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 37 through 72 of 136 quotations in this category.

"Sleep... Oh! how I loathe those little slices of death...."

-Longfellow

"It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled sea of thought."

-John Kenneth Galbraith

"Learning to dislike children at an early age saves a lot of expense and aggravation later in life."

-Robert Byrne

"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

"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

"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)

"Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; Old Age a regret."

-Benjamin Disraeli

"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

"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

"Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time."

-George Bernard Shaw

"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

"What do you despise? By this are you truly known."

-Frank Herbert

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

-Henry David Thoreau

"No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine that they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by."

-Franz Schubert

"Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives by makebelieve."

-W. Somerset Maugham

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

-George Carlin

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

-Jeff Marder

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

-Henry David Thoreau

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

-Robert Heinlein

"In art, there are tears that do lie too deep for thought."

-Louis Kronenberger