Ruthlessness Quotes

• Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.

  Aldous Huxley

  Children, Curiosity, Vision

  Aldous Huxley (2000). “Complete Essays: 1930-1935”, Ivan R Dee

  65 Copy quote

  Show source

• Perhaps this war will pass like the others which divided us leaving us dead, killing us along with the killers but the shame of this time puts its burning fingers to our faces. Who will erase the ruthlessness hidden in innocent blood?

  Pablo Neruda

  Time, War, Blood

  Pablo Neruda (1975). “Pablo Neruda: selected poems”

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• This is a ruthless world and one must be ruthless to cope with it.

  Charlie Chaplin

  Wicked World, World, Ruthless

  "Fictional character: Henri Verdoux". "Monsieur Verdoux", 1947.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Success always necessitates a degree of ruthlessness. Given the choice of friendship or success, I'd probably choose success.

  Sting

  Friendship, Choices, Degrees

  7 Copy quote

• To save our imperiled honor everything must be sacrificed, even virtue.

  Jean Racine

  Honor, Virtue

  8 Copy quote

• Simplicity requires ruthlessness.

  Tim Ferriss

  Simplicity

  6 Copy quote

• When it is established that government by right can take wealth from some and give it to others. When a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law, men will use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they have passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket.

  Ayn Rand

  Believe, Winning, Men

  4 Copy quote

• A materialistic person is ruthless with other people but kind to himself. A spiritual person is ruthless with himself but kind to everybody else.

  Jaggi Vasudev

  Spiritual, People, Humanity

  114 Copy quote

• No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Men, Bombs, Kitten

  The Great Arsenal of Democracy, delivered 29 December 1940

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich. A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.

  Nelson Algren

  Writing, Blow, Creative

  "Nonconformity: Writing on Writing". Book by Nelson Algren, 1996.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Henri-Georges Clouzot's cool, clammy, twisty 1955 thriller Diabolique is an almost perfect movie about a very nearly perfect murder, a film in which the artist's methods and the killers' are ideally matched, equal in cunning and in ruthlessness. The screenplay, adapted by Clouzot and three other writers from a novel by the crack French crime-fiction team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, is a fantastically elaborate piece of contrivance, but the scrupulous realism of the direction makes the unnatural tale somehow feel entirely likely.

  Terrence Rafferty

  Team, Artist, Almost Perfect

  5 Copy quote

• People who think of themselves as tough-minded and realistic, among them influential political leaders and businessmen as well as go-getters and hustlers of smaller caliber, tend to take it for granted that human nature is selfish and that life is a struggle in which only the fittest may survive. According to this philosophy, the basic law by which man must live, in spite of his surface veneer of civilization, is the law of the jungle. The "fittest" are those who can bring to the struggle superior force, superior cunning, and superior ruthlessness.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Philosophy, Selfish, Struggle

  "Language in Thought and Action". Book by S. I. Hayakawa (p. 8), 1949.

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• Economics dominates politics - and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.

  Chris Hedges

  Different, Economics, Form

  Chris Hedges (2010). “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle”, p.146, Nation Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.

  Jack Gilbert

  Acceptance, World, Stubbornness

  Jack Gilbert (2009). “Refusing Heaven”, p.3, Knopf

  46 Copy quote

  Show source

• What nature does blindly, slowly and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly. As it lies within his power, so it becomes his duty to work in that direction.

  Francis Galton

  Nature, Kindness, Lying

  114 Copy quote

• Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye.

  William Shakespeare

  Fall, Eye, Tears

  William Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, George Steevens (1813). “The Plays of William Shakespeare: In Twenty-one Volumes, with the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators, to which are Added Notes”, p.437

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What is evil? What is - where does the evil come from that lies behind someone like Saddam Hussein, or Radovan Karadzic, or General Claude Raymond in Haiti. As I say, I've tended to find these people - I mean, Saddam, I've never met or interviewed - but these other people to be rather disappointing. Their political goals were mundane. What they had working for them was opportunism, was very often cleverness and was ruthlessness.

  Mark Danner

  Lying, Mean, Goal

  Source: www.pbs.org

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• The true lesson of the Vietnam War is: certainty of purpose and ruthlessness of execution win wars.

  Ronald Reagan

  Peace, War, Winning

  7 Copy quote

• I suspect that one of capitalism's crucial assets derives from the fact that the imagination of economists, including its critics, lags well behind its own inventiveness, the arbitrariness of its undertaking and the ruthlessness of the way in which it proceeds.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Imagination, Lag, Way

  "Capitalism has learned to create host organisms". www.theguardian.com. October 18, 2011.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• War is simple, direct, and ruthless.

  George S. Patton

  War, Simple, Direct

  24 Copy quote

• Like one of those fake-smart, middlebrow TV shows, the speciousness of The Social Network is disguised by topicality. It's really a movie excusing Hollywood ruthlessness.

  Armond White

  Smart, Tv Shows, Fake

  "Social Network keeps its 100%, Armond White trolls by not trolling" by Vince Mancini, uproxx.com. September 29, 2010.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The price of being oneself is so high and involves so much ruthlessness toward others (or what looks like ruthlessness in our duty-bound culture) that very few people can afford it.

  May Sarton

  People, Culture, Looks

  May Sarton (2014). “The House by the Sea: A Journal”, p.43, Open Road Media

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• The vigor of a mass movement stems from the propensity of its followers for united action and self-sacrifice. When we ascribe the success of a movement to its faith, doctrine, propaganda, leadership, ruthlessness and so on, we are but referring to instruments of unification and to means used to inculcate a readiness for self-sacrifice. It is perhaps impossible to understand the nature of a mass movement unless it is recognized that their chief preoccupation is to foster, perfect and perpetuate a facility for united action and self-sacrifice.

  Eric Hoffer

  Mean, Sacrifice, Self

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Elizabeth was counting on Marco to keep cousin Mary occupied until after the board meeting was over. A piece of cheese might catch a mouse, but an afternoon alone with a muscular masseur would ensnare her cousin far more effectively. And afterwards, while Mary lay sated and sleeping upon a massage table, wiser heads could determine the company's future. There were times, Elizabeth thought, when success in business demanded utter ruthlessness.

  Barbara Taylor Bradford

  Cousin, Sleep, Business Success

  3 Copy quote

• The Great War differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought.

  Winston Churchill

  War, Agency, Ancient

  Winston Churchill (2012). “Churchill: The Power of Words”, p.199, Da Capo Press

  3 Copy quote

  Show source