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Callousness Quotes

Browse 47 quotes about Callousness.

Callousness Quotes

“My soul is callous, it is impassive... I put any sentiment whatever at defiance to attain it, with the exception of pleasure. I am mistress of that soul's movements and affections, of its desires, of its impulsions; with me, everything is under the unchallenged control of mind; and there's worse yet... for my mind is appalling. But I am not complaining, I cherish my vices, I abhor virtue; I am the sworn enemy of all religions, of all gods and godlings, I fear neither the ills of life nor what follows death; and when you're like me, you're happy.”

IndifferenceViceCallousness
Book:Juliette
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“Man of an hard heart! Hear me, Proud, Stern, and Cruel! You could have saved me; you could have restored me to happiness and virtue, but would not! You are the destroyer of my Soul; You are my Murderer, and on you fall the curse of my death and my unborn Infant’s! Insolent in your yet-unshaken virtue, you disdained the prayers of a Penitent; But God will show mercy, though you show none. And where is the merit of your boasted virtue? What temptations have you vanquished? Coward! you have fled from it, not opposed seduction. But the day of Trial will arrive! Oh! then when you yield to impetuous passions! when you feel that Man is weak, and born to err; When shuddering you look back upon your crimes, and solicit with terror the mercy of your God, Oh! in that fearful moment think upon me! Think upon your Cruelty! Think upon Agnes, and despair of pardon!”

GodDeathReligionGriefMercyMotherhoodPunishmentPityCrueltyTemptationCurseArroganceCatholicismExecutionMonkNunAccusationCallousnessSuperiority ComplexQuid Pro QuoWhat Goes Around Comes AroundCold Hearted People
Book:The Monk
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“The obstinacy of those people is funny. That someone may simply be fed up with them and their ways and may want to look for another company, that just cannot enter their heads. They can’t believe it. There must be a trick behind it, a dishonest trick, something crooked, something political, something they can understand. They’re so used to sniffing at their own behinds that when someone wants to get a breath of fresh air, to turn at last to something different, and more important, and threatened, something that's got to be saved at all costs, it's quite beyond them.”

Human NatureSincerityWestern CivilizationWestern CultureCallousnessBelief In Humanity
Book:The Roots of Heaven
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“A nod at Beatrice who held absolutely still. "She said she would come with me. She insisted on it. She stamped her little foot at me." He pointed down to her toes as if she were a child yet. Then he straightened his shoulders. "But I sent her back to the nursery, where she belonged, and told her to play with her dolls instead. As everyone knows, a female on a hunt is a distraction at best and bad luck at worse." Which explained why Beatrice went into the woods with her hound alone, George thought. She looked now as though she had gone to some other place where she could not hear her father's words and thus could not be hurt by them. George wondered how often she was forced to go to that place. Did King Helm not see how much she was like him? It seemed she was rejected for any sign of femininity yet also rejected for not showing enough femininity, How could she win?”

FatherDaughterSexismPrincessKingMockeryWithdrawalUnkindnessCallousnessInconsiderateEmotional Walls
Book:The Princess and the Hound
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“She leaned back in her chair and raised her face to the sun, mildly intoxicated, not so much by the wine as by the scope of this important argument. Seduced, also, by the possibility that she might please herself, simply by wishing it so. As a devil's advocate, he was flawless. And yet, she knew, there was a flaw in his reasoning, just as there was a flaw in his ability to feel.”

SelfishnessCallousnessAmoralitySociopathy
Book:Hotel du Lac
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“We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who Comes on at five She can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam In her eye It's interesting when people die - Give us dirty laundry Can we film the operation? Is the head dead yet? You know, the boys in the newsroom got a Running bet Get the widow on the set! We need dirty laundry You don't really need to find out what's going on You don't really want to know just how far it's gone Just leave well enough alone Eat your dirty laundry”

TabloidsTvPressCallousnessSensationalismDirty LaundryInfotainment
Author:Don Henley
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“Ebola haunted Zaire because of corruption and political repression. The virus had no secret powers, nor was it unusually contagious. For centuries Ebola had lurked in the jungles of central Africa. Its emergence into human populations required the special assistance of humanity's greatest vices : greed, corruption, arrogance, tyranny, and callousness.”

HumansPoliticalHumanitySecretSpecialCenturyGreedPopulationVicesCorruptionTyrannyArroganceAssistanceJungleRepressionVirusesContagiousEmergenceEbolaHuman PopulationCallousness
Book:Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health
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“The Dutch at close proximity looked much like Americans, apart from their peculiar uniforms, and so it was their uniforms I fired at, half convinced that I was killing, not human beings, but enemy costumes, which had borne their contents here from a distant land; and if some living man suffered for his enslavement to the uniform, or was penetrated by the bullets aimed at it well, that was unavoidable, and the fault couldn't be placed at my feet. The private charade was not equivalent to Courage, but it enabled a Callousness that served a similar purpose.”

