Torture Quotes

“Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths.”
― Criss Jami

“Some nights are made for torture, or reflection, or the savoring of loneliness.”
― Poppy Z.Brite

“Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.”
― Joanne Harris, Chocolat

“Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”
― George Orwell, 1984

“I cut off his fingers to get him to talk, and when he'd confessed everything I wanted to hear, I had his fucking tongue cut out, and the stump cauterized."

Everyone in the room stared at him.

"I called him an asshole, too," said Locke. "He didn't like that.”
― Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

“Only cowards torture women.”
― Patricia Briggs, Raven's Shadow

“My religious convictions and scientific views cannot at present be more specifically defined than as those of a believer in creative evolution. I desire that no public monument or work of art or inscription or sermon or ritual service commemorating me shall suggest that I accepted the tenets peculiar to any established church or denomination nor take the form of a cross or any other instrument of torture or symbol of blood sacrifice.

[From the will of GBS]”
― George Bernard Shaw

“It comes from history. It comes from the record of the Inquisition, persecuting heretics and torturing Jews and all that sort of stuff; and it comes from the other side, too, from the Protestants burning the Catholics. It comes from the insensate pursuit of innocent and crazy old women, and from the Puritans in America burning and hanging the witches — and it comes not only from the Christian church but also from the Taliban. Every single religion that has a monotheistic god ends up by persecuting other people and killing them because they don't accept him. Wherever you look in history, you find that. It’s still going on.”
― Philip Pullman

“إذا خفيت عنا الحكمة في العذاب أحيانا.. فلأننا لا ندرك كل شيء ولا نعرف كل شيء، ولا ندرك من القصة إلا تلك المرحلة المحدودة بين قوسين اسمها الدنيا.. أما ما قبل ذلك ومابعد ذلك فهو بالنسبة لنا غيب محجوب.. ولذا يجب أن نصمت في احترام ولانطلق الأحكام..”
― مصطفى محمود, رحلتي من الشك إلى الإيمان

“Here's a secret: Everyone, if they live long enough, will lose their way at some point. You will lose your way, you will wake up one morning and find yourself lost. This is a hard, simple truth. If it hasn't happened to you yet, consider yourself lucky. When it does, when one day you look around and nothing is recognizable, when you find yourself alone in a dark wood having lost the way, you may find it easier to blame it on someone else -- an errant lover, a missing father, a bad childhood -- or it may be easier to blame the map you were given -- folded too many times, out-of-date, tiny print -- but mostly, if you are honest, you will only be able to blame yourself.

One day I'll tell my daughter a story about a dark time, the dark days before she was born, and how her coming was a ray of light. We got lost for a while, the story will begin, but then we found our way.”
― Nick Flynn, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009

“Cowards make the best torturers. Cowards understand fear and they can use it.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“I wanted to punch him and understand him at the same time.”
― Shannon A. Thompson, Take Me Tomorrow

“When we see religion split into so many thousand of sects, and I may say Christianity itself divided into its thousands also, who are disputing, anathematizing and where the laws permit burning and torturing one another for abstractions which no one of them understand, and which are indeed beyond the comprehension of the human mind, into which of the chambers of this Bedlam would a man wish to thrust himself.

[Letter to George Logan, 12 November 1816]”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.”
― John Calvin

“The name says it all. That's where Dad (Hades) tries out his new punishment ideas, but he says the traditional ones still work best: the lava flows, the minefields full of exploding surprises, burning at the stake, running naked through cactus patches... You name it, we've got it here - Nico di Angelo”
― Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Ultimate Guide

“Always mystify, torture, mislead, and surprise the audience as much as possible.”
― Don Roff

“If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.”
― Ronald H. Coase, Essays on Economics and Economists

“Coaching 101: First you build the team, and then you build the torture chamber for underperformers.”
― Jarod Kintz, This Book Has No Title

“Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part - yet nothing in the outer world is stirred. thus by existence tortured and oppressed I crave for death, I long for rest.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part One

“Nothing will shake a man-or at any rate a man like me-out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Not returning phone calls is the severest form of torture in the civilized world.”
― Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics

“I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a creature can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go .”
― John Stuart Mill, An examination of Sir William Hamilton's philosophy, and of the principal philosophical questions discussed in his writings

“Or perhaps we should just ask Todd."
I pound the glass right at his face. He doesn't even flinch.
And then she says, "Todd would never tell you. Never."
And the Mayor just looks at me.
And he smiles

My stomach sinks, my heart drops, my head feels so light I feel like I'm going to drop right to the ground.
Oh, Viola-
Viola, please-
Forgive me.
"Captain Hammar," the Mayor says and Viola's plunged into the water again, unable to not scream out in fright as down she goes.
"NO!" I shout, pressing myself against the mirror.
But the Mayor ain't even looking at her.
He's looking right at me, as if he could see me even if I was behind a brick wall.
"STOP IT!" I shout as she's thrashing again-
And more-
And more-
"VIOLA!"
And I'm pounding even tho my hands are breaking-
And Mr. Hammar is grinning and holding her there-
"VIOLA!"
And her wrist are starting to bleed from where she's pulling-
"I'LL KILL YOU!"-
I'm shouting into the Mayor's face-
With all my Noise-
"I'LL KILL YOU!"-
And still holding her there-
"VIOLA! VIOLA!"-
But it's Davy-
Of all people-
It's Davy who stops it.”
― Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer

“Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being.”
― Mahavira

“Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him ... These things I know, Ubertino; I also have belonged to those groups of men who believe they can produce the truth with white-hot iron. Well, let me tell you, the white heat of truth comes from another flame.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“THE SILENT PEOPLE

Some people are so rude,
Living their lives with no concern for others,
Or possibly just intent on pissing other people off-
Annoying everyone around them.

The silent people-
Want to kill them-
And drive forks into their skulls-
Create weapons of extreme torture-
And scream from the top of their lungs-
"SHUT UP."

But words are not spoken-
And attention is not given.
Though annoyance is apparent,
The annoying keep on living.”
― Giorge Leedy, Uninhibited From Lust To Love

“A man does not have to feel less than human to realize his sin; oppositely, he has to realize that he gets no special vindication for his sin.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Look at me!’ I screeched. ‘Look at me, Amadeus von Linden, you sadistic hypocrite, and watch this time! You’re not questioning me now, this isn’t your work, I’m not an enemy agent spewing wireless code! I’m just a minging Scots slag screaming insults at your daughter! So enjoy yourself and watch! Think of Isolde! Think of Isolde and watch!”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.”
― Thomas Jefferson