Sinister Quotes

• Bigotrys birthplace is the sinister back room of the mind where plots and schemes are hatched for the persecution and oppression of other human beings.

  Bayard Rustin

  Birth Place, Mind, Plot

  Bayard Rustin (1971). “Down the line”, Quadrangle-New York Times Book Co.

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• A foreigner is an individual who is considered either comic or sinister. When the victim of a disaster - preferably natural but sometimes political -the foreigner may also be pitied from a distance for a short period of time.

  John Ralston Saul

  Distance, Political, May

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• People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.

  Hermann Hesse

  Inspirational, Courage, Character

  "Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth". Book by Hermann Hesse , p. 123, 1919.

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• Tis not the wholesome sharp mortality,
  Or modest anger of a satiric spirit,
  That hurts or wounds the body of a state,
  But the sinister application
  Of the malicious, ignorant, and base
  Interpreter; who will distort and strain
  The general scope and purpose of an author
  To his particular and private spleen.

  Ben Jonson

  Hurt, Ignorant, Criticism

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• At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough. and what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey.

  Daniel Handler

  Believe, Hard Times, Journey

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• Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times.

  Agnes de Mille

  Dance, Giving, Modern

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• When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend.

  William Blake

  Mean, Artist, Enemy

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• No sign, so far, of anything sinister—but I live in hope.

  Agatha Christie

  Agatha Christie (2000). “Cat Among the Pigeons”, Berkley Publishing Group

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• It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist: the threat is rather to life itself.

  Rachel Carson

  Life, Ocean, Sea

  Rachel Carson (2011). “The Sea Around Us”, p.9, Open Road Media

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• 

  The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world-the very nature of its life.

  Rachel Carson

  Nature, Men, Sea

  Rachel Carson (2002). “Silent Spring”, p.6, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti

  Thomas Harris

  Movie, Nice, Great Year

  "The Silence of the Lambs". www.imdb.com. 1991.

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• As a child I perceived violence as a sort of natural law. In the totalitarian Soviet Union, oppression held everything together. It was the sinister energy of our country.

  Vladimir Sorokin

  Country, Children, Law

  "'Russia Is Slipping Back into an Authoritarian Empire'". Interview with Martin Doerry and Matthias Schepp, www.spiegel.de. February 02, 2007.

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• The term "bend sinister" means a heraldic bar or band drawn from the left side (and popularly, but incorrectly, supposed to denote bastardy). This choice of title was an attempt to suggest an outline broken by refraction, a distortion in the mirror of being, a wrong turn taken by life, a sinistral and sinister world. The title's drawback is that a solemn reader looking for "general ideas" or "human interest" (which is much the same thing) in a novel may be led to look for them in this one.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Taken, Mean, Ideas

  "Bend Sinister" by Vladimir Nabokov, (p. 6), 1963.

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• But I think Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang really got that thing where, if a movie reads really funny and then has some dramatic or violent or sinister stuff in it, you can't forget that primarily it has to be even funnier than you read it or that other stuff doesn't work.

  Robert Downey, Jr.

  Kissing, Thinking, Stuff

  "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - Robert Downey Jr interview". IndieLondon interview, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• It is an interesting fact that during my tour I was never allowed access to computers, radios, or anything else that I might damage through curiosity, or perhaps something more sinister.

  Robert B. Laughlin

  Interesting, Curiosity, Radio

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• There is something elegantly sinister about the Rolling Stones. They sit before you at a press conference like five unfolding switchblades; their faces set in rehearsed snarls; their hair studiously unkempt and matted; their clothes part of some private conceit; and the way they walk and talk and the songs they sing all become part of some long mean reach for the jugular.

  Pete Hamill

  Song, Mean, Hair

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• To shoot a man because one disagrees with his interpretation of Darwin or Hegel is a sinister tribute to the supremacy of ideas in human affairs -- but a tribute nevertheless.

  George Steiner

  Men, Ideas, Hegel

  George Steiner (1987). “George Steiner: A Reader”, p.53, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with us, ready at any moment to burst into flame, the smoldering and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves unharmed.

  William James

  Character, Mean, Successful

  William James (1918). “The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 2”, p.410, Courier Corporation

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• What can I do to become more like my Ideal Image?

  Bucky Sinister

  Ideals

  Bucky Sinister (2008). “Get Up: A 12-step Guide to Recovery for Misfits, Freaks, and Weirdos”, p.56, Conari Press

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• The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the Press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it he cannot grow or mature.

  Octavio Paz

  Mother, School, Reality

  Octavio Paz (1985). “The Labyrinth of Solitude: And the Other Mexico ; Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude ; Mexico and the United States ; The Philanthropic Ogre”, p.25, Grove Press

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• Our very best friends have a tincture of jealousy even in their friendship; and when they hear us praised by others, will ascribe it to sinister and interested motives if they can.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Lost Friendship, Motive, Ifs

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.72

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• Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands.

  Learned Hand

  Money, Patriotic, Government

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• I regret trusting The Guardian. I didn't want to do an interview, but the journalist was persistent. [The writer] was masked as a fan, but was hiding sinister ambitions and angles. Maybe he's actually the boring one looking for something interesting to write about.

  Lana Del Rey

  Regret, Writing, Ambition

  "Lana Del Rey has a problem with our interview ... but why?" by Tim Jonze, www.theguardian.com. June 20, 2014.

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• There's something very sinister about a woman who is predatory but has an absurd voice working as a disservice to her.

  Claudia Black

  Voice, Absurd, Predatory

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• There is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit.

  William S. Burroughs

  Photography, Desire, Facts

  William S. Burroughs (2007). “Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader”, p.87, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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