An Enemy Quotes & Sayings

I'd rather die at the hands of a friend than an enemy. — Stephen King

This was it, the big moment: the corpse of his chief enemy, the ruins of his creator, the body of his dead father; the great weight of all that was unsaid and would never have been said; the pressure to say it now, when there was nobody to hear, and to speak also on his father's behalf, in an act of self-division that might fissure the world and turn his body into a jigsaw puzzle. This was it. — Edward St. Aubyn

The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered. — Thomas Jefferson

Strike an enemy once and for all. Let him cease to exist as a tribe or he will live to fly in your throat again — Shaka

Im's offspring stare at stars and make clocks that calculate useless happenings like the angle of a hawk's claws as it strikes its prey. They demonstrate their contraptions and everyone marvels. My children get drunk, confuse a herd of cows with an enemy regiment, and slaughter the lot, screaming like lunatics until the entire army panics. — Ilona Andrews

The artist and the multitude are natural enemies. They always will be, both ways. The artist is an enemy of the multitude, and the multitude is the enemy of the artist. And when the disguise comes off and they're both standing facing one another, they're just there at odds end. — Robert Altman

(Nix and Lothaire conversing)
"Have you no mate, female?" he'd asked, intrigued with her, though she was his natural enemy.

"I was betrothed to Loki for a time. Which did not proceed smoothly for obvious reasons. So for now I am an unrepentant manizer." At Lothaire's blank look, she'd said, "That will be amusing in the twenty-first century. — Kresley Cole

The assumption that everything past is preserved holds good even in mental life only on condition that the organ of the mind has remained intact and that its tissues have not been damaged by trauma or inflammation. But destructive influences which can be compared to causes of illness like these are never lacking in the history of a city, even if it has had a less chequered past than Rome, and even if, like London, it has hardly ever suffered from the visitations of an enemy. — Sigmund Freud

Suspicion is far more to be wrong than right; more often unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness. — Hosea Ballou

In the anarchist milieu, communism, individualism, collectivism, mutualism and all the intermediate and eclectic programmes are simply the ways considered best for achieving freedom and solidarity in economic life; the ways believed to correspond more closely with justice and freedom for the distribution of the means of production and the products of labour among men. Bakunin was an anarchist, and he was a collectivist, an outspoken enemy of communism because he saw in it the negation of freedom and, therefore, of human dignity. — Errico Malatesta

America is not fighting to win a war. We are fighting to give an application to an old Greek proverb, which is that the purpose of war is not to annihilate an enemy but to get him to mend his ways. And we are confident we can get the enemy to mend his. — Arthur Goldberg

It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad. We cannot hate those we despise. — Eric Hoffer

Right now we're in an arms race with the microbes, because, effectively, we're operating on the same scale that they are. The viruses are both our enemy and our arms manufacturer. — Steven Johnson

I had begun to grasp, in the past few weeks, one of the great and uncovenanted delights of Greece; a pre-coming of age present in my case: a direct and immediate link, friendly and equal on either side, between human beings, something which melts barriers of hierarchy and background and money and, except for a few tribal and historic feuds, politics and nationality as well... Existence, these glances say, is a torment, an enemy, an adventure and a joke which we are in league to undergo, outwit, exploit and enjoy on equal terms as accomplices, fellow-hedonists and fellow-victims. — Patrick Leigh Fermor

Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession. — George Washington

To have command of the air means to be able to cut an enemy's army and navy off from their bases of operation and nullify their chances of winning the war. — Giulio Douhet

Your relationship with your brother will be, in many ways, the most complex and bewildering of all the interpersonal connections you will form. An older brother is both authority and peer, friend and bitter enemy, partner and rival, and will play these contradictory roles to varying degrees throughout your life. At this point the rivalry is most prominent, owing to the difference in age and the resentment your brother feels toward you monopolizing your mother's attention. Try to remember, in the face of the poor treatment you receive at his hands, that more than a pure desire to cause you harm or pain, this is an effort on his part to win back some of that attention, even if it's only through being scolded and punished. — Ron Currie Jr.

