jobs. I’ve talked about the importance of development -- from global health to our fight against HIV/AIDS to the growth that lifts nations to prosperity. We've talked about development and how it has to include women and girls -- because by every benchmark, nations that educate their women and girls end up being more successful. And today, I want to discuss an issue that relates to each of these challenges. It ought to concern every person, because it is a debasement of our common humanity. It ought to concern every community, because it tears at our social fabric. It ought to concern every business, because it distorts markets. It ought to concern every nation, because it endangers public health and fuels violence and organized crime. I’m talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name -- modern slavery.

Health , Communication , Business , Tear

“To discriminate against a thoroughly upright citizen because he belongs to some particular church, or because, like Abraham Lincoln, he has not avowed his allegiance to any church, is an outrage against that liberty of conscience which is one of the foundations of American life. You are entitled to know whether a man seeking your suffrages is a man of clean and upright life, honorable in all of his dealings with his fellows, and fit by qualification and purpose to do well in the great office for which he is a candidate; but you are not entitled to know matters which lie purely between himself and his Maker.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Letter to Mr. J.C. Martin concerning religion and politics (6 November 1908)
1900s
Context: To discriminate against a thoroughly upright citizen because he belongs to some particular church, or because, like Abraham Lincoln, he has not avowed his allegiance to any church, is an outrage against that liberty of conscience which is one of the foundations of American life. You are entitled to know whether a man seeking your suffrages is a man of clean and upright life, honorable in all of his dealings with his fellows, and fit by qualification and purpose to do well in the great office for which he is a candidate; but you are not entitled to know matters which lie purely between himself and his Maker. If it is proper or legitimate to oppose a man for being a Unitarian, as was John Quincy Adams, for instance, as is the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, at the present moment Chaplain of the Senate, and an American of whose life all good Americans are proud then it would be equally proper to support or oppose a man because of his views on justification by faith, or the method of administering the sacrament, or the gospel of salvation by works. If you once enter on such a career there is absolutely no limit at which you can legitimately stop.

Life , Lie

“The downside of being outrageous is that you have to go around explaining your fucking self to people. If you're too cocky, somebody might just pull out a fucking gun and cock it and blow your fucking face off. You gotta be really careful what you bite off. Don't bite off more than you can chew. It's a dangerous world.”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

Rolling Stone Online, May 1997.

World , Self-confidence , People

“As to riots and tumults, let those answer for them, who, by willful misrepresentations, endeavor to excite and promote them; or who seek to stun the sense of the nation, and to lose the great cause of public good in the outrages of a misinformed mob. We take our ground on principles that require no such riotous aid. We have nothing to apprehend from the poor; for we are pleading their cause. And we fear not proud oppression, for we have truth on our side.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

Source: Address And Declaration At a Select Meeting Of The Friends Of Universal Peace And Liberty https://thomaspaine.org/essays/french-revolution/address-and-declaration.html (August 20, 1791)

Sense , Truth , Fear

“Each Javelin round costs $80,000, and the idea that it's fired by a guy who doesn't make that in a year at a guy who doesn't make that in a lifetime is somehow so outrageous it almost makes the war seem winnable.”

Sebastian Junger (1962) American author, journalist and documentarian

Source: War

War , Guy , Idea

“At the door, Audrey called, "Are you coming?"
"No, just breathing hard, love." He glanced at her and was rewarded by an outraged glare, followed by, "Oh, my God!”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Fate's Edge

Love , God

“The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: The Basis of Morality

Universe , Animals

“What lingered after them was not life, which always overcomes natural death, but the most trivial list of mundane facts: a clock ticking on a wall, a room dim at noon, and the outrageousness of a human being thinking only of herself.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

Life , Death , Nature , Thinking

“You can con God and get away with it, Granny said, if you do so with charm and wit. If you live your life with imagination and verve, God will play along just to see what outrageously entertaining thing you'll do next.”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas

Life , God , Imagination

“People give pain, are callous and insensitive, empty and cruel… but place heals the hurt, soothes the outrage, fills the terrible vacuum that these human beings make.”

Eudora Welty (1909–2001) American author

Pain , People , Hurt

“Fear is often disguised as moral outrage.”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

Fear

“You can have Jesus in your spirit and have an outrageous mess in your soul.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Soul

“You think I'd cheat on you?" I demanded with all the innocent outrage I could muster.

