Quotes about victim
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Arthur Miller photo

“It is always and forever the same struggle: to perceive somehow our own complicity with evil is a horror not to be borne. … much more reassuring to see the world in terms of totally innocent victims and totally evil instigators of the monstrous violence we see all about us. At all costs, never disturb our innocence.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

"With respect for Her Agony — but with Love" in LIFE magazine (7 February 1964)
Context: It is always and forever the same struggle: to perceive somehow our own complicity with evil is a horror not to be borne. … much more reassuring to see the world in terms of totally innocent victims and totally evil instigators of the monstrous violence we see all about us. At all costs, never disturb our innocence. But what is the most innocent place in any country? Is it not the insane asylum? These people drift through life truly innocent, unable to see into themselves at all. The perfection of innocence, indeed, is madness.

Alejandro Jodorowsky photo

“We forgive ourselves because no one is guilty. Generation after generation, each one is victim to the one before. We end up with many centuries of being victims, but in the end you understand that there is no reason for resentment.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)
Context: Family hurts us, it is like a trap, it shortens our life, it bothers us psychically and socioculturally, it forces us into a limited level of consciousness, it robs us of our essential self, it inculcates ideas in us that are not our own, and at the moment when we find ourselves in the world, all of this collapses and we have to build a life from scratch. We forgive ourselves because no one is guilty. Generation after generation, each one is victim to the one before. We end up with many centuries of being victims, but in the end you understand that there is no reason for resentment.

Desiderius Erasmus photo
Friedrich Dürrenmatt photo
Elie Wiesel photo
Frank Zappa photo
Teal Swan photo
Upton Sinclair photo

“Men of unlimited means live lives of unbridled lust, and then, in their old age, they are helpless victims of their own impulses.”

Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) American novelist, writer, journalist, political activist

https://books.google.com/books?id=CbfTjcDmA6gC&pg=RA1-PA26&lpg=RA1-PA26&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false The Book of Life (1921)

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Pope Francis photo

“(I) thank you for what you tell us about what is wrong in the Church, for helping us not to sweep it under the carpet, and for the voice you have given to the abuse victims," the pope said.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

2020s, 2021
Source: Quoted in Pope thanks journalists for helping expose Church sex scandals. Reuters 13 November 2021

Camille Paglia photo
Philip K. Dick photo
Robert J. Sawyer photo
Betty Friedan photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo

“In the end, life makes victims of us all.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

Haruki Murakami photo
Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Paulo Coelho photo

“You can either be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It all depends on how you view your life.”

Variant: I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It's all a question of how I view my life.
Source: Eleven Minutes (2003), p. 37.

Frank Herbert photo
E.M. Forster photo
Azar Nafisi photo
Yehuda Bauer photo

“Thou shall not be a perpetrator, thou shall not be a victim, and thou shall never, but never, be a bystander.”

Yehuda Bauer (1926) Israeli historian of the Holocaust

As quoted in The Legacy of the Holocaust (2011) by Jason Skog, p. 57.

Toni Morrison photo
Howard Zinn photo
Stephen Crane photo
Margaret Atwood photo
Samuel Butler photo
Aleister Crowley photo
Karen Marie Moning photo

“Sometimes, Ms. Lane,” he said, “one must break with one’s past to embrace one’s future. It is never
an easy thing to do. It is one of the distinguishing characteristics between survivors and victims.
Letting go of what was, to survive what is.”

Variant: Sometimes, Ms. Lane," he said, "one must break with one's past to embrace one's future. It is never an easy thing to do. It is one of the distinguishing characteristics between survivors and victims. Letting go of what was, to survive what is.
Source: Darkfever

Robin S. Sharma photo

“Victims recite problems, leaders provide solutions.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in Life
Variant: Victims recite problems. Leaders present solutions.

Ayn Rand photo

“Evil requires the sanction of the victim.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher
James Baldwin photo
Philip K. Dick photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Phyllis Schlafly photo
Salman Rushdie photo
Harvey Fierstein photo
John Boyne photo
Maya Angelou photo

“Never whine. Whining lets a brute know that a victim is in the neighborhood.”

