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 73 through 108 of 141 quotations in this category.

"Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors."

-Francious de la Rochefoucauld

"The American Way Of Life™ has destroyed our individuality while pretending to cater to it, and the natural interdependence of society has been compromised by the...media and the cubicle farms they call workplaces."

-Srini Kumar, unamerican.com

"The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world."

-Eric Hoffer

"Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America."

-Eric Hoffer

"There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life."

-Eric Hoffer

"The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but no vision."

-Helen Keller

"That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane individual has ever given his assent."

-Aldous Leonard Huxley

"One's real life is often the life that one does not lead."

-Oscar Wilde

"The keenest sorrow is to recognize ouselves as the sole cause of all our adversities."

-Sophocles

"A man with a career can have no time to waste upon his wife and friends; he has to devote it wholly to his enemies."

-John Oliver Hobbes

"Humanity is composed but of two categories, the invalids and the nurses."

-Richard Brinsley Sheridan

"What is originality? Undetected plagiarism."

-Dean William Ralph Inge

"There is so much trouble in coming into the world, and so much more, as well as meanness, in going out of it, that 'tis hardly worth while to be here at all."

-Viscount Henry St. John Bolingbroke

"Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts."

-Albert Einstein

"All our lauded technological progress -- our very civilization - is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal."

-Albert Einstein

"In almost every act of our lives whether in the sphere of politics or business in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind."

-Edward L. Bernays

"One disturbing trend is an inverse relationship between wealth (social success) and number of children. Sucessful families having 1.2 children (below the replacement level; their genes are effectively selected against). Poverty-level families having 3.6 children (geneticaly sucessful). We are effectively selecting against being successful."

-Alsee (from the web)

"Scientists in the 19th century postulated that in time, the world would be taken over by morons. My belief is that this actually happened, but we are now too stupid to realise."

-Kirruth (from the web)

"You just can't escape the conclusion that half the people you know are below average."

-Scaramouche

"There are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots."

-unknown

"As a connoisseur of madness, I believe we all carry the seeds of self-treachery, that we sometimes secretly seek out people who hold the keys to our own destruction."

-Cary Tennis

"Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them."

-Ecclesiastes 9:12

"Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise."

-George Orwell

"Politics has become a game of meaningless, mindless battles, conducted by unscrupulous methods and people, designed to transform even the most serious policy debates into sport."

-Al Gore, May 2006

"Think about how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of us are stupider than that."

-George Carlin

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."

-Voltaire

"Any mention of the poor, income inequality, or declining class mobility is 'class warfare' - on the upper class, of course. There are no poor in America. There are only the lazy and the soon-to-be-rich, if they would only work even harder, 'sacrifice' even more, and give up the health care they don't have. Also, the upper class needs another tax cut . Now quit whining or we will ship your few remaining Walmart jobs over to China."

-jjack (frumforum.com)

"Alas, my friends. He looked not like the ruins of his former self, but like the ruins of those ruins.""

-John Ford

"Maybe this world is another planet's hell."

-Aldous Huxley

"Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now."

-unknown

"The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie."

-Joseph A. Schempeter

"No human thing is of serious importance."

-Plato

"[Anne Coulter's success] demonstrates the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of a journalistic culture that allows her near a microphone, much less a printing press."

-Eric Alterman

"Better make a weak man your enemy than your friend."

-Josh Billings

"It is not so much the suffering as the senselessness of it that is unendurable."

-Nietzsche

"You think that way as you begin to get grayer and you see pretty plainly that the game is not going to end as you planned."

-Loren Eiseley