"With another guy, no. With a cheeseburger… in a heartbeat.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Smooth Talking Stranger

Guy , Thinking , Cheating

“It’s your duty as my best friend to be outraged with me.”
“I’m outraged!” I snarled. “That bastard!”
“Thank you,” Andrea said.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

“Rose: "Did you hotwire this car? Did you steal this car?"
Dimitri: "You have an interesting set of morals. Breaking out of jail is okay. But steal a car, and you sound totally outraged."
- Rose Hathaway and Dimitri Belikov (Last Sacrifice)”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Cars

“You have an interesting set of morals," he observed. "Breaking out of jail is okay. But steal a car, and you sound totally outraged.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Cars

“It isn't deep," the Eddisian Ambassador said from the other side of the bed. He was leaning over the wound, looking critical and mildly disappointed. Eugenides didn't miss a beat.
"It is… too… deep!" he insisted, outraged.”

Megan Whalen Turner The King of Attolia

Source: The King of Attolia

Disappointment

“Another old saying is that revenge is a dish best served cold. But it feels best served piping hot, straight out of the oven of outrage. My opinion? Take care of revenge right away.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Feeling , Revenge

“The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

World , Help , Madness

“That’s what they mean by the womb of time: the agony and the despair of spreading bones, the hard girdle in which lie the outraged entrails of events.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

Lie , Time , Despair

“What you need is sustained outrage… there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority.”

Molly Ivins (1944–2007) American journalist

“One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Truth , Sincerity

“You can have Jesus in your spirit and have an outrageous mess in your soul, and if you don't know what that's called, it's called religion.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Religion , Soul

“Two lords and an archduke had asked her to marry them, and so, she wrote to me in outrage, had Solya.”

Naomi Novik book Uprooted

Source: Uprooted

“We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as he wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages, when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty, when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner "Freedom Now"”

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

they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled.
2000s, 2005, Second Inaugural Address (January 2005)

Hunger , God , Age , Peace

“India is yet another major victim of Islam. The day Muhammad bin Qasim, entered Sindh as a conqueror, must rank as the most ominous, odious and outrageous moment in the history of India, whose proud, pious and powerful traditions have been the torch-bearer of world civilisation. The Indians, used to enjoying the warmth of ahinsa, were stunned by the violence that the Arab raiders displayed in robbing the rich and seducing the indigenous damsels. Yet the irony was that they did all this in the name of the Most Compassionate and Just Allah, who counts these felonies as acts of fairness when they are committed to torture the unbelievers. Then, this land that had become indifferent to the vicissitudes of history owing to a very long period of prosperity and plentitude, was attracted by more Islamic predators, who rushed in through the Khaiber Pass to loot her wealth, dishonour her daughters and crush her ethos that had stood the test of time despite its proneness to physical comforts and spiritual mirages such as ahinsa.”

Anwar Shaikh (1928–2006) British Pakistani writer

Anwar Shaikh (1998). Anwar Shaikh's Islam, the Arab imperialism. Cardiff: Principality Publishers.

World , History , Time , Daughters

“It is a revolution; a revolution of the most intense character; in which belief in the justice, prudence, and wisdom of secession is blended with the keenest sense of wrong and outrage, and it can no more be checked by human effort for the time than a prairie fire by a gardener’s watering pot.”

Judah P. Benjamin (1811–1884) American politician and lawyer

On the secession movement in the South (1860). Reported in Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln (1950), p. 387.

Wisdom , Justice , Sense , Effort

“What makes The Joker tick I wonder?” Fredric said. “I mean what are his real motivations?”
“Consider him at any level of conduct,” Bruce said slowly, “in the home, on the street, in interpersonal relations, in jail—always there is an extraordinary contradiction. He is dirty and compulsively neat, aloof and desperately gregarious, enthusiastic and sullen, generous and stingy, a snappy dresser and a scarecrow, a gentleman and a boor, given to extremes of happiness and despair, singularly well able to apply himself and capable of frittering away a lifetime in trivial pursuits, decorous and unseemly, kind and cruel, tolerant yet open to the most outrageous varieties of bigotry, a great friend and an implacable enemy, a lover and abominator of women, sweet-spoken and foul-mouthed, a rake and a puritan, swelling with hubris and haunted by inferiority, outcast and social climber, felon and philanthropist, barbarian and patron of the arts, enamored of novelty and solidly conservative, philosopher and fool, Republican and Democrat, large of soul and unbearably petty, distant and brimming with friendly impulses, an inveterate liar and astonishingly strict with petty cash, adventurous and timid, imaginative and stolid, malignly destructive and a planter of trees on Arbor Day—I tell you frankly, the man is a mess.”
“That’s extremely well said Bruce,” Fredric stated. “I think you’ve given a very thoughtful analysis.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“I was paraphrasing what Mark Schorer said about Sinclair Lewis,” Bruce replied.
“The Joker’s Greatest Triumph”.
Come Back, Dr. Caligari (1964)

