Sadism Quotes

• Pleasure is sweetest when 'tis paid for by another's pain.

  Ovid

  Pain, Pleasure, Sweetest

  Ovid (1932). “The Love Books of Ovid”, p.135, Biblo & Tannen Publishers

  66 Copy quote

  Show source

• Tears gratify a savage nature, they do not melt it.

  Publilius Syrus

  Tears, Savages

  47 Copy quote

• Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Long, Childhood

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.265, Macmillan

  74 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pornography incarnates male supremacy. It is the DNA of male dominance. Every rule of sexual abuse, every nuance of sexual sadism, every highway and byway of sexual exploitation, is encoded in it.

  Andrea Dworkin

  Dna, Abuse, Nuance

  Andrea Dworkin (1989). “Pornography: men possessing women”, Plume

  67 Copy quote

  Show source

• The pleasure in complete domination over another person (or other animate creature) is the very essence of the sadistic drive. Another way of formulating the same thought is to say that the aim of sadism is to transform man into a thing, something animate into something inanimate, since by complete and absolute control the living loses one essential quality of life - freedom.

  Erich Fromm

  Men, Essence, Quality

  Erich Fromm (2011). “The Heart of Man”, p.29, Lantern Books

  43 Copy quote

  Show source

• Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Soul, Skepticism

  "History and Utopia". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1960.

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hatred can be nurtured anywhere, idealism can be perverted into sadism anywhere. If hatred and sadism combine with modern technology the inferno could erupt anew anywhere.

  Simon Wiesenthal

  Technology, Hatred, Modern

  39 Copy quote

• Sadism is all right in its place, but it should be directed to proper ends.

  Sigmund Freud

  Ends, Should

  32 Copy quote

• I cannot be with someone who takes pleasure in inflicting pain on me, someone who can't love me

  E. L. James

  Pain, Broken, Pleasure

  23 Copy quote

• You assume we are all sexually stable; while on the other hand, as I have become acquainted with people, I find that they are all perverted sinners, one way or another, that the whole
  society is corrupt and rotten and repressed and unconscious that it exhibits its repression in various forms of social sadism.

  Allen Ginsberg

  Hands, People, Rotten

  Allen Ginsberg, Louis Ginsberg, Michael Schumacher (2002). “Family Business: Selected Letters Between a Father and Son”, p.21, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• The suppression of natural sexual gratification leads to various kinds of substitute gratifications. Natural aggression, for example, becomes brutal sadism which then is an essential mass-psychological factor in imperialistic wars.

  Wilhelm Reich

  War, Essentials, Example

  "The Mass Psychology of Fascism". Book by Wilhelm Reich, 1933.

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sadistic excess attempts to reach roughly and by harshness what art reaches by fineness.

  Wyndham Lewis

  Art, Excess, Sadistic

  Wyndham Lewis (1926). “The Art of Being Ruled”

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pornography is the essential sexuality of male power: of hate, of ownership, of hierarchy; of sadism, of dominance.

  Andrea Dworkin

  Hate, Males, Essentials

  Andrea Dworkin (1989). “Pornography: men possessing women”, Plume

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• "Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice." ... They have experienced secretly and privately their natural human impulse toward sadism and brutality... Not merely did I learn to kill with a noose of piano wire put around somebody's neck from behind, but I learned to enjoy the prospect of killing that way.

  Paul Fussell

  War, Nice, Piano

  "The Initial Shock... A Conversation with Paul Fussell". Humanities, November/December 1996.

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• The blessed in the kingdom of heaven will see the punishments of the damned, in order that their bliss be more delightful for them.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Blessed, Order, Punishment

  10 Copy quote

• Suicides are timid murderers. Masochism instead of Sadism.

  Cesare Pavese

  Suicide, Murderer, Masochism

  Cesare Pavese (1961). “This Business of Living: Diary: 1935-1950”, London : P. Owen

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I hated the brutality, the sadism, and the insanity of Nazism. I just couldn't stand by and see people destroyed. I did what I could, what I had to do, what my conscience told me I must do. That's all there is to it. Really, nothing more.

  Oskar Schindler

  People, Insanity, Brutality

  402 Copy quote

• Satan cannot create anything new, cannot create anything at all. He must steal what God has created. Thus he twists love and God's wonderful gift of sex into lust and sadism and myriad perversions. He disfigures the heart's deep desire to worship God and persuades us to bow before lesser gods of lust or money or power.

  Catherine Marshall

  Sex, Heart, Lust

  Catherine Marshall (1995). “Catherine Marshall: Inspiration Writings”, Bbs Publishing Corporation

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is above all man's social position that decides whether he will sublimate his sadism as a butcher, surgeon, or policeman.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Men, Social, Butchers

  20 Copy quote

• When blended with sexuality, the death instinct is transformed into more harmless impulses expressed in sadism or masochism.

  Erich Fromm

  Instinct, Sexuality, Impulse

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, p.37, Open Road Media

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lesbians, homosexuals, masochism, sadism are not perversions. Actually, there are only two perversions: hockey on grass and ballet on ice.

  Faina Ranevskaya

  Hockey, Ice, Two

  22 Copy quote

• It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

  Joseph Heller

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Truth

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.336, Simon and Schuster

  98 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.

  Marie Curie

  Truth, Science, Hunting

  "The Commodity Trader's Almanac 2007". Book by Scott W. Barrie and Jeffrey A. Hirsch, November 6, 2006.

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• It was rumored, in 1946, that the hangman in Nuremberg adjusted the nooses of some of the condemned to magnify the pain of suffocation. Such sadism was not called for then and is not called for now. But if fornication is wrong, there is no denying that it can bring pleasure. The death of Saddam Hussein at rope's end brings a pleasure that is undeniable, and absolutely chaste in its provenance.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Pain, Rope, Hussein

  "Spare Thoughts on Saddam" by William F. Buckley Jr., www.nationalreview.com. December 29, 2006.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• These political passions are born of a hunger so deep that it touches on the spiritual. Or they were for me, and they still are. I want my life to be a battle cry, a war zone, an arrow pointed and loosed into the heart of domination: patriarchy, imperialism, industrialization, every system of power and sadism. If the martial imagery alienates you, I can rephrase it. I want my lifemy bodyto be the place where the earth is cherished not devoured, where the sadist is granted no quarter, where the violence stops.

  Lierre Keith

  Spiritual, War, Passion

  Lierre Keith (2009). “The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability”, p.1, PM Press

  21 Copy quote

  Show source