Quotes about vice (782 quotes, page 3) | Quotes of famous people

“On the September 26, 2008 broadcast of CNN's "Situation Room", while sitting next to Wolf Blitzer, Cafferty directly highlighted Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's abysmal interview performance with Katie Couric earlier in the week. Cafferty stated, prior to playing a particularly embarrassing segment of the interview in which Palin stumbles across a murky, confused, ambiguous answer to Couric's query regarding the pending economic bailout package, "There's a reason the McCain campaign keeps Sarah Palin away from the press." After the clip's conclusion, he then went on to say, "…Did you get that? If John McCain wins, this woman will be one 72 year-old's heartbeat away from being president of the United States, and if that doesn't scare the Hell out of you, it should…I'm 65 and have been covering politics as you have [addressing Blitzer] for a long time, and that is one of the most pathetic pieces of tape I have ever seen for someone aspiring to one of the highest offices in this country. That's all I have to say." Blitzer responded in a light-hearted, seemingly forced defense of Palin, stating, "Yeah, but she's cramming a lot of information…" Cafferty interrupted, "There's no excuse for that. She's supposed to know a little bit of this, you know. Don't make excuses for her - that's pathetic."”

Jack Cafferty (1942) American journalist

Blitzer replied, "It was not her best answer. I agree with you on that," and the segment came to a close.
[CNN, Jack Cafferty on Sarah Palin, 26 September 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8__aXxXPVc]
2008

Hell , Light , Wolf , Time

“What does really happen when the factor of love withdraws from a human relationship? Is it a loss or a gain? Is the real landscape revealed at last, hitherto transfigured, but delusive, too, by the driving mist of fantasy? Is it a perverted vision which finds a glowing cloud more beautiful than the solid truth of a plot of earth? And vice versa, what really happens when the radiance, the glamour, begins to take shape, concentrating on a landscape or on a face?”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Diaries 1957-59.

Love , Truth , Beauty , Loss

“Gambling is a wretched vice,” Lady Corey replied with a sniff. “A snare for men of weak character.”

David D. Levine (1961) science fiction writer

Source: Arabella and the Battle of Venus (2017), Chapter 5, “Navigation” (p. 71)

Men

“Without precise predictability, control is impotent and almost meaningless. In other words, the lesser the predictability, the harder the entity or system is to control, and vice versa. If our universe actually operated on linear causality, with no surprises, uncertainty, or abrupt changes, all future events would be absolutely predictable in a sort of waveless orderliness.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 280

Universe , Change , Future

“The Duke (Cesare) is a good-natured man, but he cannot tolerate affronts. I have often told him that Rome is a free city, and that everyone may write and speak as he pleases. Evil is even spoken of me, but I let it pass." The Duke replied: "Rome is accustomed to write and speak; it is well, but I will teach such people repentance."* The Pope finally reminded him how much he himself had forgiven, and especially at the time of Charles VIII's invasion, so many cardinals, whom the King himself had called his betrayers. "I could," he said, "have sentenced the Vice-Chancellor and Cardinal Vincula to death, but I did not wish to harm anyone, and I have forgiven fourteen great nobles.”

Pope Alexander VI (1431–1503) pope of the Catholic Church 1492-1503

Report of the Ferrarese ambassador, Beltrando Costabili to Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, February 1, 1502. Archives of Modena: As quoted in History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages (1900), Ferdinand Gregorovius, George Bell & Sons, London, Volume 7, Part 2 (1497-1503), p. 486. http://books.google.com/books?id=kW1OAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA486&dq=%22often+told+him+that+Rome+is+a+free+city%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PQRlUeiiBIPA9QT4s4H4CA&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22often%20told%20him%20that%20Rome%20is%20a%20free%20city%22&f=false See also L. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol.6, p. 12. http://books.google.com/books?id=hk1DAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA112&dq=%22told+him+that+Rome+is+a+free+city%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ojZlUeS7Dob49QTTn4HQBw&ved=0CEUQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22told%20him%20that%20Rome%20is%20a%20free%20city%22&f=false. (Commonweal writes: “Whatever his faults, the Pope appears to have been of a forgiving and clement disposition, pardoning foes when he had them in his power, and becoming reconciled with those who had bitterly opposed him. With Savonarola — pulpit methods, by the way, were scarcely as novel and extraordinary then as our author (Peter de Roo) thinks — Alexander VI dealt on the whole rather patiently, more so, indeed, than our author, who is hardly fair to the friar.” -- Commonweal (1924), Commonweal Publishing Company, volume 1, p. 185. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=Whatever+his+faults%2C+the+Pope+appears+to+have+been+of+a+forgiving+and+clement+disposition&btnG=#hl=en&tbm=bks&sclient=psy-ab&q=%22Whatever+his+faults%2C+the+Pope+appears+to+have+been+of+a+forgiving+and+clement+disposition%22&oq=%22Whatever+his+faults%2C+the+Pope+appears+to+have+been+of+a+forgiving+and+clement+disposition%22&gs_l=serp.3...1287.1287.1.1562.1.1.0.0.0.0.79.79.1.1.0...0.0...1c.1.8.psy-ab.VnzmdIrn1SQ&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.44990110,d.eWU&fp=5b7686e7449457e7&biw=1294&bih=770)

Death , People , Nature , Evil

“It is a frequent vice of radical polemic to assert, and even to believe, that once you have found the lowest motive for an antagonist, you have identified the correct one.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2004/04/hitchens.htm "Reactionary Prophet", The Atlantic, April 2004
2000s, 2004

Motivation

“It’s really a home. It’s not like the White House because there aren’t tours of the vice president’s residence. You don’t really go there unless someone invites you to go there. It’s really a warm kind of home. It’s like a Victorian home. It has a wrap-around porch. You can sit out on the porch and feel like you have some privacy. We’re pretty private and we’ve been living on Meridian Street where it’s right there. So I think we’re kind of looking forward to having a little bit of privacy there, or as much as you can get with cameras all around.”