Women , Fools , Art , Home

“Why, what is the matter with us? Are we going to palliate and excuse a palpable and flagrant outrage on the right of speech, by implying that only a particular description of persons should exercise that right? Are we, at such a time, when a great principle has been struck down, to quench the moral indignation which the deed excites, by casting reflections upon those on whose persons the outrage has been committed? After all the arguments for liberty to which Boston has listened for more than a quarter of a century, has she yet to learn that the time to assert a right is the time when the right itself is called in question, and that the men of all others to assert it are the men to whom the right has been denied?”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1880s, Plea for Free Speech in Boston (1880)

Men , Exercises , Question , Learning

“If a [democratic] society displays less brilliance than an aristocracy, there will also be less wretchedness; pleasures will be less outrageous and wellbeing will be shared by all; the sciences will be on a smaller scale but ignorance will be less common; opinions will be less vigorous and habits gentler; you will notice more vices and fewer crimes.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Original text: [...] si l'on y rencontre moins d'éclat qu'au sein d'une aristocratie, on y trouvera moins de misères; les jouissances y seront moins extrêmes, et le bien-être plus général; les sciences moins grandes, et l'ignorance plus rare; les sentiments moins énergiques, et les habitudes plus douces; on y remarquera plus de vices et moins de crimes.
Introduction.
Democracy in America, Volume I (1835)

Pleasure , Science

“Do we suppose Jesus Christ laid His blessing on this unholy poverty? Do we really imagine that this is what He had in His eye, as He pronounced the benediction? Nay! This is the Poverty which blights and curses. This is the Poverty which God hates. This is the Poverty which is an outrage on man, and an insult to God. Far from accepting it as a preparation for the Kingdom of Heaven, we have, in the name of that Kingdom, to demand that it be swept off the face of the earth and be never again seen.”

Henry Scott Holland (1847–1918) British theologian

Our Neighbors (1911)

God , Hate , Imagination , Christ

“Thus far woman has struggled through life with bandaged eyes, accepting the dogma of her weakness and inability to take care of herself not only physically but intellectually. She has held out a trembling hand and received gratefully the proffered aid. She has foregone her right to study, to know the laws and purposes of government to which she is subject. But there is now awakened in her a consciousness that she is defrauded of her legitimate Rights and that she never can fulfill her mission until she is placed in that position to which she feels herself called by the divinity within. Hitherto she has surrendered her person and her individuality to man, but she can no longer do this and not feel that she is outraging her nature and her God.”

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) American abolitionist

Written in 1857, as quoted in ch. 87.
The Female Experience (1977)

Life , God , Law , Feeling

“Voting for politicians who tell you what you want to hear has all but destroyed civilization, giving in to outrage in the hope of avoiding trouble has all but destroyed freedom, and looking for the easy road to success in bodybuilding has all but destroyed the actually great potential value of weight training.”

Arthur Jones (inventor) (1926–2007) American inventor

The New High Intensity Training (2004)

Hope , Freedom , Success , Training

“Evidently, there is a political element in the attack on The Satanic Verses which has killed and injured good if obstreperous Muslims in Islamabad, though it may be dangerously blasphemous to suggest it. The Ayatollah Khomeini is probably within his self-elected rights in calling for the assassination of Salman Rushdie, or of anyone else for that matter, on his own holy ground. To order outraged sons of the Prophet to kill him, and the directors of Penguin Books, on British soil is tantamount to a jihad. It is a declaration of war on citizens of a free country, and as such it is a political act. It has to be countered by an equally forthright, if less murderous, declaration of defiance…. I do not think that even our British Muslims will be eager to read that great vindication of free speech, which is John Milton’s Areopagitica. Oliver Cromwell’s Republic proposed muzzling the press, and Milton replied by saying, in effect, that the truth must declare itself by battling with falsehood in the dust and heat…. I gain the impression that few of the protesting Muslims in Britain know directly what they are protesting against. Their Imams have told them that Mr Rushdie has published a blasphemous book and must be punished. They respond with sheeplike docility and wolflike aggression. They forgot what Nazis did to books … they shame a free country by denying free expression through the vindictive agency of bonfires…. If they do not like secular society, they must fly to the arms of the Ayatollah or some other self-righteous guardian of strict Islamic morality.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