Fear not, too much, an open enemy; He is consistent
always at his post; But watchful be of him who holds the key Of your own heart, and flatters you the most. — Andrew Jackson Downing

We should render a service to a friend to bind him closer to us, and to an enemy in order to make a friend of him. — Cleobulus

An enemy of innovation could be your own sales force. — Akio Morita

I was the enemy of the major studio. I believed in one man - one film. I believed one man should make the film. And I believed the director should be that one man. One man should do it - I didn't give a damn who. I just couldn't accept art as a committee. I could only accept art as an extension of an individual. — Frank Capra

We seem to face an enemy who, no matter how many times we win, will best us in the end. He has so many allies: time, disease, boredom, stupidity, religious quackery, and bad habits. — Tom Robbins

Churchill , he is a great man. He is, of course, our enemy and has always been the enemy of Communism, but he is an enemy one must respect, an enemy one likes to have. — Josip Broz Tito

it takes two people to cut you to the heart: an enemy to slander you and a friend to tell you what the enemy said. — Monica Ferris

There is a holy story that tells of a man who was fulfilled by sowing his enemy's field one night. Bjartur's story is the story of a man who sowed his enemy's field all his life, day and night. Such is the story of the most independent man in the country. Moors; more moors. From the ravine there came an eerie echoing rumble as the headstone crashed its way down, and the bitch sprang to the brink, barking wildly. — Halldor Laxness

Unfortunately, oppression does not automatically produce only meaningful struggle. It has the ability to call into being a wide range of responses between partial acceptance and violent rebellion. In between you can have, for instance, a vague, unfocused dissatisfaction; or, worst of all, savage infighting among the oppressed, a fierce love-hate entanglement with one another like crabs inside the fisherman's bucket, which ensures that no crab gets away. This is a serious issue for African-American deliberation.
To answer oppression with appropriate resistance requires knowledge of two kinds: in the first place, self-knowledge by the victim, which means awareness that oppression exists, an awareness that the victim has fallen from a great height of glory or promise into the present depths; secondly, the victim must know who the enemy is. He must know his oppressor's real name, not an alias, a pseudonym, or a nom de plume! — Chinua Achebe

Religion and its defenders have always been the most insidious enemy of the true faith precisely because they are not glaring opponents; they are impostors. A raving pagan is easier to dismiss than an elder in your church. Before Jesus came along, the Pharisees ran the show. Everybody took what they said as gospel - even though it didn't sound like good news at all. But we wrestle not against flesh and blood. The Pharisees and their brethren down through the ages have merely acted - unknowingly, for the most part - as puppets, the mouthpiece of the Enemy. — John Eldredge

The boys were going to a place that none had ever been before, to serve an order that had been the enemy of their kith and kin for thousands of years, yet Jon saw no tears, heard no wailing mothers. These are winter's people, [ ... ] tears freeze upon your cheeks where they come from. — George R R Martin

How could you beat an enemy you couldn't see? — Jodi Picoult

To be a friend of the earth, you have to be an enemy of man. — T.C. Boyle

You can afford to be compassionate, lax, and courteous if, once in a while, when it is least expected of you, but completely justified, you sue someone, or savage an enemy, just to show that you can walk the walk. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Well, until next time.' Sadie threw her arms around Annabeth. Annabeth was a little shocked to be getting a hug from a girl she'd just met - a girl who could just as easily have seen Annabeth as an enemy. But the gesture made her feel good. In life-and-death situations, Annabeth had learned, you could make friends pretty quickly. She patted Sadie's shoulder. 'Stay safe. — Rick Riordan

Better the anger of a friend than the kiss of an enemy. — Solomon

Your big heart will make you care and care a lot - About nature, a friend, a moment, even an enemy. Sometimes you will feel no one else does. Take a breath and trust it will be momentarily. Keep looking for those who care and keep them close to you. — Septem Nuntius

Because as much as I dislike her, I would prefer not to have an enemy. — Dawn O'Porter

