Impunity Quotes - Page 4

• The world is going mad in mutual extermination, and murder, considered as a crime when committed individually, becomes a virtue when it is committed by large numbers. It is the multiplication of the frenzy that assures impunity to the assassins.

  Cyprian

  Numbers, Mad, World

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• The creed of evil has been, since the beginnings of highly industrialized society, not only a precursor of barbarism but a mask of good. The worth of the latter was transferred to the evil that drew to itself all the hatred and resentment of an order which drummed good into its adherents so that it could with impunity be evil.

  Theodor Adorno

  Order, Evil, Hatred

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.94, Verso

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• Consider, I pray, whether you are not renouncing all shame and sincerity to advance such principles. Because a comet appears in a group of stars which the ancients thought fit to call the Virgin, therefore, shall our women be barren, or have frequent miscarriages, or die old maids. I know of nothing which hangs so ill together! To offer such things in seriousness, shows the greatest contempt of mankind, and the most scandalous lying impunity.

  Pierre Bayle

  Stars, Lying, Miscarriage

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• 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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• Familiarity with any great thing removes our awe of it. The great general is only terrible to the enemy; the great poet is frequently scolded by his wife; the children of the great statesman clamber about his knees with perfect trust and impunity; the great actor who is called before the curtain by admiring audiences is often waylaid at the stage door by his creditors.

  L. Frank Baum

  Children, Doors, Perfect

  L. Frank Baum (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of L. Frank Baum (Illustrated)”, p.2783, Delphi Classics

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• Only a great fool or a great genius is likely to flout all social grace with impunity, and neither one, doing so, makes the most comfortable companion.

  Amy Vanderbilt

  Grace, Genius, Fool

  Amy Vanderbilt, Letitia Baldrige (1978). “The Amy Vanderbilt complete book of etiquette: a guide to contemporary living”, Doubleday Books

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• Now, it is well known, that a man may with more impunity be guilty of an actual breach either of real good breeding or of good morals, than appear ignorant of the most minute point of fashionable etiquette.

  Walter Scott

  Real, Men, Ignorant

  Sir Walter Scott (1855). “The waverly novels”, p.440

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Any nose may ravage with impunity a rose.

  Robert Browning

  Flower, Rose, Noses

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

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• The experience of treaties being broken with impunity provide an afflicting lesson to mankind how little dependence is to be placed on treaties which have no other sanction than the obligations of good faith; and which oppose general considerations of peace and justice to the impulse of any immediate interest and passion.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Passion, Broken, Justice

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• It is easy enough to say, I do not believe in God. For God permits all things to be said of Him with impunity. he looks at our acts. And any breach of His Law carries with it, not its vindictive, but it purifying, compelling punishment.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Believe, Law, Punishment

  Mahatma Gandhi (1965). “Glorious Thoughts of Gandhi: Being a Treasury of about Ten Thousand Valuable and Inspiring Thougths of Mahatma Gandhi, Classified Under Four Hundred Subjects”

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• Torture is banned but in two-thirds of the world's countries it is still being committed in secret. Too many governments still allow wrongful imprisonment, murder or "disappearance" to be carried out by their officials with impunity.

  Peter Benenson

  Country, Government, Two

  The Amnesty International Annual Report (p. 22), 2002.

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• Big Business can make laws as easily as it can break them - and with as little impunity.

  Ralph Chaplin

  Law, Littles, Break

  Ralph Chaplin, Ben Hur Lampman, Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. Dept. of Research and Education (1971). “The Centralia case: three views of the Armistice Day tragedy at Centralia, Washington, Novemeber 11, 1919: The Centralia conspiracy”, Da Capo Pr

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• What outrages me as a representative of journalists is that there's not more outrage about the number, and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq....They target and kill journalists ... uh, from other countries, particularly Arab countries like Al -, like Arab news services like Al-Jazeera, for example. They actually target them and blow up their studios with impunity.

  Linda Foley

  Country, Hate, Military

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• Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable, and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks-drinks which they see others taking with impunity.

  William Duncan Silkworth

  Recovery, Men, Alcohol

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• There was a taboo as a result of the Holocaust that people respected that anti-Semitism was an ugly thing and should be avoided. Now that taboo seems to have been broken with impunity.

  Steven T. Katz

  Ugly Things, People, Broken

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• The north of the Central African Republic is now a war zone, with rival armed bands burning villages, kidnapping children, robbing travelers and killing people with impunity.

  Nicholas D. Kristof

  Children, War, People

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• In the 21st Century, the community of nations may see more and more of this very kind of threat that Iraq poses now - a rogue state with biological and chemical weapons. If we fail to respond, Saddam and all those who follow will believe that they can threaten the security of a vital region with impunity. But if we act now as one, we will send a clear message to would-be tyrants and terrorists that we will do what it takes to protect our security and our freedom in this new era.

  Sandy Berger

  Believe, Iraq, Tyrants

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• Appearing better than others is always dangerous, but most dangerous of all is to appear to have no faults or weaknesses. It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to deflect envy and appear more human and approachable. Only gods and the dead can seem perfect with impunity.

  Robert Greene

  Smart, Order, Perfect

  Robert Greene (2010). “The 48 Laws Of Power”, p.16, Profile Books

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• Much as we don't condone impunity, if pursuit for justice was in conflict with pursuit for peace, peace must prevail.

  Bernard Membe

  Justice, Conflict, Pursuit

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