Karen Pence (1958) First Lady of Indiana, schoolteacher

Karen Pence focuses on moving family forward amid hoopla http://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/20/karen-pence-focuses-moving-family-forward-amid-hoopla/96828962/ (January 20, 2017)

Feeling , Home , Thinking , Housing

“A person who thinks by images becomes less and less capable of thinking by reasoning, and vice versa. The intellectual process based on images is contradictory to the intellectual process of reasoning that is related to the word. There are two different ways of dealing with an object. They involve not only different approaches, but even more important, opposing mental attitudes. This is not a matter of complementary processes, such as analysis and synthesis or logic and dialectic. These processes lack any qualitative common denominator.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

J. Hanks, trans. (1985), p. 214
The Humiliation of the Word (1981)

Way , Thinking , Personality

“Each of us has that ember within him to create his own Camelot, to form his life by taste. Being different from the crowd, like quality, is not a vice. Tradition and standards shape shooting as surely as manners make the man.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

An Affair with Grouse (1982)

Life

“Beware of knowing your virtues; you may lose them. Beware of knowing your vices; you may forgive them.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#166
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Forgiveness

“The vice president has two duties. One is to inquire daily as to the health of the president, and the other is to attend the funerals of third world dictators. And neither of those do I find an enjoyable exercise.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

In response to question by Tim Russert on how he would respond if George W. Bush asked him to be his vice presidential running mate in 2000. Interview on Meet the Press. Originally aired 3 March 2000. Aired again as a clip 15 June 2008 ( transcript http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25171251/page/3/).
2000s

Health , World , Exercises

“I remember when you could always rely on those little street kids to pop a few people for the latest Nikes," Vice-President John said. "Now people get mugged for Reeboks, for Adidas — for generics, for Christ's sake.”

Max Barry book Jennifer Government

Source: Jennifer Government (2003), Chapter 1, page 5

People , Christ

“Survival—of the species of the culture of the faith—has a biological dimension. What would have befallen our Hominid ancestors had they implemented gender parity in their hunter-gatherer societies—sometimes the women hunt while the men forage and mind the kids, and vice versa?”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

" Emasculated West Primed For A Muscular, Muslim Takeover http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263677/emasculated-west-primed-muscular-muslim-takeover-ilana-mercer," FrontPage Magazine, July 29, 2016.
2010s, 2016

Women , Men , Faith

“I have found it; I have discovered the cause of all the misfortunes which befell him. A public school, Joseph, was the cause of all the calamaties which he afterwards suffered. Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality.”

Henry Fielding book Joseph Andrews

Abraham Adams, speaking of his host, Wilson.
Book III, Ch. 5
Joseph Andrews (1742)

School , Suffering

“Virtues are often conquered by vices, but their rout is most complete when it is inflicted by other virtues, more militant, more efficient, or more congenial.”

R. H. Tawney (1880–1962) English philosopher

Part IV, Ch. 2
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926)

“ONAELIA:You are like common beadles, apt to lash
Almost to death poor wretches not worth striking,
But fawn with slavish flattery on damned vices
So great men act them. You clap hands at those,
Where the true poet indeed doth scorn to gild
A gaudy tomb with glory of his verse,
Which coffins stinking carrion.”

Thomas Dekker The Noble Spanish Soldier

The Noble Spanish Soldier (1622)

Death , Men

“To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.”
Virtus est vitium fugere et sapientia prima stultitia caruisse.

Horace book Epistles

Epistles (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)

Wisdom

“That the American, by temperament, worked to excess, was true; work and whiskey were his stimulants; work was a form of vice; but he never cared much for money or power after he earned them. The amusement of the pursuit was all the amusement he got from it.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Money

“If Vice President Al Gore advocated killing rabbits to see if women are pregnant and called it a step forward for science, we'd all think he'd gone 'round the bend. We don't need to do that sort of thing anymore, we'd say. We have better, kinder ways.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

The Washington Times, 1999 August 29
1990s

Women , Way , Thinking , Science

“The environment that nutures creative programmers kills management and marketing types - and vice versa.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

How Software Companies Die

“The aesthetics of painting were always in a state of development parallel to the development of painting itself. They influenced each other and vice versa. But all of the sudden, in that famous turn of the century [1900] a few people thought they could take the bull by the horns and invent an aesthetic beforehand. After immediately disagreeing with each other, they began to form all kinds of groups, each with the idea of freeing art... The question as they saw it, was not so much what you could paint, but what you could not paint. You could not paint a house or a tree or a mountain. It was then that the subject matter came into existence as something you ought not to have.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

De Kooning's speech 'What Abstract Art means to me' on the symposium 'What is Abstract At' - at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 5 February, 1951, n.p.
1950's

People , Art , Mountain , Idea

“To make everything yield to custom would be to do the greatest injustice. Were the judgments of mankind correct, custom would be regulated by the good. But it is often far otherwise in point of fact; for, whatever the many are seen to do, forthwith obtains the force of custom. But human affairs have scarcely ever been so happily constituted as that the better course pleased the greater number. Hence the private vices of the multitude have generally resulted in public error.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Prefatory Address, p. 23
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

Error

“Because Impudence is a Vice, it does not follow that Modesty is a Virtue; it is built upon Shame, a Passion in our Nature, and may be either Good or Bad according to the Actions perform'd from that Motive.”