'Islam's Gangster Tactics', in the London Independent newspaper , 1989
Writing

War , Truth , Books , Thinking

“Only the other day. a missionary descended on a famine area with money in his pocket, distributed it among the famine-stricken, converted them to his fold, took charge of their temple and demolished it. This is outrageous. The temple could not belong to the converted Hindus, and it could not belong to the Christian missionary. But this friend goes and gets it demolished at the hands of the very men who, only a little while ago, believed that God was there.”

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

‘Harijan’, English weekly (founded by M.K. Gandhi), Poona, May 11, 1935
1930s

Men , Money , God

“The fate of Africans in the cities of the nation rests on the stand we take against this tyrannical action of the government. As leaders we shall do all in our power to consolidate the country to oppose the carrying out of this outrageous tyrannical scheme.”

Albert Lutuli (1898–1967) South African politician

Resist apartheid! (1954)

Fate , Country

“I'll know how outraged I am when I know how many black people were on those flights.”

Al Sharpton (1954) American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host

Attributed as a remark on The O'Reilly Factor on 13 October 2002. There was no episode of "The O'Reilly Factor" on this date.
Misattributed

People

“If I read the future aright Hitler's government will confront Europe with a series of outrageous events and ever-growing military might. It is events which will show our dangers, though for some the lesson will come too late.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to Lord Londonderry (6 May 1936), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 733
The 1930s

Reading , Future

“No one has to stand behind us; we’ve never asked anyone to defend the way we get attention. The fact is we are the biggest group because we succeed in getting attention. … The fact is we may be doing all sorts of things on a campaign but the one thing that gets attention is the outrageous thing. It simply goes to prove to us each time, that that is the thing that’s going to work; and so we won’t shirk from doing that facet — in addition to all the other things we do that you never hear about because no one cares.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

Satya, January, 2001 http://www.satyamag.com/jan01/newkirk.html.
2001

Way , Time

“Wars always bring about a conservative reaction. They overwhelm and destroy patient and careful efforts to improve the condition of man. Nothing can be heard in the cannon's roar but the voice of might. All the safeguards laboriously built to preserve individual freedom and foster man's welfare are blown to pieces with shot and shell. In the presence of the wholesale slaughter of men the value of life is cheapened to the zero point. What is one life compared with the almost daily records of tens of thousands or more mowed down like so many blades of grass in a field? Building up a conception of the importance of life is a matter of slow growth and education; and the work of generations is shattered and laid waste by machine guns and gases on a larger scale than ever before. Great wars have been followed by an unusually large number of killings between private citizens and individuals. These killers have become accustomed to thinking in terms of slaying and death toward all opposition, and these have been followed in turn by the most outrageous legal penalties and a large increase in the number of executions by the state. It is perfectly clear that hate begets hate, force is met with force, and cruelty can become so common that its contemplation brings pleasure, when it should produce pain.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Source: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 26 "The Aftermath Of The War"

Life , Death , Men , Pain

“Until the arrival of Arafat and the Palestinian terrorists, Lebanon was a Christian democracy. But Islamic radicalism could not tolerate either Christianity or democracy. This — not the presence of tiny Israel (one hundred times smaller than its current antagonists) is the root cause of the violence in the Middle East. The cause is Arab intolerance and Islamic hate. One Jewish state among 22 Arab states was one too many. Six million Jews among 300 million Arabs was too much to bear. A sliver of land, less than one percent of the Arab land mass, which belonged to first to the Turks and then to the British was an imperialist outrage.”

David Horowitz (1939) Neoconservative activist, writer

[David, Horowitz, http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/horowitz.html, "Lebanon is not Innocent", jewishworldreview.com, July 24, 2006, 2010-01-04]
2006

Hate , Democracy , Time

“My older friends say, "I was in a punk band once, and we used to be pretty outraged. We would get pretty angry, we'd get a stomp going or something, we would rally against Reagan, or other elected officials. But now I am an older man, and I have some responsibilities, so I really cannot be excited. I appreciate Kurt Cobain, and I'm excited about all those bands that seem very angry, but—why would you keep doing this after all these years?" And I say, "Because I still hate you and I'm trying to prove to you that you're wrong."”

