Negative Quotations

Not all quotations are positive, as this category proves. These will offer only pessimistic or negative views on a variety of subjects.

Showing 109 through 141 of 141 quotations in this category.

"If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm."

-Vince Lombardi

"Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so."

-Bertrand Russell

"Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies."

-W. L. George

"What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more."

-Seneca

"If we slide into one of those rare moments of military honesty, we realize that the technical demands of modern warfare are so complex a considerable percentage of our material is bound to malfunction even before it is deployed against a foe. We no longer waste manpower by carrying the flag into battle. Instead we need battalions of electronic engineers to keep the terrible machinery grinding."

-Ernest K. Gann

"The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil."

-Albert Einstein

"Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again."

-Andre Gide

"Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy."

-Aldous Huxley

"It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others."

-unknown

"Madness is rare in individuals--but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule."

-Friedrich Nietzsche

"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better."

-unknown

"A witty saying proves nothing."

-Voltaire

"The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing."

-Aleister Crowley

"The greatest shortage on every beat, in every newsroom in America, is courage."

-Dan Rather, speaking before the Radio-Television News Directors Association in 1993

"There are no saints, only unrecognized villains."

-unknown

"No matter how carefully designed and operated a system is, it can still fail grotesquely."

-Peter G. Neumann

"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."

-Robert Heinlein

"The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself."

-Winston Churchill

"Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy."

-George Bernard Shaw

"One of the greatest and most prolonged insults to human dignity the world has ever seen."

-Writer Matt Taibbi, on the 2004 US presidential race

"If at first you don't succeed, please go somewhere else and fail quietly."

-oldspewey (Slashdot.org)

"You know what's really terrifying -- more terrifying than the deadening effect of society? It's that, bit by bit, completely of your own accord, you eventually become so boring that you want to stomp yourself in the face with a boot."

-Cary Tennis

"Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it."

-Russell Baker

"The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable."

-H. L. Mencken

"Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street."

-Elbert Hubbard

"Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up."

-unknown

"All that I care to know is that a man is a human being - that is enough for me; he can't be any worse."

-Mark Twain

"Affluence creates stupid, or at least mindless, consumers."

-David Bradford

"Like puppets we are moved by outside strings."

-Horace

"Man is the sole animal whose nudities offend his own companions, and the only one who, in his natural actions, withdraws and hides himself from his own kind."

-Montaigne

"It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it."

-Mark Twain

"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."

-George Bernard Shaw

"You can't fix stupid, so shouldn't sex between consenting idiots be legislatively outlawed too?"

-Brian Kontrath