Bernard Mandeville book The Fable of the Bees

Remark C, p. 65
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

Motivation , Nature , Passion

“Karma brings us ever back to rebirth, binds us to the wheel of births and deaths. Good Karma drags us back as relentlessly as bad, and the chain which is wrought out of our virtues holds as firmly and as closely as that forged from our vices.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Theosophical Review, Volume 17 http://books.google.co.in/books?id=nv8LAAAAIAAJ, p. 139
Source: https://www.theosophy.world/resource/ebooks/karma-annie-besant Karma

Birth , Death

“To be considered stupid and to be told so is more painful than being called gluttonous, mendacious, violent, lascivious, lazy, cowardly: every weakness, every vice, has found its defenders, its rhetoric, its ennoblement and exaltation, but stupidity hasn’t.”

Primo Levi book Other People's Trades

"The Irritable Chess-Players"
Other People's Trades (1985)

Pain , Stupidity

“Our virtues are most frequently but vices in disguise.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Nos vertus ne sont, le plus souvent, que de vices déguisés.
Epigraph. Note: "This epigraph, which is the key to the system of La Rochefoucauld, is found in another form as No. 179 of the Maxims of the first edition, 1665; it is omitted from the second and third, and reappears for the first time in the fourth edition at the head of the Reflections". Aime Martin, editor, Bartlett's Quotations, 1919 edition.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

“The episode in Sodom is undoubtedly the earliest account in human history of the entrapment of homosexuals, a strategy widely practiced by the law enforcement agencies of modern Western countries, especially those of the United States. In effect, the men of Sodom were entrapped by two strangers, who in truth were not travelers but angels, that is to say, God’s plain-clothesmen. These agents of the Biblical vice-squad wasted no time punishing the offenders.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1997), p. 162.

Men , God , Truth , Law

“Those of you who have visited Oxford know what a busy, crowded, noisy place it now is and you might perhaps not guess that it was a university town if it were not that, now and then, the traffic is halted while the Vice-Chancellor, preceded by his two mace-bearers, crosses the street. It must be one of the few places left in the world where self-assertion, covetousness, and the whole world of the combustion engine must come to a halt because somebody distinguished for his intelligence is going about his business.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Lewis Carroll in the Theatre (1994)

World , Intelligence , Business , Universe

“I suppose the implication of that is the president and the vice president and myself and Colin Powell just fell off a turnip truck to take these jobs.”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

In response to Jeffrey Goldberg's question to comment on accusations that the "Jewish lobby" maneuvered the administration into war. The New Republic, October 8, 2007. http://www.tnr.com/toc/story.html?id=523b5134-8643-4f5e-a314-ac9b8a786b16&p=13
2000s

“It were once clearly understood, that it was not disreputable for married persons to avail themselves of such precautionary means as would, without being injurious to health, or destructive of female delicacy, prevent conception, a sufficient check might at once be given to the increase of population beyond the means of subsistence; vice and misery, to a prodigious extent, might be removed from society, and the object of Mr. Malthus, Mr. Godwin, and of every philanthropic person, be promoted, by the increase of comfort, of intelligence, and of moral conduct, in the mass of the population.”

Francis Place (1771–1854) English social reformer

Source: Illustrations and Proofs of the Principle of Population. 1822, p. 122

Health , Intelligence , Personality

“The most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Life of Alexander
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Men

“The Turkish and Greek tyrants had reduced the Bulgarian people to the lowest level of human culture, but their Bulgarians could not root out. Under the consciousness of the people there were still embryos of national sense. The Bulgarian people realized that it was a people and had its own independent state and even managed to win its people's church. Russia freed a part of the Bulgarian people. The liberated Bulgarians were called for autonomous rule, but they were divided into two divisions … One of them, called Slavophiles, was of the opinion that Bulgaria should be placed under Russia's protectorate because it could not be itself ruled … The other party, which was called patriots, was for an independent Bulgaria. The fierce struggles between these two parties fill the history of Bulgaria from liberation to the world war. Russophiles grew up with various modern trends, such as Communists, Socialists, and other truths that did not give birth to tobacco and native tobacco. Fatherland was considered a vice for backwardness. It's hard for him to say he's a patriot.”