Jack Terricloth (1970)

Because, really, if you're bored and you're listless, you just need to get yourself an enemy.
Introducing "I Wouldn't Want to Live in a World Without Grudges"
Live

Hate

“Life cannot have had a random beginning … The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 1040,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1981)

Life , Universe , Chance , Parting

“I left school at age 16. I was illiterate with no role models. The great psychobabble today is the dysfunctional family. Well, I've never met one that was functional. In Limerick, a family that was dysfunctional was one who could afford to drink but didn't.
I had the taste of the alcohol since I was 11 … It allowed me to be clever, charming and to behave outrageously. Acting also allowed me not to be me. So I could indulge every fantasy in this paradise of America.”

Malachy McCourt (1931) Irish-American actor, writer and politician

The New York Times interview (1998)

Alcohol , Age , School , Family

“Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

An unpublished paper of 1907, as quoted in The Rising American Empire (1960) by Richard Warner Van Alstyne, p. 201; also quoted in On Power and Ideology (1987) by Noam Chomsky; accounts of this as being from a lecture of 15 April 1907 seem to be incorrect.
1900s

World

“There aren't any even halfway reasonable dogmas around nowadays, not one that doesn't offend or outrage either the intellect or the intuitions.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981), p. 25

“Slavery has left behind it a spirit that still delights in human blood. Outrage, murder, and assassination are the inheritance of the freed men and women of the South. Neither our government nor our civilization seems able to stop the flow of blood. As in the time of slavery, the Church is silent.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Letter http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

Women , Men , Time

“It is an outrage towards the masses.... It's wanting to treat them as though they're incapable of raising themselves up to this new realism [promoted by Léger and Le Corbusier ] which is that of their area, which they've made with their hands... To want to say to these men 'the modern is not for you it's an art for the rich bourgeoisie..”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

attack on the notion of Social Realism art
Quote, c. 1949, in: Fernand Léger - The Later Years, catalogue ed. Nicolas Serota, published by the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art gallery, London, Prestel Verlag, 1988, p. 58
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1940's

Men , Art

“DOGS, KIDDIE PORN & STAR TREK: (Hey, that’s a good book title). Unfortunately, I was out with Cosmo when the conversation got interesting around here. First of all, while I think it is wrong to judge dogs by human political categories they most certainly aren’t liberals. Dogs may try to run your life, but they do not much care about running the lives of people they’ve never met. And still, they are willing to judge others -- and admit it. They are morally pragmatic, loyal and willing to share with family while outraged or flummoxed by the idea of taxation for the benefit of people or dogs they don’t know. They firmly believe in sexual harassment as a modus vivendi. They believe nature is a tool. They are not vegetarians and reject animal rights. They chuff at egalitarianism. In short, I think they are Monarchists; they believe in something very close to a Great Chain of Being with humans and dogs at the top (and, even at the top humans and dogs have different ranks).”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

April 2002 http://web.archive.org/web/20001011/www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/2002_04_14_corner-archive.asp
2000s, 2002

Life , People , Books , Family

“It were but reasonable to hope that this sacred influence should never have been overshadowed, and that in the history of other nations, no less than in our own past, we might find beacon-lights for our guidance. In part this has been realized, and might have reached the height of our expectations if it had not been for the blasting effects of slavery, whose deadly pall has so long spread its folds over this nation, to the destruction of peace, union, and concord. Most particularly has its baneful influence been felt in the south, causing the people to be at once restless and discontented. Even now, sir, after the great conflict between slavery and freedom, after the triumph achieved at such a cost, we can yet see the traces of the disastrous strife and the remains of disease in the body-politic of the south. In proof of this witness the frequent outrages perpetrated upon our loyal men. The prevailing spirit of the southron is either to rule or to ruin. Voters must perforce succumb to their wishes or else risk life itself in the attempt to maintain a simple right of common manhood.”

Joseph Hayne Rainey (1832–1887) politician

1871, Speech on the the Ku Klux Klan Bill of 1871 (1 April 1871)

Life , Men , People , Disease

“Men are excessively ruthless and cruel not as a rule out of malice but from outraged righteousness. How much more is this true of legally constituted states, invested with all this seeming moral authority of parliaments and congresses and courts of justice! The destructive capacity of an individual, however vicious, is small; of the state, however well-intentioned, almost limitless. Expand the state and the destructive capacity necessarily expands too. Collective righteousness is far more ungovernable than any individual pursuit of revenge. That was a point well understood by Woodrow Wilson, who warned: 'Once lead this people into war and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.”

