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 1 through 36 of 141 quotations in this category.

"All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field."

-Albert Einstein

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."

-Douglas Adams

"We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express; and another one - the one we use - which we force ourselves to wear to please [people], until habit makes us comfortable in it, and the custom of defending it presently makes us love it, adore it, and forget how pitifully we came by it. Look at it in politics."

-Mark Twain

"Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways."

-Stephen Vincent Benet

"Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of."

-Edward L. Bernays

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

-Calvin

"Life is tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

-William Shakespeare

"History is a set of lies agreed upon."

-Napoleon Bonaparte

"Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony."

-William James

"The monopoly capitalists - even while employing purely empirical methods - weave around art a complicated web which converts it into a willing tool. The superstructure of society ordains the type of art in which the artist has to be educated. Rebels are subdued by its machinery and only rare talents may create their own work. The rest become shameless hacks or are crushed."

-Ernesto "Che" Guevara

"History repeats itself; that's one of the things that's wrong with history."

-Clarence Darrow

"There has been no other period in my life when picking up a morning newspaper seemed like such an invitation to begin your day in a state of crippling rage. The wish to know the worst has to fight it out daily with the desire to get through the day, to work, to spend time with your loved ones, to experience pleasure."

-Charles Taylor, Salon.com writer

"Gen Y has been raised in an anti-reality vacuum. Everybody's a winner, everybody gets a trophy, even the preschoolers get a graduation ceremony, everybody's special, there are no such things as wrong answers, don't say no to them -- it hurts their widdle self-esteem. As always, once the kids are no longer small and cute, the truth dawns: You're not special, you can't have everything you want, there are no do-overs, and the weak members of the herd are culled by the lions. When you stumble, there are a billion others, bloodthirstily waiting to take your place. Life's tough."

-Gaby Kaplan, letter to Salon.com

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"

-Isaac Asimov

"We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins of fur and feather so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the devil in human form."

-William Ralph Inge

"Love your enemies just in case your friends turn out to be a bunch of bastards."

-R. A. Dickson

"Suicide is the most sincere form of self-criticism."

-unknown

"It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done. "

-Samuel Johnson

"Do unto others what has been done to you."

-Maynard James Keenan

"The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race."

-Don Marquis

"America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization."

-George Clemenceau

"Our repentance is not so much regret for the ill we have done as fear of the ill that may happen to us in consequence."

-François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."

-William James

"The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind."

-H. L. Mencken

"The existing world economic order constitutes a system of plundering and exploitation like no other in history."

-Fidel Castro

"The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame."

-Oscar Wilde

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."

-George Bernard Shaw

"Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."

-George Bernard Shaw

"We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence...on pain of liquidation."

-George Bernard Shaw

"What evidence is there for people's tendency to overspend when using credit? How about the glaring example of the towering mountain of credit card debt Americans now find themselves buried under. Did they set out to go deeply in debt? Did they have a plan to ruin their financial lives? You know who's got a plan? CitiBank."

-Corndogdriver (thetaoofmakingmoney.com)

"We have committed the fatal sin ... of becoming cynical and arrogant with respect to decisions affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of people."

-US General Lee Butler, on maintaining a nuclear arsenal

"Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."

-George Bernard Shaw

"If you don't like yourself, you can't like other people."

-Robert Heinlein

"There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness."

-Henry David Thoreau

"We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police."

-Jeff Marder

"Although it is a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out, sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation."

-Bertrand Russell