IfsMenHumansWellsPurposeHuman BeingsHalfEnemyFeetLandFaultsKillingConvincedPeculiarUniformsBulletsCostumesDutchEnslavementProximityCallousnessCharades
Author:Robert Charles Wilson
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“I have no other pictures of the world apart from those which express evanescence, and callousness, vanity and anger, emptiness, orhideous useless hate. Everything has merely confirmed what I had seen and understood in my childhood: futile and sordid fits of rage, cries suddenly blanketed by the silence, shadows swallowed up for ever by the night.”

WorldNightHateSilenceChildhoodCryFitUnderstoodShadowRageVanityUselessEmptinessCallousnessWorlds ApartEvanescence
Author:Eugene Ionesco
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“Rabbits (says Mr. Lockley) are like human beings in many ways. One of these is certainly their staunch ability to withstand disaster and to let the stream of their life carry them along, past reaches of terror and loss. They have a certain quality which it would not be accurate to describe as callousness or indifference. It is, rather, a blessedly circumscribed imagination and an intuitive feeling that Life is Now.”

WayHumansFeelingsPastLife IsCertainImaginationHuman BeingsLossAbilityAnimalQualityTerrorDisasterIndifferenceStreamsAccurateIntuitiveRabbitsCallousness
Book:Watership Down
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“The death of American liberalism as a significant moral force can be traced to the point in when President Bill Clinton signed legislation that effectively ended the main federal anti-poverty program and turned the fate of welfare recipients, 70 percent of whom were children, over to the tender mercies of the states. With a stroke of the pen, Clinton eliminated what remained of New Deal-era compassion for the poor and codified into law the "tough love" callousness that his Republican allies in the Congress, led by Newt Gingrich, had long embraced.”

ChildrenLongStatesLawForcePresidentPoorDealsCompassionMoralPovertyFateRepublicanPercentToughProgramMercyBillsClintonCongressSignificantErasWelfareLiberalismPensAlliesLegislationStrokesNewtsNew DealTough LoveCallousnessPresident Bill ClintonTender MerciesWelfare Recipients
Author:Robert Scheer
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“An increasing number of people are growing uncomfortable with the gulf between the world's rich and the poor. Ostentatiously splashing your money around simply draws attention to that disparity, and to your own position on the lucky higher ground. It suggests a callousness, an inhumanity, a let's-just-rub-their-noses-in-it arrogance.”

PeopleWorldPoorNumbersAttentionRichGrowingPositionHigherLuckyDrawsNosesUncomfortableArroganceInhumanityDisparityCallousnessHigher GroundSplashing
Author:Kalle Lasn
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“The mother's battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.”

NeedsHumansChildrenWarMotherPassionForceCommonPovertyBattleSurvivalHuman LifeSicknessExploitationCallousness
Book:Of woman born motherhood as experience and institution
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“It is hard for me to imagine that I felt good about behaving like that. I also remember that the smallest gesture of affection would bring a lump to my throat, whether it was directed at me or at someone else. Sometimes all it took was a scene in a movie. This juxtaposition of callousness and extreme sensitivity seemed suspicious even to me.”

SometimesHardRememberFeltImagineSceneAffectionExtremesThroatGesturesImagine ThatSmallestSensitivitySuspiciousLumpsJuxtapositionCallousness
Book:The Reader
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“I was unfair to him, of course, but where would I have been without unfairness? In thrall, in harness. Young women need unfairness, it's one of their few defenses. They need their callousness, they need their ignorance. They walk in the dark, along the edges of high cliffs, humming to themselves, thinking themselves invulnerable.”

ThinkingNeedsHas BeensYoungCoursesDarkWalksIgnoranceEdgesDefenseUnfairYoung WomenCliffsHarnessUnfairnessHummingCallousness
Book:Cat's Eye
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“I wondered why it had to be so poisonous. Oleanders could live through anything, they could stand heat, drought, neglect, and put out thousands of waxy blooms. So what did they need poison for? Couldn't they just be bitter? They weren't like rattlesnakes, they didn't even eat what they killed. The way she boiled it down, distilled it, like her hatred. Maybe it was a poison in the soil, something about L.A., the hatred, the callousness, something we didn't want to think about, that the plant concentrated in its tissues. Maybe it wasn't a source of poison, but just another victim.”