Paul Johnson (1928) journalist, historian and speechwriter from England

Modern Times (1983).

Men , War , People , Justice

“I do not know whether to be delighted or outraged by the fact that Literary Theory: An Introduction was the subject of a study by a well known U. S. business school, which was intrigued to discover how an academic text could become a best-seller.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

New Preface to Literary Theory: An Introduction, Anniversary Edition, (2008)
2000s

School , Business , Study

“There was a time when I should have felt terribly ashamed of not being up-to-date. I lived in a chronic apprehension lest I might, so to speak, miss the last bus, and so find myself stranded and benighted, in a desert of demodedness, while others, more nimble than myself, had already climbed on board, taken their tickets and set out toward those bright but, alas, ever receding goals of Modernity and Sophistication. Now, however, I have grown shameless, I have lost my fears. I can watch unmoved the departure of the last social-cultural bus—the innumerable last buses, which are starting at every instant in all the world’s capitals. I make no effort to board them, and when the noise of each departure has died down, “Thank goodness!” is what I say to myself in the solitude. I find nowadays that I simply don’t want to be up-to-date. I have lost all desire to see and do the things, the seeing and doing of which entitle a man to regard himself as superiorly knowing, sophisticated, unprovincial; I have lost all desire to frequent the places and people that a man simply must frequent, if he is not to be regarded as a poor creature hopelessly out of the swim. “Be up-to-date!” is the categorical imperative of those who scramble for the last bus. But it is an imperative whose cogency I refuse to admit. When it is a question of doing something which I regard as a duty I am as ready as anyone else to put up with discomfort. But being up-to-date and in the swim has ceased, so far as I am concerned, to be a duty. Why should I have my feelings outraged, why should I submit to being bored and disgusted for the sake of somebody else’s categorical imperative? Why? There is no reason. So I simply avoid most of the manifestations of that so-called “life” which my contemporaries seem to be so unaccountably anxious to “see”; I keep out of range of the “art” they think is so vitally necessary to “keep up with”; I flee from those “good times” in the “having” of which they are prepared to spend so lavishly of their energy and cash.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

“Silence is Golden,” p. 55
Do What You Will (1928)

Life , People , World , Fear

“They bring in high earnings without work. One of these days I’ll sweep away this outrage and nationalize all corporations.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

As quoted in Spandau: The Secret Diaries, Albert Speer, New York, NY, Pocket Books (1977) p. 84
Other remarks

“The bomb attack on the Grand Hotel early this morning was first and foremost an inhuman, undiscriminating attempt to massacre innocent unsuspecting men and women staying in Brighton for our Conservative Conference…But the bomb attack clearly signified more than this. It was an attempt not only to disrupt and terminate our Conference; It was an attempt to cripple Her Majesty's democratically-elected Government. That is the scale of the outrage in which we have all shared, and the fact that we are gathered here now—shocked, but composed and determined—is a sign not only that this attack has failed, but that all attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (12 October 1984) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105763
Second term as Prime Minister

Women , Men , Democracy

“The Tories deserved a kicking last night. With chaos and discord in our hospitals and schools, an unprecedented housing crisis and fatcats lining their pockets while life gets tougher for everybody else, it’s an outrage for David Cameron to appear on TV looking like the cat who got the cream, knowing his party is on track to win again in 2020.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

We nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership. Now we regret it (6 May 2016)

Life , School , Cats , Appearance

“And are there no laws of moral health? Can they be outraged and the penalty not paid? Let a man turn out of the bright and bustling Broadway, out of the mad revel of riches and the restless, unripe luxury of ignorant men whom sudden wealth has disordered like exhilarating gas; let him penetrate through sickening stench the lairs of typhus, the dens of small-pox, the coverts of all loathsome disease and unimaginable crimes; let him see the dull, starved, stolid, lowering faces, the human heaps of utter woe, and, like Jefferson in contemplating slavery a hundred years ago in Virginia, he will murmur with bowed head, 'I tremble for this city when I remember that God is just'. Is his justice any surer in a tenement-house than it is in a State? Filth in the city is pestilence. Injustice in the State is civil war. 'Gentlemen', said George Mason, a friend and neighbor of Jefferson's, in the Convention that framed the Constitution, 'by an inscrutable chain of causes and effects Providence punishes national sins by national calamities'. 'Oh no. gentlemen, it is no such thing', replied John Rutledge of South Carolina. 'Religion and humanity have nothing to do with this question. Interest is the governing principle with nations'. The descendants of John Rutledge live in the State which quivers still with the terrible tread of Sherman and his men. Let them answer! Oh seaports and factories, silent and ruined! Oh barns and granaries, heaps of blackened desolation! Oh wasted homes, bleeding hearts, starving mouths! Oh land consumed in the fire your own hands kindled! Was not John Rutledge wrong, was not George Mason right, that prosperity which is only money in the purse, and not justice or fair play, is the most cruel traitor, and will cheat you of your heart's blood in the end?”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Men , Money , God , War