Gancho Tsenov (1870–1949) Bulgarian historian

Source: Ziezi ex quo Vulgares, "Забравеният д-р Ганчо Ценов" http://ziezi.net/cenov.html

War , People , Truth , World

“It appears that soon after the introduction of bowling-alleys they were productive of very evil consequences; for they became not only exceedingly numerous, but were often attached to places of public resort, which rendered them the receptacles of idle and dissolute persons; and were the means of promoting a pernicious spirit of gambling among the younger and most unwary part of the community. The little room required for making these bowling-alleys was no small cause of their multiplication, particularly in great towns and cities. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries these nurseries of vice were universally decried, and especially such of them as were established within the city and suburbs of London, where the ill effects arising from them were most extensive.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 269
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Bowling alleys

Communication , Universe , Appearance , Evil

“743. As Virtue is its own Reward, so Vice is its own Punishment.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“Joe Biden would probably be running a Denny's if he wasn't Vice President.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

citation needed

“Alas, the vices of man, as horrifying as they are presumed to be, contain proof (if only in their infinite expansiveness!) of his bent for the infinite.”

Charles Baudelaire book Les Paradis artificiels

Hélas! les vices de l’homme, si pleins d’horreur qu’on les suppose, contiennent la preuve (quand ce ne serait que leur infinie expansion!) de son goût de l’infini.
"Le poème du haschisch," I: Le goût de l’infini http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Paradis_artificiels_-_I
Les paradis artificiels (1860)

“I demand of you, and of the whole world, that you show me a generic character—one that is according to generally accepted principles of classification, by which to distinguish between Man and Ape. I myself most assuredly know of none. …But, if I had called man an ape, or vice versa, I should have fallen under the ban of all the ecclesiastics. It may be that as a naturalist I ought to have done so.”

Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist

Letter to J. G. Gmelin (1747) as quoted by Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species (1999)

World

“Whilst that for which all virtue now is sold,
And almost every vice — almighty gold.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

Epistle to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland, lines 1-2. Comparable to "The flattering, mighty, nay, almighty gold", John Wolcot, To Kien Long, Ode iv; "Almighty dollar", Washington Irving, The Creole Village.
The Works of Ben Jonson, First Folio (1616), The Forest

“I want to reassure the American people that the full resources of the federal government are working to assist local authorities to save lives and to help the victims of these attacks. Make no mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.
I've been in regular contact with the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the national security team and my Cabinet. We have taken all appropriate security precautions to protect the American people. Our military at home and around the world is on high alert status, and we have taken the necessary security precautions to continue the functions of your government.
We have been in touch with the leaders of Congress and with world leaders to assure them that we will do whatever is necessary to protect America and Americans.
I ask the American people to join me in saying a thanks for all the folks who have been fighting hard to rescue our fellow citizens and to join me in saying a prayer for the victims and their families.”

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

Remarks Upon Arrival at Barksdale Air Force Base https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Remarks_Upon_Arrival_at_Barksdale_Air_Force_Base (11 September, 2001)
2000s, 2001

People , World , Family , Home

“Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Adversity
Essays (1625)

“…vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!”

Charles Dickens book Dombey and Son

Source: Dombey and Son (1846-1848), Ch. 48

“When we reflect upon the brutal vices of these salt-water bandits, pirates as shameful as any whom the sea has borne, or recoil from their villainous destruction and cruel deeds, we must also remember the discipline, the fortitude, the comradeship and martial virtues which made them at this period beyond all challenge the most formidable and daring race in the world.”

Winston S. Churchill book A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

On The Vikings, Vol I; The Birth of Britain.
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–58)

World , Water , Sea

“But they say, "It is not so much the Dreadnoughts we object to, it is pensions". If they objected to pensions, why did they promise them? They won elections on the strength of their promises. It is true they never carried them out. Deception is always a pretty contemptible vice, but to deceive the poor is the meanest of all.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), p. 145.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

“…except for the NCERT experts who specialise in making molehills of mountains, and vice versa.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

Mountain

“Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

Source: An Autobiography (1883), Ch. 5

“Here's a rule I recommend. Never practice two vices at once.”

Tallulah Bankhead (1902–1968) American actress

On drinking impacting her gambling abilities
Tallulah: My Autobiography (1952)

“Those in whom anger or desire or any other passion, or again any insidious vice holds sway, are entirely enslaved, while all whose life is regulated by law are free. And right reason is an infallible law engraved not by this mortal or that and, therefore, perishable as he, nor on parchment slabs, and, therefore, soulless as they, but by immortal nature on the immortal mind, never to perish.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

45.
Every Good Man is Free

Life , Law , Nature , Passion

“… He is not very sharp in some ways; and in his simple view of the world, paederasts are dangerous only to powder-monkeys and choir boys, or to those epicene creatures that are to be found in Mediterranean brothels. I made circuitous attempt at enlightening him a little, but he looked very knowing and said, 'Don't tell me about rears and vices; I have been in the Navy all my life.'"
"Then surely he must be wanting a little in penetration?”

Patrick O'Brian book Master and Commander

"James, I trust there was no mens rea in that remark?"
Master and Commander (1970) ("rears and vices" is O'Brian's homage to Jane Austen's Mansfield Park)

Life , World , Way , Boy

“57: It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

Change

“I'm out there on my own this season as a ball player. Right now, I don't think the fans care anything about me being a vice-president of the club or what I would do as a manager. That's all out this season. It's the old Babe on the old job—a ball player. It has been the only job I ever knew. It was the only job that put me where I happen to be right now. I'd rather make good as a ball player this season than anything I ever did. I'm not kidding myself. I'm not going to be any Tris Speaker in that outfield. The old dogs are going to do a lot of barking. But they've barked before. And you know—a barking dog seldom bites.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

As quoted in "'Never Happier in My Life' Ruth Tells Grantland Rice..."