Variant: Whining is not only graceless, but can be dangerous. It can alert a brute that a victim is in the neighborhood.
Source: Letter to My Daughter

Richard Bach photo

“If it's never our fault, we can't take responsibility for it. If we can't take responsibility for it, we'll always be its victim.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit (1994)

Robin S. Sharma photo

“Victim fall in love with excuses”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in Life

Meg Cabot photo

“The victimization of children is nowhere forbidden; what is forbidden is to write about it.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Source: Thou Shalt Not Be Aware : Society's Betrayal of the Child

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“If you don't want to be a victim, don't act like one.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Perfect Scoundrels

Elie Wiesel photo

“What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor but the silence of the bystander.”

In an interview with Carol Rittner and Sandra Meyers in Courage To Care - Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, NYU Press, 1986, p. 2. Also quoted by Yad Vashem http://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/about-the-program.html and Nicholas Kristoff in The Silence of the Bystanders https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/opinion/the-silence-of-bystanders.html, New York Times (March 19, 2006).
Source: Night

Osamu Dazai photo
Joseph Heller photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Karen Marie Moning photo
George Carlin photo
T.D. Jakes photo
Joshua Ferris photo
Dennis Lehane photo
Aldous Huxley photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Bret Easton Ellis photo
H.L. Mencken photo
Howard Zinn photo
Saul Williams photo

“i am like a survivor
of the flood
walking through the streets
drenched with
God
surprised that all of the
drowned victims
are still walking and talking”

Saul Williams (1972) American singer, musician, poet, writer, and actor

Source: , said the shotgun to the head.

Paulo Coelho photo
Jonathan Stroud photo
Carol Tavris photo

“History is written by the victors, but it's victims who write the memoirs.”

Carol Tavris (1944) American psychologist

Source: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

Joyce Carol Oates photo
Ayaan Hirsi Ali photo

“I would like to be judged on the validity of my arguments, not as a victim.”

Epilogue: The Letter of the Law
Source: Infidel (2007)

Alan Moore photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Rick Riordan photo
Karen Marie Moning photo
Borís Pasternak photo
Norman Vincent Peale photo
Tom Clancy photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“[Nonviolence] is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story

“No one can make you a victim but yourself.”

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (1984) Novelist

Source: The Den of Shadows Quartet

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. And this is one of the big problems of life, that so many people never quite get to the point of rising above self. And so they end up the tragic victims of self-centeredness. They end up the victims of distorted and disrupted personality.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Variants (Many of MLKs' speeches were delivered many times with slight variants): An Individual has not started living fully until they can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity. Every person must decide at some point, whether they will walk in light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment: Life's most persistent and urgent question is: 'What are you doing for others?'
As quoted in The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Coretta Scott King, Second Edition (2011), Ch. "Community of Man", p. 3
1950s, Conquering Self-centeredness (1957)

Edith Wharton photo
Alfred Hitchcock photo

“Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

Interview on CBS TV (20 February 1977).

“Most murders are committed by someone who is known to the victim. In fact, you are most likely to be murdered by a member of your own family on Christmas day.”

Mark Haddon (1962) English writer and illustrator

Source: The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time

Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Johnny Cash photo

“I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he's a victim of the times.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Man in Black ·  First public performance (17 February 1971) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t51MHUENlAQ
Song lyrics, Man in Black (1971)
Source: The Essential Johnny Cash

William Goldman photo
Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) photo
William H. McNeill photo
Craig Ferguson photo

“Another innocent victim of my pointless rage.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

citation needed
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005–2014), Commonly repeated

Frances Power Cobbe photo

“I could not bear it did I not believe in another life for the poor harmless victims where their wrongs will be recompensed, & I may add also in another life for their inhuman persecutors where they will all repent in moral agony worse than the physical pain of their poor victims.”

Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904) Irish writer, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist and leading suffragette

On vivisection. Quoted in Sally Mitchell, Frances Power Cobbe: Victorian Feminist, Journalist, Reformer (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2004), p. 348 https://books.google.it/books?id=eAaC5cVOuuoC&pg=PA348.