“There is a breed of men who do not deserve the name of Germans. I trust that the entire nation will find the strength to beat back their outrageous attacks. If that does not occur, I shall have to call on you, my Guards, for protection against the gang of traitors and for leading the battle which will free us from such elements.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Speech (2 September 1895), quoted in Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times (London: Penguin, 1975), p. 159
1890s

Men

“If we assume that the person asking the question is serious, there is an underlying background of purposes and understanding (the 'horizon' as Gadamer calls it) into which the question fits. If a questioner were to ask "Can pigs have wings?" a respondent within the analytic tradition might have difficulty answering, because although the idea is outrageously farfetched, current work in genetic engineering does leave open the logical possibility of creating a beast with the desired characteristics. Admittedly, there might be some refuge in challenging the asker as to whether such a monstrosity would still properly be called a pig,11 thereby invalidating the question. But if the question were asked seriously, neither the logical possibility nor the precise meaning of "pig" would be the issue at hand. The questioner would be asking for some reason in some background of understanding and purpose, and the appropriate answer (just like the appropriate answer to "Is there water in the refrigerator?") would have to be relevant to that background.”

Terry Winograd (1946) American computer scientist

Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design (1986, with Fernando Flores), p. 105.
<sup>11</sup> See, for example Putnam's discussion of natural kinds in "Is semantics possible?" (1970).

Idea , Understanding , Question , Water

“Diverting attention from the way in which certain beliefs, desires, attitudes, or values are the result of particular power relations, then, can be a sophisticated way of contributing to the maintenance of an ideology, and one that will be relatively immune to normal forms of empirical refutation. If I claim (falsely) that all human societies, or all human societies at a certain level of economic development, have a free market in health services, that is a claim that can be demonstrated to be false. On the other hand, if I focus your attention in a very intense way on the various different tariffs and pricing schema that doctors or hospitals or drug companies impose for their products and services, and if I become morally outraged by “excessive” costs some drug companies charge, discussing at great length the relative rates of profit in different sectors of the economy, and pressing the moral claims of patients, it is not at all obvious that anything I say may be straightforwardly “false”; after all, who knows what “excessive” means? However, by proceeding in this way I might well focus your attention on narrow issues of “just” pricing, turning it away from more pressing issues about the acceptance in some societies of the very existence of a free market for drugs and medical services. One can even argue that the more outraged I become about the excessive price, the more I obscure the underlying issue. One way, then, in which a political philosophy can be ideological is by presenting a relatively marginal issue as if it were central and essential.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), p. 54.

Health , Way , Falseness

“I understand how strongly so many of my fellow veterans and citizens feel about the flag and I understand the powerful sentiment in state legislatures for such an amendment. I feel the same sense of outrage. But I step back from amending the Constitution to relieve that outrage. The First Amendment exists to insure that freedom of speech and expression applies not just to that with which we agree or disagree, but also that which we find outrageous. I would not amend that great shield of democracy to hammer a few miscreants. The flag will be flying proudly long after they have slunk away.”

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

1990s, Letter to Patrick Leahy (1999)

Feeling , Democracy , Understanding , Sense

“English is an outrageous tangle of those derivations and other multifarious linguistic influences, from Yiddish to Shoshone, which has grown up around a gnarly core of chewy, clangorous yawps derived from ancestors who painted themselves blue to frighten their enemies.”

Roy Blount Jr. (1941) American writer

Alphabet Juice (2008), p. 93.