Dogs , Thinking , Season

“The Jew can take the credit for having corrupted the Graeco-Roman world. Previously words were used to express thoughts; he used words to invent the art of disguising thoughts. Lies are his strength, his weapon in the struggle. The Jew is said to be gifted. His only gift is that of juggling with other people's property and swindling each and everyone. Suppose I find by chance a picture that I believe to be a Titian. I tell the owner what I think of it, and I offer him a price. In a similar case, the Jew begins by declaring that the picture is valueless, he buys it for a song and sells it at a profit of 5000 per cent. To persuade people that a thing which has value, has none, and vice versa—that's not a sign of intelligence. They can't even overcome the smallest economic crisis!”

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

5 November 1941.
Disputed, Hitler's Table Talks (1941-1944) (published 1953)

People , World , Art , Intelligence

“I made a mistake. I underestimated the influence of Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and the rest of the neocons; I vastly underestimated their disingenuousness and incompetence. So George W. Bush went to war again, and just the way the neocons wanted him to- without significant international backing.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 342
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

War , Way

“Wisdom is not to be found in the art of oratory, or in great books, but in a withdrawal from these sensible things and in a turning to the most simple and infinite forms. You will learn how to receive it into a temple purged from all vice, and by fervent love to cling to it until you may taste it and see how sweet That is which is all sweetness. Once this has been tasted, all things which you now consider as important will appear as vile, and you will be so humbled that no arrogance or other vice will remain in you. Once having tasted this wisdom, you will inseparably adhere to it with a chaste and pure heart. You will choose rather to forsake this world and all else that is not of this wisdom, and living with unspeakable happiness you will die.”

Nicholas of Cusa book De Docta Ignorantia

De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance) (1440)

Love , Wisdom , Books , World

“To sleep with a woman: it can seem of the utmost importance in your mind, or then again it can seem like nothing much at all. Which only goes to say that there's sex as therapy (self-therapy, that is) and there's sex as pastime. There's sex for self-improvement start to finish and there's sex for killing time straight through; sex that is therapeutic at first only to end up as nothing-better-to-do, and vice versa. Our human sex life- how shall I put it?- differs fundamentally from the sex life of a whale. We are not whales- and this constitutes one great theme underscoring our sex lives.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 4: The Whale's Penis and the Woman with Three Occupations

Life , Sex , Sleep , Time

“From the point of view of semantics, errors must be accidents: if in the extension of "horse" there are no cows, then it cannot be required for the meaning of "horse" that cows be called horses. On the other hand, if "horse" did not mean that which it means, and if it were an error for horses, it would never be possible for a cow to be called "horse." Putting the two things together, it can be seen that the possibility of falsely saying "this is a horse" presupposes the existence of a semantic basis for saying it truly, but not vice versa. If we put this in terms of the crude causal theory, the fact that cows cause one to say "horse" depends on the fact that horses cause one to say "horse"; but the fact that horses cause one to say "horse" does not depend on the fact that cows cause one to say "horse"…”

Jerry Fodor (1935–2017) American philosopher

Fodor (1990). A Theory of Content and Other Essays. The MIT Press.

Error , Horse , Dependency , Falseness

“For years I thought that what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country. Our contribution to the nation is considerable.”

Charles Erwin Wilson (1890–1961) American secretary of Defence

Charles E. Wilson (1952) in: Confirmation hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee, responding to Sen. Robert Hendrickson's question regarding conflicts of interest. Quoted in Safire's Political Dictionary (1978) by William Safire.

Country

“Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet— the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Attributed

Nature

“A year ago my approval rating was in the 30s, my nominee for the Supreme Court had just withdrawn, and my vice president had shot someone. Ah, those were the good ol' days.”

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

Radio and Television Correspondents' Association dinner, March 28, 2007
Bush delivers punch lines, Associated Press (via MSNBC.com), March 29, 2007, 2007-03-31 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17846185/,
2000s, 2007

“What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.”

Samuel Gompers (1850–1924) American Labor Leader[AFL]

The Shoe workers' journal, Volume 16‎ (1915) p. 4
Variant: What does labor want? We want more school houses and less jails. More books and less guns. More learning and less vice. More leisure and less greed. More justice and less revenge. We want more … opportunities to cultivate our better natures.

Books , Justice , Revenge , Nature

“The philosophers have always given truth a bill of divorce, by separating what nature has joined together and vice versa.”

Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) German philosopher

Sämtliche Werken, ed. Josef Nadler (1949-1957), vol. III, p. 40.

Truth , Nature

“Rolfe's vice was spiritual more than it was carnal: it might be said that he was a pander and a swindler, because he cared for nothing but his faith. He would be a priest or nothing, so nothing it had to be…If he could not have Heaven, he would have Hell, and the last footprints seem to point unmistakably towards the Inferno.”

