Empty Promises Quotes

• Political campaigns are the graveyard of real ideas and the birthplace of empty promises.

  Teresa Heinz

  Real, Ideas, Political

  "Teresa Heinz" by Julia Turner, www.slate.com. December 11, 2003.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Never underestimate the power of temptation to disarm your better senses. Throughout the ages good people surrendered their honor for the empty promise that wealth or power would bring fulfillment and their dignity, good name and self-esteem for the passing pleasures of sex and drugs.

  Michael Josephson

  Sex, Self Esteem, Names

  4 Copy quote

• Autocracy cannot do without its twin agents: a hangman and a priest, the first to suppress popular resistance by force, the second to sweeten and embellish the lot of the oppressed with empty promises of a heavenly kingdom.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Promise, Religion, Atheism

  25 Copy quote

• There we were - demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords, hollow protestations of faith hurled after empty promises of vengeance - and every gesture, every pose, vanishing into the thin unpopulated air. We ransomed our dignity to the clouds, and the uncomprehending birds listened. Don't you see?! We're actors - we're the opposite of people!

  Tom Stoppard

  Children, Men, Clouds

  Tom Stoppard (2007). “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, p.63, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If economic progress means that we become anonymous cogs in some great machine, then progress is an empty promise.

  Charles Handy

  Mean, Promise, Progress

  Charles B. Handy (1995). “The Empty Raincoat: Making Sense of the Future”, Random House Business Books

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• Soldiers' bellies are not satisfied with empty promises and hopes.

  Peter the Great

  Military, Soldier, Promise

  358 Copy quote

• During my election campaign I was not giving out empty promises, but invited every member of society to join the efforts to work for a better life in Lithuania.

  Dalia Grybauskaite

  Giving, Effort, Promise

  Source: www.glamour.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hope drives us to invent new fixes for old messes, which in turn create ever more dangerous messes. Hope elects the politician with the biggest empty promise; and as any stockbroker or lottery seller knows, most of us will take a slim hope over prudent and predictable frugality. Hope, like greed, fuels the engine of capitalism.

  Margaret Atwood

  Greed, Promise, Fuel

  4 Copy quote

• Accursed, blasted, heartless things [books]! Full of empty promises, full of false lures, always making you hungry, never satisfying you, never!

  Cornelia Funke

  Book, Heartless, Promise

  Cornelia Funke (2011). “Inkspell”, p.703, Scholastic Inc.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Since Don Quixote de la Mancha is a crazy fool and a madman, and since Sancho Panza, his squire, knows it, yet, for all that, serves and follows him, and hangs on these empty promises of his, there can be no doubt that he is more of a madman and a fool than his master.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Crazy, Doubt, Promise

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1950). “The adventures of Don Quixote”, Penguin Classics

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fact is that a "minor exorcism" takes place in every Baptism and Confirmation ceremony when we renounce Satan and all his works and empty promises. This prayer service will be along those lines. I'm not saying that anyone involved in the redefinition of marriage is possessed by the devil, which, if that were the case, would require the remedy of a "Major Exorcism," but all of us are certainly subject to the devil's evil influences and in need of protection and deliverance from evil.

  Thomas J. Paprocki

  Prayer, Evil, Baptism

  7 Copy quote

• The Barry Goldwater movement excited the depths because the apocalypse was brought more near, and like millions of other whites, I had been leading a life which was a trifle too pointless and a trifle too full of guilt and my gullet was close to nausea with the empty promises of an empty liberal center.

  Norman Mailer

  Promise, Guilt, Nausea

  4 Copy quote

• If you ask people to do things and they usually don't get around to them, stop asking yourself, "What's the matter with people these days?" Instead, ask yourself, "What's the matter with me? What am I doing or failing to do that causes people to give me empty promises?"

  Ed Bliss

  People, Giving, Promise

  4 Copy quote

• Bopha, Sandy, floods in Pakistan, droughts in China… How many reports from the likes of the World Bank, NASA and the International Energy Agency will it take? How many preventable catastrophes until our leaders realize that climate change will not be solved by nice speeches and empty promises? Countries like Canada and the U.S. have promised to reduce their greenhouse gas pollution and provide adequate financial support for developing countries, they have so far failed on both counts.

  Steven Guilbeault

  Country, Nice, Agency

  5 Copy quote

• Eyes Tell Stories But do they know how to craft fiction? Do they know how to spin lies? His eyes swear forever, flatter with vows of only me. But are they empty promises? I stare into his eyes, as into a crystal ball, but I cannot find forever, only movies of yesterday, a sketchbook of today, dreams of a shared tomorrow. His eyes whisper secrets. But are they truths or fairy tales? I wonder if even he knows.

  Ellen Hopkins

  Dream, Lying, Eye

  Ellen Hopkins (2009). “Tricks”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Never give us what we really want. Cut the dream into pieces and scatter them like ashes. Dole out the empty promises. Package our aspirations and sell them to us, cheaply made enough to fall apart.

  Scott Westerfeld

  Dream, Fall, Cutting

  6 Copy quote