Praise from an enemy is the most pleasing of all commendations. — Richard Steele

Of course, if Saint Peter could come out today upon these streets below he would find all he could wish, voices from nowhere, music from unpopulated boxes, men ascending divine distances in gas balloons, and traveling at the speed of sound, apparitions from nowhere appear on the screen; the sick are raised from the dead, life is prolonged so that every detail of pain may be relished, the blind are given eyes and the cripples forced to walk, and there is an item which can blow a city of the beloved enemy into a place where their sins will be brought home to them, with of course as much noise as the trumpets on the walls of Jericho — William Gaddis

I've set a clear doctrine: America makes no distinction between the terrorists and the countries that harbor them. If you harbor a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorists, and you're an enemy of the United States of America. — George W. Bush

Fear makes you feel surrounded by an enemy. Faith makes you realize you are surrounded by God. — Joyce Meyer

Fear is the enemy of logic. There is no more debilitating, crushing, self-defeating, sickening thing in the world
to an individual or to a nation. — Frank Sinatra

Whatever the hateful do to the hateful, or an enemy to an enemy, worse is the harm of a misguided mind directed at oneself. — Gautama Buddha

...experience has proved the distinction of active and passive courage. The fanatic who endures without a groan the torture of the rack or the state would tremble and fly before the face of an armed enemy. — Edward Gibbon

There is a power in names. Olakunde told us of ashe-the power which runs through all things, subtle and flexible, which find its most potent expression in human utterance; so that it is a terrible thing to call down imprecations on an enemy, or to wish for anything but good, for what is said out loud is forged into truth. — M T Anderson

There is something living deep within us all that welcomes, even relishes, the role of victimhood for ourselves. There is no cause in the world more righteously embraced than our own when we feel someone has wronged us. Perhaps it is a psychological leftover from early childhood, when we felt the primeval terror of the world around us and yearned for the intervention of a mother/protector to keep us safe. Perhaps it makes it easier to explain away our personal failures when the work of an enemy can be blamed. Perhaps we just get tired of long explanations and like the cleanliness of an easy solution. It is for wiser people than me to say. Whatever its allure, this primitive ideology of Hutu Power swept through Rwanda in 1993 and early 1994 with the speed of flame through dry grass. — Paul Rusesabagina

Loss of empathy might well be the most enduring and deep-cutting scar of all, the silent blade of an unseen enemy, tearing at our hearts and stealing more than our strength. Stealing our will, for what are we without empathy? What manner of joy might we find in our live if we cannot understand the joys and pains of those around us, if we cannot share in a greater community. — R.A. Salvatore

And in that unlikely moment, as she held his dagger poised high, ready to strike, Royce Westmoreland thought she was the most magnificent creature he'd ever beheld; a wild, beautiful, enraged angel of retribution, her chest rising and falling with fury as she courageously confronted an enemy who towered over her. — Judith McNaught

The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy. — Sun Tzu

A person who always fights back with an enemy is not strong; a person who shows kindness to an enemy is strong. — Debasish Mridha

I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion. — Abraham Lincoln

Just pausing for two to three breaths is a perfect way to stay present. This is a good use of our life. Indeed, it is an excellent, joyful use of our life. Instead of getting better and better at avoiding, we can learn to accept the present moment as if we had invited it, and work with it instead of against it, making it our ally rather than our enemy. — Pema Chodron

Patriarchy requires violence or the subliminal threat of violence in order to maintain itself ... The most dangerous situation for a woman is not an unknown man in the street, or even the enemy in wartime, but a husband or lover in the isolation of their home. — Gloria Steinem

Whatever an enemy might do to an enemy, or a foe to a foe, the ill-directed mind can do to you even worse — Gautama Buddha

And while I'm on the subject, let me say something about Harry Potter. [Gravels her voice.] Warlocks are enemies of God!! [Back to normal screech.] And I don't care what kind of hero they are, they're an enemy of God. And had it been in the Old Testament, Harry Potter woulda been put to death! [Applause.] You don't make heroes out of warlocks. This is the generation that's gonna stand for purity, an' righteousnesss, an' holiness, an' you're gonna serve the lord all the days of your life. — Becky Fischer