Frederick Rolfe (1860–1913) British writer, photographer and historian

Graham Greene "Frederick Rolfe: Edwardian Inferno" (1934); cited from Collected Essays (New York: The Viking Press, 1969) p. 175
Criticism

Faith , Hell

“Andrej’s mind, like any sane human’s … was a constantly convulsing dialectical unity of consciousness and subconsciousness, the battening down and channelling of dreams and desires, the recurring re-creation of the subliminal by the contradictory, the rational-capricious ego. And vice versa. The interaction of levels of consciousness into an unstable and permanently self-renewing whole.”

China Miéville book Perdido Street Station

Source: Perdido Street Station (2000), p. 553

Dreams

“We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

As quoted in Thesaurus of Epigrams: A New Classified Collection of Witty Remarks, Bon Mots and Toasts (1942) by Edmund Fuller

“As I understand it, the benefits of multiculturalism are that the sterile white-bread cultures of Britain, Canada and Australia get some great ethnic restaurants and a Commonwealth Games opening ceremony that lasts until two in the morning. But in the case of those Muslim ghettoes — in Sydney, in Oslo, in Paris, Copenhagen and Manchester — multiculturalism means that the worst attributes of Muslim culture — the subjugation of women — combine with the worst attributes of Western culture — licence and self-gratification. Tattoed, pierced Pakistani skinhead gangs swaggering down the streets of Northern England are as much a product of multiculturalism as the turban-wearing Sikh Mountie in the vice-regal escort at Rideau Hall. Yet even in the face of the crudest assaults on its most cherished causes — women's rights and gay rights — the political elite turns squeamishly away.”

Mark Steyn (1959) Canadian writer

Battered Westerner Syndrome inflicted by myopic Muslim defenders (2002)

Women , Game , Understanding

“George W. Bush revels in being a war president. His campaign is shamelessly exploiting the fears generated by 9/11. Vice President Cheney is conjuring mushroom clouds into our cities. But fear is a bad counselor; we must resist it wherever it comes from. President Roosevelt had the right idea when he said, "We have nothing to fear but Fear itself."”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Speech at the National Press Club (2004)

War , Fear , Idea

“The portrait I have to paint is of…an ambiguous character, a mixture of virtues and vices, a perpetual contrast between good impulses and bad actions.”

Antoine François Prévost (1697–1763) French novelist

J'ai à peindre…un caractère ambigu, un mélange de vertus et de vices, un contraste perpétuel de bons sentiments et d'actions mauvaises.
Avis de l'auteur, p. 30; translation p. 3.
L'Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (1731)

Painting

“If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say "give them up," for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.”

Robert Louis Stevenson book Across the Plains

Source: Across the Plains (1892), Ch. XII, A Christmas Sermon.

People , Dependency

“Even the blandest (or bluffest) “scholarly work” fears getting into trouble: less with the adversaries whose particular attacks it keeps busy anticipating than through what, but for the spectacle of this very activity, might be perceived as an overall lack of authorization. It is as though, unless the work at once assumed its most densely professional form, it would somehow get unplugged from whatever power station (the academy, the specialization) enables it to speak. Nothing expresses—or allays—this separation anxiety better than the protocol requiring an introduction to “situate” the work within its institutional and discursive matrix. The same nervous ritual that attests a positive dread of being asocial — of failing to furnish the proper authorities with one’s papers, and vice versa — places these possibilities at an infinite remove from a writing whose thorough assimilation, courted from the start, makes it too readable to need to be read much further.”

D. A. Miller (1948) American literary critic

The Novel and the Police (1988), p. vii

Fear , Business , Reading

“These are the two vices that beset Government Offices; both of them originating in insufficient Intellect,—that sad insufficiency from which, directly or indirectly, all evil whatsoever springs!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Downing Street (April 1, 1850)

Sadness , Spring , Evil

“How many of you watched the vice presidential debate expecting Sarah Palin to screw up? Be honest. [cheers and applause] : And how many of you watched the debate expecting Joe Biden to screw up? [more cheers and applause] : And how many of you watched the baseball game knowing the Cubs would screw up?”

Jay Leno (1950) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, voice actor and television host

more applause
Monologue, 6 October, 2008
The Tonight Show

Game

“Just as, in at least one religion, accidie is the first of the cardinal sins, so boredom, and particularly the incredible circumstance of waking up bored, was the only vice Bond utterly condemned.”

Ian Fleming book From Russia, with Love

Source: From Russia with Love (1957), Ch. 11 : The Soft Life

Religion

“Don't talk about my moms yo, sometimes he rhyme quick sometimes he rhyme slow, or vice versa. Whip up a slice o' nice verse pie, hit it on the first try, Villain…the worst guy.”

MF Doom (1971) hip hop artist from America

As Madvillain, "ALL CAPS", Madvillainy (2004)
Sourced Lines

Guy , Moms

“No doubt my poetry errs on the side of oddness. I hope in time to have a more balanced and Miltonic style. But as air, melody, is what strikes me most of all in music, and design in painting, so design, pattern, or what I am in the habit of calling inscape is what I above all aim at in poetry. Now it is the virtue of design, pattern, or inscape to be distinctive, and it is the vice of distinctiveness to become queer. This vice I cannot have escaped.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

Letter to Robert Bridges (15 February 1879)
Letters, etc

Hope , Music , Time , Painting

“Anarchism does not mean bloodshed; it does not mean robbery, arson, etc. These monstrosities are, on the contrary, the characteristic features of capitalism. Anarchism, or Socialism, means the re-organization of society upon scientific principles and the abolition of causes which produce vice and crime.”

