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 137 of 137 quotations in this category.

"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

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

-Seneca

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

-unknown

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

-Winston Churchill

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

-Russell Baker

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

-W. L. George

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

-unknown

"A witty saying proves nothing."

-Voltaire

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

-Peter G. Neumann

"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

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

-Josh Billings

"No human thing is of serious importance."

-Plato

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

-Albert Einstein

"There are no saints, only unrecognized villains."

-unknown

"[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

"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

"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

"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

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

-Nietzsche

"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

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

-H. L. Mencken

"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

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

-unknown

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

-Elbert Hubbard

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

-George Bernard Shaw

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

-Mark Twain

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

-David Bradford

"Like puppets we are moved by outside strings."

-Horace