At first, then, exhibit the coyness of a maiden, until the enemy gives you an opening; afterwards emulate the rapidity of a running hare, and it will be too late for the enemy to oppose you. — Sun Tzu

An enemy sees his attackers laughing? It is better than all the insults. A man who laughs as he goes into battle is a man who has confidence, and a man with confidence is terrifying to an enemy. "For the whore!" I shouted. — Bernard Cornwell

The Supreme Leader's voice was flat. "You have compassion for her." "No - never. Compassion? For an enemy of the Order?" "I perceive the problem," Snoke intoned. "It isn't her strength that is making you fail. It's your weakness." The rebuke hurt, but Ren didn't show it. — Alan Dean Foster

Perfectionism is the enemy of the idea muscle. Perfectionism is your brain trying to protect you from harm - from coming up with an idea that is embarrassing and stupid and could cause you to suffer pain. — James Altucher

According to a group of New England college students, writing in the year 1920, an alien was the following:
"A person hostile to his country."
"A person against the government."
"A person who is on the opposite side."
"A native of an unfriendly country."
"A foreigner at war."
"A foreigner who tries to do harm to the country he is in."
"An enemy from a foreign land."
"A person against a country." etc ...
Yet the word alien is an unusually exact legal term, far more exact than words like sovereignty, independence, national honor, rights, defense, aggression, imperialism, capitalism, socialism, about which we readily take sides "for" or "against. — Walter Lippmann

A mafia could never kill an alliance. That's how you become safe from the enemy, you befriend them. — Basma Salem

The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend. — Abraham Lincoln

To forgive a friend, one must practice generosity. To forgive an enemy, one must practice empathy. To forgive yourself requires charity. Forgiveness is a sacred act of gallantry. — Mac MacKenzie

What do you do when you're wound up?' she asked. 'Do you play that drum?'. 'No,' said the child. 'We used to dance.' 'But now we walk,' said the father. 'And behind us an enemy walks faster.' 'That's life,' said Euterpe. — Russell Hoban

In front of him was an enemy who was trying to kill him: in front of him, also, was a human creature, in pain and perhaps with a broken bone. Already — George Orwell

English is an outrageous tangle of those derivations and other multifarious linguistic influences, from Yiddish to Shoshone, which has grown up around a gnarly core of chewy, clangorous yawps derived from ancestors who painted themselves blue to frighten their enemies. — Roy Blount Jr.

And then, for an old man like me, it's not exactly right,This kind o' playing soldier with no enemy in sight. — Bret Harte

Evil's greatest triumph may be its success in portraying religion as an enemy of pleasure when, in fact, religion accounts for its source: every good and enjoyable thing is the invention of a Creator who lavished gifts on the world. — Philip Yancey

I cannot get any sense of an enemy - only of a disaster. — D.H. Lawrence

People can't imagine an enemy that would cut someone's head off before a video camera and spread it out across the world. But that has happened with the kind of enemy we are now facing. — Kay Bailey Hutchison

Even if you were a general in 1945, if you split the revolutionary national unity today, if you are an enemy of the main pillars of the revolution today, then you have become a force of reaction! — Sukarno

Contempt for one's own comrades, for the troops of the enemy, and, above all, fierce contempt for one's own person, are what war demands of everyone. Far better is it for an army to be too savage, too cruel, too barbarous, than to possess too much sentimentality and human reasonableness. — William James

If speech always wins, even if it's an atomic secret that's going to be broadcast to our enemies, it's easy to make a decision. Speech always wins. But it doesn't ... Liberty doesn't always trump equality or equality always trump liberty. — David Souter

Oh, how sweet it is to pity the fate of an enemy who can no longer threaten us! — Pierre Corneille

It is through madness that we hate an enemy, and think of revenging ourselves; and it is through indolence that we are appeased, and do not revenge ourselves. — Jean De La Bruyere