August Spies (1855–1887) American upholsterer, radical labor activist, and newspaper editor

Spies (1887 cited in: Lucy Eldine Parsons, August Vincent Theodore Spies (1969) Famous Speeches of the Eight Chicago Anarchists. p. 22

“All these books were written by idle, unoccupied, ignorant men, the slaves of vice and filth. I wonder what it is that delights us in these books unless it be that we are attracted by indecency. Learning is not to be expected from authors who never saw even a shadow of learning. As for their story-telling, what pleasure is to be derived from the things they invent, full of lies and stupidity?”
Quos omnes libros conscripserunt homines otiosi, male feriati, imperiti, vitiis ac spurcitiae dediti, in queis miror quid delectet nisi tam nobis flagitia blandirentur. Eruditio non est exspectanda ab hominibus qui ne umbram quidem eruditionis viderant. Iam cum narrant, quae potest esse delectatio in rebus quas tam aperte et stulte confingunt?

Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540) Spanish philosopher

De Institutione Feminae Christianae (1523), trans. by C. Fantazzi (1996), Vol. I, p. 47.

Men , Pleasure , Books , Stupidity

“There's a reason the left's rhetoric bears such a striking resemblance to some of the nuttier religions: Abhorring real religions, liberals refuse to condemn what societies have condemned for thousands of years — e. g., promiscuity, divorce, illegitimacy, homosexuality. Consequently the normal human instinct to condemn something bubbles up against a legion of quite modern vices, such as smoking, fur, red meat, excessive consumption, and land development.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Source: 2002, Slander : Liberal Lies About the American Right (2002), p. 247.

Religion

“Bodies have men as their masters, souls their vices and passions.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

17.
Every Good Man is Free

Men , Soul , Passion

“Hillary Clinton said she'd consider naming Barack Obama as her vice president when she gets the nomination, but she's nowhere near a shoo-in.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

About the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries in audio released by the Journal. As quoted in Donald Trump Once Said Hillary Clinton Would Make A 'Good President' http://time.com/4402522/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-good-president/ (July 12, 2016) by Tara John, The Times.
2000s

“One of the most popular superstitions consists in the belief that every man is endowed with definite qualities—that some men are kind, some wicked; some wise, some foolish; some energetic, some apathetic, etc. This is not true. We may say of a man that he is oftener kind than wicked; oftener wise than foolish; oftener energetic than apathetic, and vice versa. But it would not be true to say of one man that he is always kind or wise, and of another that he is always wicked or foolish. And yet we thus divide people. This is erroneous. Men are like rivers—the water in all of them, and at every point, is the same, but every one of them is now narrow, now swift, now wide, now calm, now clear, now cold, now muddy, now warm. So it is with men. Every man bears within him the germs of all human qualities, sometimes manifesting one quality, sometimes another; and often does not resemble himself at all, manifesting no change. With some people these changes are particularly sharp. And to this class Nekhludoff belonged.”

Leo Tolstoy book Resurrection

Source: Resurrection (1899), Ch. 57

Men , People , Water , Change

“Those sculptur'd halls my feet shall never tread,
Where varnish'd vice and vanity combin'd,
To dazzle and seduce, their banners spread,
And forge vile shackles for the free-born mind.”

Tobias Smollett (1721–1771) 18th-century poet and author from Scotland

Ode to Independence, antistrophe 3.

“Avarice is the vice of declining years.”

George Bancroft (1800–1891) American historian and statesman

Vol. 1, ch. 13, p. 484
A History of the United States (1834-74)

“So she was Greek, was she?’ said Sir Benjamin. ‘Well, well. I suppose the new vice laws are driving some of them out of Soho. Driving them down here,’ he said, as though a whole new world were opening up. ‘Well.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Eve of St. Venus (1964)

World , Law

“Amid the general anarchy, against the coarse vice and brutality of the barbarians, herself harried by the rapacity of the nobles and weakened by the ignorance and barbarism of her own clergy, the Church did what she could, but a thorough social reconstruction was impossible. In modern life her power is broken by the prevalent doubt and apostasy, and the current of materialism and mammonism is now too great to be stemmed.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 146

Life

“The weak, when they have authority, surround themselves with the weak. It is, indeed, a vice of rulers that men who have exceptional ability and worth are offensive to them, since they whose greatness is due to their position find it difficult to love those whom inner power makes great.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)

Love , Men

“Life at Papeete soon became a burden.It was Europe, the Europe which I had thought to shake off — and that under the aggravating circumstances of colonial snobbism, and the imitation, grotesque even to the point of caricature, of our customs, fashions, vices, and absurdities of civilization.Was I to have made this far journey, only to find the very thing which I had fled?”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Quote from Noa Noa ,(1893) [Dover, 1985, ISBN 0-486-24859-3], p. 2.
1890s - 1910s

Life , Fashion

“While discussing the merits of djbdns over BIND (2004):
Niek: "Bind people don't ack djb points and vice versa."
Paul Vixie: i don't ack djb's existence, not merely his 'points.'”

