Quotes about trap

A collection of quotes on the topic of trap, likeness, doing, use.

Quotes about trap

Amos Oz photo
Richard Bach photo

“Trapped in life, only escape I know is death.”

E.M.S (1995) Nigerian rapper, singer and record producer

"Hidden"

Tennessee Williams photo

“All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be.”

Amanda, Scene Six
Source: The Glass Menagerie (1944)

Eckhart Tolle photo
Andrzej Sapkowski photo
Eckhart Tolle photo
Tennessee Williams photo
Walter Mosley photo
Yanni photo
Andrea Dworkin photo

“I think the essence of romantic love for women is being the special one, and that's an absolutely terrible trap. If the lover treats certain other people badly, you will be treated that badly, too.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Norah Vincent, Sex, Love and Politics: Andrea Dworkin, in New York Press, vol. 11, no. 5, Feb. 4–10, 1998, p. 40, col. 4 (main title and subtitle may have been in either order, per id., p. [1]).

Elliott Smith photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
John Steinbeck photo
Alice Munro photo
Aldo Leopold photo
Niccolo Machiavelli photo

“The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.”

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 18
Variant translations of portions of this passage:
Every one admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith, and to live with integrity and not with craft. Nevertheless our experience has been that those princes who have done great things have held good faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect of men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have relied on their word.
Ch. 18. Concerning the Way in which Princes should keep Faith (as translated by W. K. Marriott)
A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.
You must know there are two ways of contesting, the one by the law, the other by force; the first method is proper to men, the second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it is necessary to have recourse to the second.
Context: A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from snares, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognise snares, and a lion to frighten wolves. Those that wish to be only lions do not understand this.
Context: How laudable it is for a prince to keep good faith and live with integrity, and not with astuteness, every one knows. Still the experience of our times shows those princes to have done great things who have had little regard for good faith, and have been able by astuteness to confuse men's brains, and who have ultimately overcome those who have made loyalty their foundation. You must know, then, that there are two methods of fighting, the one by law, the other by force: the first method is that of men, the second of beasts; but as the first method is often insufficient, one must have recourse to the second. It is therefore necessary to know well how to use both the beast and the man. This was covertly taught to princes by ancient writers, who relate how Achilles and many others of those princes were given to Chiron the centaur to be brought up, who kept them under his discipline; this system of having for teacher one who was half beast and half man is meant to indicate that a prince must know how to use both natures, and that the one without the other is not durable. A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from snares, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognise snares, and a lion to frighten wolves. Those that wish to be only lions do not understand this. Therefore, a prudent ruler ought not to keep faith when by so doing it would be against his interest, and when the reasons which made him bind himself no longer exist. If men were all good, this precept would not be a good one; but as they are bad, and would not observe their faith with you, so you are not bound to keep faith with them.... those that have been best able to imitate the fox have succeeded best. But it is necessary to be able to disguise this character well, and to be a great feigner and dissembler.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett photo

“one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap”

Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862–1931) African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, early leader in the civil rights mo…
Stephen King photo

“Was there ever a trap to match the trap of love?”

Source: The Gunslinger

Frank O'Hara photo
Patrick Rothfuss photo
William Shakespeare photo

“Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.”

Hero, Act III, scene i.
Source: Much Ado About Nothing (1598)

Christopher Morley photo
Matt Haig photo
Bruce Lee photo
Barack Obama photo
Aleksandr Pushkin photo
Alan Moore photo
Thom Yorke photo

“I have no idea what I am talking about
I'm trapped in this body and can't get out”

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

Bodysnachers
Lyrics, In Rainbows (2007)

Lewis Hamilton photo
James Tobin photo
Malcolm X photo

“You put the government on the spot when you even mention Vietnam. They feel embarrassed — you notice that?… It's just a trap that they let themselves get into. … But they're trapped, they can't get out. You notice I said 'they.' They are trapped, They can't get out. If they pour more men in, they'll get deeper. If they pull the men out, it's a defeat. And they should have known that in the first place. France had about 200,000 Frenchmen over there, and the most highly mechanized modern army sitting on this earth. And those little rice farmers ate them up, and their tanks, and everything else. Yes, they did, and France was deeply entrenched, had been there a hundred or more years. Now, if she couldn't stay there and was entrenched, why, you are out of your mind if you think Sam can get in over there. But we're not supposed to say that. If we say that, we're anti-American, or we're seditious, or we're subversive…. They put Diem over there. Diem took all their money, all their war equipment and everything else, and got them trapped. Then they killed him. Yes, they killed him, murdered him in cold blood, him and his brother, Madame Nhu's husband, because they were embarrassed. They found out that they had made him strong and he was turning against them…. You know, when the puppet starts talking back to the puppeteer, the puppeteer is in bad shape….”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

January 1965, p. 217
Malcolm X Speaks (1965)

George Washington photo
Emile Zola photo
Barack Obama photo
James Tobin photo
Thomas Mann photo
Lynn Margulis photo
Tupac Shakur photo

“It's not going to stop until "we" stop it. And it's not just white man that's doing this to Brenda. It's not just white man that's keeping us trapped. It's "black."”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

And we have to find the new African in everybody... But before we can be African, we gotta be black first.
1990s, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Atlanta (1992)

Madeleine K. Albright photo
Eminem photo
Everlast photo
Brian Keith photo
Tennessee Williams photo
Stephen Hawking photo
Hermann Hesse photo

“Property, possessions and riches had also finally trapped him. They were no longer a game and a toy. They had become a chain and a burden.”

Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German writer

H. Rosner, trans. (Bantam: 1971), pp. 76-79
Siddhartha (1922)
Context: The world had caught him; pleasure, covetousness, idleness, and finally also that vice he had always despised and scorned as the most foolish—acquisitiveness. Property, possessions and riches had also finally trapped him. They were no longer a game and a toy. They had become a chain and a burden.

Barack Obama photo

“I know the history, but I refuse to be trapped by it.”

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

2016, Remarks to the People of Cuba (March 2016)
Context: Before 1959, some Americans saw Cuba as something to exploit, ignored poverty, enabled corruption. And since 1959, we’ve been shadow-boxers in this battle of geopolitics and personalities. I know the history, but I refuse to be trapped by it.

Barack Obama photo

“When a man, desperate for work, finds himself in a factory or on a fishing boat or in a field, working, toiling, for little or no pay, and beaten if he tries to escape -- that is slavery. When a woman is locked in a sweatshop, or trapped in a home as a domestic servant, alone and abused and incapable of leaving -- that’s slavery. When a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed -- that’s slavery. When a little girl is sold by her impoverished family”

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

2012, Remarks at Clinton Global Initiative (September 2012)
Context: Now, I do not use that word, "slavery" lightly. It evokes obviously one of the most painful chapters in our nation’s history. But around the world, there’s no denying the awful reality. When a man, desperate for work, finds himself in a factory or on a fishing boat or in a field, working, toiling, for little or no pay, and beaten if he tries to escape -- that is slavery. When a woman is locked in a sweatshop, or trapped in a home as a domestic servant, alone and abused and incapable of leaving -- that’s slavery. When a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed -- that’s slavery. When a little girl is sold by her impoverished family -- girls my daughters’ age -- runs away from home, or is lured by the false promises of a better life, and then imprisoned in a brothel and tortured if she resists -- that’s slavery. It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world.

Barack Obama photo

“The March on Washington teaches us that we are not trapped by the mistakes of history; that we are masters of our fate. But it also teaches us that the promise of this nation will only be kept when we work together.”

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

2013, "Let Freedom Ring" Ceremony (August 2013)
Context: The March on Washington teaches us that we are not trapped by the mistakes of history; that we are masters of our fate. But it also teaches us that the promise of this nation will only be kept when we work together. We’ll have to reignite the embers of empathy and fellow feeling, the coalition of conscience that found expression in this place 50 years ago. And I believe that spirit is there, that truth force inside each of us. I see it when a white mother recognizes her own daughter in the face of a poor black child. I see it when the black youth thinks of his own grandfather in the dignified steps of an elderly white man. It’s there when the native-born recognizing that striving spirit of the new immigrant; when the interracial couple connects the pain of a gay couple who are discriminated against and understands it as their own. That’s where courage comes from -- when we turn not from each other, or on each other, but towards one another, and we find that we do not walk alone. That’s where courage comes from.

Barack Obama photo
Bertrand Russell photo
James Baldwin photo

“The United Nations is nothing but a trap-door to the Red World's immense concentration camp. We pretty much control the U.N.”

Harold Wallace Rosenthal (1947–1976) American terrorist victim

Fabricated, The Hidden Tyranny interview

Tupac Shakur photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Henry Rollins photo

“A rose trapped inside a fist.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: The Portable Henry Rollins

Raymond Chandler photo

“There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

Source: Long Goodbye

Anne Lamott photo
David Levithan photo
Walter Isaacson photo
Graham Greene photo
Ken Robinson photo

“The Element is about discovering your self, and you can't do this if you're trapped in a compulsion to conform. You can't be yourself in a swarm.”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

Source: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

Rick Riordan photo
David Levithan photo
Naomi Wolf photo

“You do not win by struggling to the top of a caste system, you win by refusing to be trapped within one at all.”

Source: The Beauty Myth (1991), Chapter 8 : 'Beyond the Beauty Myth', p. 290

Charles Bukowski photo

“theres no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.
nobody ever finds
the one.”

Variant: there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.
Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

Suzanne Collins photo

“Trapped for days, years, centuries maybe. Dead, but not allowed to die. Alive, but as good as dead.”

Variant: Dead, but not allowed to die. Alive, but as good as dead.
Source: Mockingjay

Suzanne Collins photo
Don DeLillo photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
David Levithan photo

“Don't get trapped into thinking people are halves instead of wholes.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story

Suzanne Collins photo

“I'm a 21st-century kid trapped in a 19th-century family.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Source: There's Treasure Everywhere

Victor Hugo photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Malcolm Gladwell photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Andrew Solomon photo
Eoin Colfer photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Richelle Mead photo
Robert M. Pirsig photo
Tom Robbins photo