Impunity Quotes - Page 4

• As there are none so weak that we may venture to injure them with impunity, so there are none so low that they may not at some time be able to repay an obligation. Therefore, what benevolence would dictate, prudence would confirm.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  May, Venture, Able

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.37

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• Now, one cannot read nonsense with impunity.

  Victor Hugo

  Nonsense

  Victor Hugo (2016). “Les miserables”, p.205, Victor Hugo

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• It is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity.

  John Ruskin

  Work, Two, Healthy

  John Ruskin (2013). “The Stones of Venice -: The Sea Stories”, p.169, Cosimo, Inc.

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• No one provokes me with impunity.

  Mary, Queen of Scots

  Punishment, Provoking

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• One cannot with impunity try to transfer this task entirely to mechanical assistants if one wishes to figure something, even though the final result is often small indeed.

  Max Weber

  Wish, Trying, Tasks

  Max Weber (1968). “On Charisma and Institution Building”, p.295, University of Chicago Press

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• Rules such as "Write what you know," and "Show, don't tell," while doubtlessly grounded in good sense, can be ignored with impunity by any novelist nimble enough to get away with it. There is, in fact, only one rule in writing fiction: Whatever works, works.

  Tom Robbins

  Writing, Novelists, Fiction

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• The certainty of a God giving meaning to life far surpasses in attractiveness the ability to behave badly with impunity. The choice would not be hard to make. But there is no choice and that is where the bitterness comes in. The absurd does not liberate; it binds.

  Albert Camus

  Giving, Choices, Bitterness

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.67, Vintage

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• The great majority of us are required to live a constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected by it if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what bring brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn’t just a fiction, it’s part of our physical body, and our soul exists in space and is inside us, like teeth in our mouth. It can’t be forever violated with impunity.

  Boris Pasternak

  Life, Opposites, Duplicity

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• For women in my lifetime things have changed quite a bit, but not enough. They have only changed for women that have education and access to health care in the Western world. But look at the rest of the world. Still in many places, women are sold into premature marriages, prostitution, forced labor; they are forced to have children that they cannot support or that they don't want. They are abused, tortured, exploited and even killed with impunity.

  Isabel Allende

  Children, Support, Looks

  "Isabel Allende: Despite Terrorism, the World Is a Better Place Now Than Ever Before". Interview with Michael Skafidas, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 24, 2015.

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• Man is not an omipotent master of the universe, allowed to do with impunity whatever he thinks, or whatever suits him at the moment. The world we live in is made of an immensely complex and mysterious tissue about which we know very little and which we must treat with utmost humility.

  Vaclav Havel

  Humility, Men, Thinking

  "Rio and the New Millennium" by Vaclav Havel, www.nytimes.com. June 3, 1992.

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• As the most extravagant errors were received among the established articles of their faith, so the most infamous vices obtained in their practice, and were indulged not only with impunity, but authorized by the sanction of their laws.

  David Brainerd

  Errors, Law, Practice

  David Brainerd (1818). “The Life of the Rev. David Brainerd, Missionary to the Indians: From the Honourable Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge; who Died at Northampton in New England, Oct. 9, 1747 ...”, p.473

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• He sighed. It had come to this. He was a responsible authority, and people could use terms like "core values" at him with impunity.

  Terry Pratchett

  People, Use, Authority

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• THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely, settled --but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Revenge, Ideas, Soul

  Edgar Allan Poe (1984). “Poetry and Tales”, p.848, Library of America

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• I am strongly of the opinion that, after the age of twenty-one, a man ought not to be out of bed and awake at four in the morning. The hour breeds thought. At twenty-one, life being all future, it may be examined with impunity. But, at thirty, having become an uncomfortable mixture of future and past, it is a thing to be looked at only when the sun is high and the world full of warmth and optimism.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Morning, Past, Insomnia

  P. G. Wodehouse (2011). “The Little Nugget”, p.40, The Floating Press

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• there is a God, there always has been. I see him here, in the eyes of the people in this [hospital] corridor of desperation. This is the real house of God, this is where those who have lost God will find Him... there is a God, there has to be, and now I will pray, I will pray that He will forgive that I have neglected Him all of these years, forgive that I have betrayed, lied, and sinned with impunity only to turn to Him now in my hour of need. I pray that He is as merciful, benevolent, and gracious as His book says He is.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Faith, Real, Book

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• One cannot use with impunity the different categories of beings-animals, plants, the natural elements-simply as one wishes, according to economic needs. One must take into account the nature of each being and its mutual connection in an ordered system, which is the cosmos.

  Pope John Paul II

  Animal, Environmental, Wish

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• The North American Church is at a critical juncture. The gospel of grace is being confused and compromised by silence, seduction, and outright subversion. The vitality of the faith is being jeopardized. The lying slogans of the fixers who carry religion like a sword of judgment pile up with impunity. Let ragamuffins everywhere gather as a confessing Church to cry out in protest. Revoke the licenses of religious leaders who falsify the idea of God. Sentence them to three years in solitude with the Bible as their only companion.

  Brennan Manning

  Religious, Confused, Lying

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• People do not read stupidities with impunity.

  Victor Hugo

  Stupid, People, Stupidity

  Victor Hugo (1994). “Les Miserables Volume One”, p.105, Wordsworth Editions

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• Any nose may ravage with impunity a rose.

  Robert Browning

  Flower, Rose, Noses

  'Sordello' (1840) bk. 6, l. 881

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• It is above all in the present democratic age that the true friends of liberty and human grandeur must remain constantly vigilant and ready to prevent the social power from lightly sacrificing the particular rights of a few individuals to the general execution of its designs. In such times there is no citizen so obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed, and there are no individual rights so unimportant that they can be sacrificed to arbitrariness with impunity.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  True Friend, Sacrifice, Rights

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• The federal government is a machine designed to increase its control over the lives of average Americans. It is constantly probing here, pushing there, and generally increasing its control. Without a philosophically sound, constitutionally based political party opposing that process, it is going to continue to do so with impunity.

  Ed Crane

  Party, Government, Average

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• My father was a Little League dictator. That really affected me, his control-freakery, his impunity, his arbitrary unreasonable power.

  Junot Diaz

  Father, League, Arbitrary

  Interview with Meghan O'Rourke, www.slate.com. April 8, 2008.

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• There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.

  Denis Diderot

  Men, Literature, May

  Denis Diderot (1966). “Selected Writings”, New York : Macmillan

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• At a time of such hope and optimism in the Middle East, we cannot let the Libyan government violate every principle of international law and human rights with impunity.

  William Hague

  Rights, Government, Law

  "Libya air strikes". Live coverage of the continuing military action in Libya, www.theguardian.com. March 22, 2011.

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• Never, ever deal with terrorists. Hunt them down and, more important, mercilessly punish those states and groups that fund, arm, support, or simply allow their territories to be used by the terrorists with impunity.

  Meir Kahane

  Support, Important, Groups

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