Paul Vixie (1963) American internet pioneer

NANOG mailing list http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.operators.nanog/30687

People

“It has also been said that your Education has been a failure no matter how much it has done for you, if it has failed to open your heart. Dr. Zakir Hussain, when Vice-Chancellor of the Aligarh University, said, that the aim of Education was that students should become responsible citizens and not merely bundles of styles and sophistication like articles in a furniture shop – the product now being churned out lacks even that saving grace….. The old system may have produced 'snobs' what is being spewed out now are 'slobs'. The young student in Indian Schools is being smothered under a dead weight of books and notes dealing with a host of subjects imaginable and unimaginable. Busy cramming from morning till night and repeating parrot-like that he does not understand, he is fast becoming a literate moron. Initiative, leadership and education in the real sense of the term are encouraged only in a few public Schools.”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Teachers & Education

Books , Education , School , Imagination

“A good general rule is to state that the bouquet is better than the taste, and vice versa.”

Stephen Potter (1900–1969) British writer

One-Upmanship (1952) ch. 14
On wine-tasting.

“That character clearly saw no use for discipline, and just as clearly found his reward in the life of an outcast. The principles which he proclaimed could not lead in any other direction. Vice and misery were their natural and inevitable consequences. He refused to recognize or obey any authority, save his own material inclinations. He never rose above his appetites. Your Society stands as a protest against this attitude of mind.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

Life , Nature

“I don’t know if I would want him as vice president. He and I have the same strengths. But to serve in other capacities? Hell, yeah.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

In an interview to the Weekly Standard http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0608/11000.html regarding his interest in Dick Cheney serving in McCain's administration (2006)
2000s, 2006

Hell

“Vanity is a weakness. I know this. It's a shallow dependence on the exterior self, on how one looks instead of what one is. I know this well…Vanity and dishonesty may be vices, but they're also the first forms of protection I ever knew.”

Dennis Lehane book A Drink Before the War

Source: A Drink Before the War (1994), Ch. 7.

Dependency

“If young people are educated properly, we have moral order; if not, vice and disorder prevail. Religion alone can initiate and achieve a true education.”

John Bosco (1815–1888) Italian Roman Catholic priest, educator and writer

People , Education , Religion

“The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality, and the desire for achievement and success. They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 162

Success

““Are you sharpness personified?”
Khouri poured herself a few final sips of coffee and then left the rest of it on the stove for when she got back. Coffee was her only vice, one acquired in her soldiering days on the Edge. The trick was to reach a knife-edge of alertness, but not be so buzzing that she could not point the weapon without shaking.
“I think I’ve reduced the amount of blood in my caffeine system to an acceptable level, if that’s what you mean.””

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 2 (p. 27).

Coffee , Thinking

“To this period [age seven] I trace my worst faults. Indecision, for I found that by hesitating for a long time over two toys in a shop I would be given both and so was tempted to make two alternatives always seem equally attractive; Ingratitude, for I grew so used to having what I wanted that I assumed it as a right; Laziness, for sloth is the especial vice of tyrants; the Impatience with boredom that is generated by devotion; the Cruelty which comes from a knowledge of power and the Giving way to moods, for I learnt that sulking, crying, moping and malingering were bluffs that paid.”

Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 3: A Georgian Boyhood, Ch. 18: The Branching Ogham (p. 149)

Age , Way , Mood , Knowledge

“But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

July 14, 1763, p. 123
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

Thinking , Housing

“Human virtue, if we went down to the roots of it, is not so rare. The materials of human virtue are everywhere abundant as the light of the sun: raw materials,—O woe, and loss, and scandal thrice and threefold, that they so seldom are elaborated, and built into a result! that they lie yet unelaborated, and stagnant in the souls of wide-spread dreary millions, fermenting, festering; and issue at last as energetic vice instead of strong practical virtue!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Model Prisons (March 1, 1850)

Lie , Soul , Light , Strong

“Capitalism is being attacked not because it is inefficient or misgoverned but because it is cynical. And indeed a society based on the assertion that private vices become public benefits cannot endure, no matter how impeccable its logic, no matter how great its benefits.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 392

“…Hunt asked me the question one week before the campaign, and basically it was, are you going to do something about Rumsfeld and the Vice President? And my answer was, they're going to stay on. And the reason why is I didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign. And so the only way to answer that question and to get you on to another question was to give you that answer.”

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

The President's reasoning for telling reporters in the Oval Office that the current Defense Secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, would be staying on, although Bush had already selected potential replacements. Given at a news conference http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/11/20061108-2.html (November 8, 2006)
2000s, 2006

War , Way , Question , Decision

“To elevate every desire, however obscene, into a good because it is desired may be the way of all flesh, but it is not the way of the Cross. And the moral anarchy which is said to pervade our youth…is not going to be countered by lowering the demands of religion, but by insisting on them. The notion that to enlist the support and enthusiasm of youth it is necessary to condone their vices is entirely to misjudge them, and to forfeit their respect. The churches are much more likely to fail in the long run because they demand too little than because they demand too much of human nature. The real tragedy of the position in which the young find themselves to-day arises from the collapse of the orthodoxy of past generations, and the failure to replace it by a confident coherent faith applicable to the conditions of to-day. Principles may be eternal, but their embodiment must be temporal.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the annual assembly of the Congregational Union, London (12 May 1931), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 83-84.
1931

Youth , Faith , Religion , Way

Quotes about vice page 3

Quotes about vice
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