ThinkingWayWantNeedsSourceHatredVictimPlantBitterHeatPoisonSoilNeglectTissuesLike HerPoisonousDroughtRattlesnakesCallousnessOleanders
Author:Janet Fitch
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“It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. It's despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they've won a lot of money. And then do what you've done to me.”

MenWorldLifeShouldMadeIdeasReasonDoneFeelingsCareYoungEvilDespairNormalYoung ManBombsContemplatingLots Of MoneyViciousDroppingBrutalityPerfectly NormalCallousness
Author:John Fowles
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“It seems to me of great importance to teach children respect for life. Towards this end, experiments on living animals in classrooms should be stopped. To encourage cruelty in the name of science can only destroy the finer emotions of affection and sympathy, and breed an unfeeling callousness in the young towards suffering in all living creatures.”

ShouldChildrenEndsSeemsYoungSufferingNamesNatureAnimalEmotionTeachCreaturesRespectAbuseImportanceAffectionExperimentsCrueltyPetAnimal RightsClassroomAnimal WelfareAnimal CrueltyLiving CreaturesAnimal AbuseUnfeelingAnimal TestingKindness To AnimalsCallousnessAnimal SufferingExperiments On Animals
Author:Eleanor Roosevelt
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“when someone speaks he looks at a mouth, not eyes and their colors, which, it seems to him, will always alter depending on the light of a room, the minute of the day. Mouths reveal insecurity or smugness or any other point on the spectrum of character. For him they are the most intricate aspect of faces. He's never sure what an eye reveals. but he can read how mouths darken into callousness, suggest tenderness. One can often misjudge an eye from its reaction to a simple beam of sunlight.”

LooksCharacterLightSeemsEyeFacesSpeakSimpleRoomsMinutesColorMouthsAspectReactionsInsecurityTendernessSunlightSpectrumBeamIntricateSmugnessCallousness
Author:Michael Ondaatje
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“The indifference, callousness and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering in animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of the human spirit. All education should be directed toward the refinement of the individual's sensibilities in relation not only to one's fellow humans everywhere, but to all things whatsoever.”

PeopleShouldFirstsHumansSpiritSufferingHumanityEvilIndividualAnimalResultsAll ThingsRelationFellowsWelfareIndifferencePetVeganContemptSensibilityHuman SpiritExhibitsRefinementAnimal WelfareAnimal EthicsKindness To AnimalsCallousnessAnimal Suffering
Author:Ashley Montagu
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“The indifference, callousness and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering in animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of the human spirit.”

PeopleFirstsHumansSpiritSufferingEvilAnimalResultsCompassionCrueltyIndifferencePetContemptAnimal RightsHuman SpiritVegetarianismExhibitsAnimal WelfareAnimal CrueltyAnimal LoveLove And CompassionHuman AnimalAnimal WorldHumans And AnimalsPet AnimalsAnimal CompassionAnimal EthicsAnimal TestingInspirational AnimalKindness To AnimalsCallousnessHuman CompassionHuman CrueltyAnimal SufferingCompassion Towards Animals
Author:Albert Einstein
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“War paralyzes your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood. It degrades and stupefies with the sense that you are not responsible, that 'tis not yours to think and reason why, but to do and die,' like the hundred thousand others doomed like yourself. War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder.”

ThinkingMeanWarReasonSpiritDiesPeaceLike YouThousandHundredDestructionMurderResponsibleBlindStupidityObedienceReason WhyAnti WarDoomedManhoodIrresponsibleDegradeWantonLike YourselfTrue ManCallousnessBlind Obedience
Book:Now and After: the ABC of Anarchist Communism
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“Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.”

ForcePrayerVisionSocietyMovementPromiseHatredSeekingRuinsRevolutionaryMeaninglessFalsehoodPyramidsSubversiveCallousnessOpportunism
Author:Abraham Joshua Heschel
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“We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.”

ShouldChildrenReasonLawLife IsPoliticsLeftSocialViewsProtectAdultsPolicePoint Of ViewVulnerableReason WhyRegulationLazinessConsideringWorkplaceNormLife Is LikeSocial NormsCallousness
Book:The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
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“Perhaps the greatest rudenesses of our time come not from the callousness of strangers, but from the solicitousness of intimates who believe that their frank criticisms are always welcome, and who feel free to "be themselves" with those they love, which turns out to mean being their worst selves, while saving their best behavior for strangers.”

FeelsBelieveMeanSelfTurnsFriendshipWorstBehaviorCriticismStrangerWelcomeSavingOur TimeFrankRudenessCallousness
Book:Common courtesy: in which Miss Manners solves the problem that baffled Mr. Jefferson
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