Painting

“Terrorism' is a word that has become a plague on our vocabulary, the excuse and reason and moral permit for state-sponsored violence - our violence - which is now used on the innocent of the Middle East ever more outrageously and promiscuously. Terrorism, terrorism, terrorism. It has become a full stop, a punctuation mark, a phrase, a speech, a sermon, the be-all and end-all of everything that we must hate in order to ignore injustice and occupation and murder on a mass scale. Terror, terror, terror, terror. It is a sonata, a symphony, an orchestra tuned to every television and radio station and news agency report, the soap-opera of the Devil, served up on prime-time or distilled in wearyingly dull and mendacious form by the right-wing 'commentators' of the America east coast or the Jerusalem Post or the intellectuals of Europe. Strike against Terror. Victory over Terror. War on Terror. Everlasting War on Terror. Rarely in history have soldiers and journalists and presidents and kings aligned themselves in such thoughtless, unquestioning ranks. In August 1914, the soldiers thought they would be home by Christmas. Today, we are fighting for ever. The war is eternal. The enemy is eternal, his face changing on our screens. Once he lived in Cairo and sported a moustache and nationalised the Suez Canal. Then he lived in Tripoli and wore a ridiculous military uniform and helped the IRA and bombed American bars in Berlin. Then he wore a Muslim Imam's gown and ate yoghurt in Tehran and planned Islamic revolution. Then he wore a white gown and lived in a cave in Afghanistan and then he wore another silly moustache and resided in a series of palaces around Baghdad. Terror, terror, terror. Finally, he wore a kuffiah headdress and outdated Soviet-style military fatigues, his name was Yassir Arafat, and he was the master of world terror and then a super-statesman and then again, a master of terror, linked by Israeli enemies to the terror-Meister of them all, the one who lived in the Afghan cave.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

The Great War for Civilization (2005)

Hate , War , World , Home

“I like to dress conservatively because then the outrageous things you say are even more outrageous.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville: Who cares whodunnit? (2013)

“Those of us whose parenting style can be described as "a series of reflexes, instincts, and minute-by-minute adjustments," as Julie of A Little Pregnant puts it, rather than as a philosophy, are less invested in our own practices. What we do is often less a matter of conviction than one of convenience. What we need to remember is that there is no need to apologize for that, even in the face of the most red-faced outrage.”

Ayelet Waldman (1964) American- Israeli writer

Salon.com column http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/waldman/2005/08/15/judgment/index1.html

Parent

“It's outrageous to line your pockets off the misery of the poor.
Outrageous, the crimes some human beings must endure.
It's a blessing to wash your face in the summer solstice rain.
It's outrageous a man like me stand here and complain.
But I'm tired.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Outrageous
Song lyrics, Surprise (2006)

Summer

“In the course of some ninety years, the wheel has certainly turned full circle. The Protectionist case, which seemed to most of our fathers and grandfathers so outrageous, even so wicked, has been re-stated and carried to victory. Free Trade, which was almost like a sacred dogma, is in its turn rejected and despised… many acute and energetic minds in the ’forties “looked to the end.” They foresaw what seemed beyond the vision of their rivals— that after the period of expansion would come the period of over-production… [Disraeli] perceived only too clearly the danger of sacrificing everything to speed. Had he lived now, he would not have been surprised. The development of the world on competitive rather than on complementary lines; the growth of economic nationalism; the problems involved in the increasing productivity of labour, both industrial and agricultural; the absence of any new and rapidly developing area offering sufficient attractive opportunities for investment; finally, the heavy ensuing burden of unemployment, in every part of the world— all these phenomena, so constantly in our minds as part of the conditions of crisis, would have seemed to the men of Manchester nothing but a hideous nightmare. Disraeli would have understood them. I think he would have expected them.”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

‘Preface’ to Derek Walker-Smith, The Protectionist Case in the 1840s (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1933), pp. vii-viii.
1920s-1950s

Men , World , Problem , Thinking

“When public men indulge themselves in abuse, when they deny others a fair trial, when they resort to innuendo and insinuation, to libel, scandal, and suspicion, then our democratic society is outraged, and democracy is baffled.”

J. William Fulbright (1905–1995) American politician

Speech in the Senate on McCarthyism (February 2, 1954), Congressional Record, vol. 100. p. 1105

Men , Democracy

“I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment.”

James Inhofe (1934) American politician

regarding Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse, quoted in [2004-05-12, GOP senator labels abused prisoners 'terrorists', CNN, http://articles.cnn.com/2004-05-11/politics/inhofe.abuse_1_naked-prisoners-iraqi-prisoners-james-inhofe]