Damn Quotes

• Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
  Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn'd,
  Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,
  Be thy intents wicked, or charitable,
  Thou com'st in such a questionable shape,
  That I will speak to thee.

  William Shakespeare

  Angel, Air, Heaven

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 1, sc. 4, l. 39

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• I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

  Mark Twain

  Book, Beer, Men

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• Cape Town's beaches are superb and while the water on the Atlantic side is damn cold, it's very pleasant on the other side. Bring your golf clubs if you play - Cape Town has some fabulous golf courses.

  Wilbur Smith

  Beach, Golf, Play

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• Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

  Clark Gable

  Movie, Badass, Wind

  "Fictional character: Rhett Butler". "Gone with the Wind", 1939.

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• When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun.'

  Groucho Marx

  Funny, Friendship, Witty

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• Old breed? New breed? There's not a damn bit of difference so long as it's the Marine breed.

  Chesty Puller

  Marine, Differences, Long

  Speech by Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta, Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, archive.defense.gov. August 10, 2012.

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• Ideas are somewhat like babies - they are born small, immature, and shapeless. They are promise rather than fulfillment. In the innovative company executives do not say, "This is a damn-fool idea." Instead they ask, "What would be needed to make this embryonic, half-baked, foolish idea into something that makes sense, that is an opportunity for us?"

  Peter Drucker

  Baby, Opportunity, Ideas

  "The Frontiers of Management". Book by Peter F. Drucker, 1986.

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• If countries were named after the words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called Damn It.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Country, Firsts, England

  "Aphorisms" by Georg C. Lichtenberg, "Notebook F", (F 33), 1776-1779.

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• A theory that you can't explain to a bartender is probably no damn good.

  Ernest Rutherford

  Bartender, Theory, Damn Good

  "The Language of God". Book by Francis Collins, p. 60, 2006.

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• You simply keep putting down one damn word after the other, as you hear them, as they come to you. You can either set brick as a laborer or as an artist.

  Anne Lamott

  Writing, Artist, Bricks

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.236, Anchor

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• I compelled myself all through to write an exercise in verse, in a different form, every day of the year. I turned out my page every day, of some sort - I mean I didn't give a damn about the meaning, I just wanted to master the form - all the way from free verse, Walt Whitman, to the most elaborate of villanelles and ballad forms. Very good training. I've always told everybody who has ever come to me that I thought that was the first thing to do.

  Conrad Aiken

  Mean, Writing, Exercise

  "Conrad Aiken, The Art of Poetry No. 9". Interview with Robert Hunter Wilbur in September 1963, "The Paris Review", www.theparisreview.org. Winter - Spring 1968.

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• Hitler had the willpower of a demon and he needed it. If he didn't have such a strong willpower he couldn't have achieved anything. Don't forget, if Hitler had not lost the war, if he did not have to fight against the combination of big powers like England, America, and Russia - each one he could have conquered individually - these defendants and these generals would now be saying, 'Heil Hitler,' and would not be so damn critical.

  Hermann Goring

  Strong, War, Fighting

  Remark on May 24, 1946. "The Nuremberg Interviews". Book by Leon Goldensohn, 2004.

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• I think it's very attractive when people cook. So I don't wear sweatpants. When you dress sexy to cook, too, it's like, damn, I got a girl who can cook and look like that? And I always have really cute aprons.

  Blake Lively

  Cute, Girl, Sexy

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• Oh judge! Your damn laws! The good people don't need them, and the bad people don't obey them.

  Ammon Hennacy

  Responsibility, Law, People

  "Voices from the Catholic Worker". Book by Rosalie Riegle Troester (p. 114), 1993.

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• I'm addicted to self-improvement. The thing is, there's so damn much about myself to improve.

  A. J. Jacobs

  Self, Improvement, Obsession

  "Drop Dead Healthy" by A.J. Jacobs, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 13, 2012.

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• An actor can do a play on Broadway for three years. Every night he's expressing the same emotion in exactly the same way. He has developed a technique to convey those feelings so that he can get the ideas across. Or a musician may not want to play that damn music at all, but he has a booking and has to do it.

  Richard Estes

  Night, Years, Play

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• I've chosen a life that's so different from everybody else's that it cuts me off from them. Practically everybody I know treats me like a guest celebrity. Of course it's my own fault. I feel so damn alone sometimes, I feel like I could just float away into the stratosphere and everybody would stand there looking up at me and not one would haul me back down to earth. No ropes.

  Jordan Mechner

  Cutting, Different, Rope

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• When he was very excited, [John Singer] Sargent would rush at his canvas with his brush poised for attack, yelling, 'Demons, demons, demons!' When he was particularly angry or frustrated, he expressed these feelings with 'Damn,' the only curse he allowed himself. He once had the expletive inscribed on a rubber stamp so he could have the satisfaction of pounding it on a piece of paper.

  Deborah Davis

  Yelling, Feelings, Frustrated

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• Everybody knows that the federal government promises a lot and delivers damn little, and pays for most of what it does deliver out of the earnings of individuals rather than the profits of great corporations.

  Karl Hess

  Government, Promise, Doe

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• Stop them damn pictures! I don’t care what the papers write about me. My constituents can’t read. But, damn it, they can see the pictures!

  Boss Tweed

  Writing, Paper, Care

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• For now, I'm supposing that all movements are equal, which they're not, except in this respect: that none of them gives a damn about artists beyond their immediate utility. Good movements will use a writer just as ruthlessly as bad ones; since they all fancy they have better things to do than worry about one man's artistic survival.

  Wilfrid Sheed

  Artist, Men, Supposing That

  Wilfrid Sheed (1978). “The good word and other words”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• I am now even more persuaded of the urgent need to study why Socrates was accused. The dislike of philosophy is perennial, and the seeds of the condemnation of Socrates are present at all times, not in the bosoms of pleasure-seekers, who don't give a damn, but in those of high-minded and idealistic persons who do not want to submit their aspirations to examination.

  Allan Bloom

  Philosophy, Giving, Want

  "Giants and Dwarfs". Book by Allan Bloom. Chapter: "Western Civ," p. 19, 1990.

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• Art is not a copy of the real world; one of the damn things is enough.

  Virginia Woolf

  Art, Real, World

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• And for an apple damn'd mankind.

  Thomas Otway

  Apples, Mankind

  1680 TheOrphan, act 3.

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• You wags that judge by rote, and damn by rule.

  Thomas Otway

  Judging, Wags

  1677 Titus and Berenice, prologue.

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