Touch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are betrayed and betray others ... an accidental brushing of shoulders or touching of hands ... hands laid on shoulders in a gesture of comfort that lies like a thief, that takes, not gives, that wants, not offers, that awakes, not pacifies. When one flesh is waiting, there is electricity in the merest contact. — Wallace Stegner

Death wasn't part of God's original plan for humanity, and the Bible calls death an enemy - the last enemy to be destroyed. — Billy Graham

In the city that the wolf enters, enemies will be close by. An alien force will sack a great country. Allies will cross the mountains and the borders. — Nostradamus

Louise was an urbanite, she preferred the gut-thrilling sound of an emergency siren slicing through the night to the noise of country birds at dawn. Pub brawls, rackety roadworks, mugged tourists, the badlands on a Saturday night - they all made sense, they were all part of the huge, dirty, torn social fabric. There was a war raging out there in the city and she was part of the fight, but the countryside unsettled her because she didn't know who the enemy was. She had always preferred North and South to Wuthering Heights. All that demented running around the moors, identifying yourself with the scenery, not a good role model for a woman. — Kate Atkinson

People don't just disappear. There's always a reason, or an enemy with a grudge. There's always a loose thread that starts to unravel. — Jodi Picoult

When you infiltrate the enemy line and come to a naturally fortified place, use the appropriate tools to gain entrance successfully. To get into an impregnable castle with a high stone wall, a high fence, a barrier, or a castle not naturally fortified but well constructed, or even one fortified with water such as a river, it is essential for you to prepare yourself with useful tools before you embark on a shinobi mission. In addition, you need to use the appropriate weapons when you invade the enemy's residence. This chapter shows how you create these tools. — Antony Cummins

By acknowledging a petty problem you give it existence and credibility. The more attention you pay an enemy, the stronger you make him; and a small mistake is often made worse and more visible when you try to fix it. It is sometimes best to leave things alone. If there is something you want but cannot have, show contempt for it. The less interest you reveal, the more superior you seem. — Robert Greene

Kaladin hoped for something else. Hoped. Yes, he'd discovered that he could still hope. A spear in his hands. An enemy to face. He could live like that. — Brandon Sanderson

What worked in war would likewise work in the place of peace. God's principle of power never altered because of circumstances. It takes as much faith to produce a crop of corn as it does to storm and seize an enemy stronghold. One must act in confidence, sure that
God will play His part, whether in a cornfield or on a battlefield. — W. Phillip Keller

If only I had an enemy bigger than my apathy I could've won. — Mumford & Sons

... of a child dying an agonizing death from diphtheria, of a young mother ravaged by cancer, of tens of thousands of Asians swallowed in an instant by the sea, of millions murdered in death camps and gulags and forced famines ... Our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred ... As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God, but the face of his enemy. It is ... a faith that ... has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. — David Bentley Hart

Then surely there is an adversary. There is something opposed to you. Something that desires to defeat you. You want to believe your enemy is the disease. You don't want to believe even for a minute that the enemy is your own body, this weak tent of flesh that cannot stand up against a speck of contagion, this fragile weave of muscle, bone, and soul that also cannot resist the power of flame nor the pull of the ground — Susan Meissner

To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings. What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action. Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man, and to plot against an enemy behind his back was perfectly legitimate self-defence. Anyone who held violent opinions could always be trusted, and anyone who objected to them became a suspect. — Thucydides

An unsuspected enemy is doubly dangerous. — L. Frank Baum

At the moment, the general perception ... is that the United States is an unreliable friend and a harmless enemy. — Bernard Lewis

I do not believe that the men who served in uniform in Vietnam have been given the credit they deserve. It was a difficult war against an unorthodox enemy. — William Westmoreland

Machinic desire can seem a little inhuman, as it rips up political cultures, deletes traditions, dissolves subjectivities, and hacks through security apparatuses, tracking a soulless tropism to zero control. This is because what appears to humanity as the history of capitalism is an invasion from the future by an artificial intelligent space that must assemble itself entirely from its enemy's resources. — Nick Land

Want to control a people? Teach them to think of themselves as victims. Tell them they have an enemy, and that enemy is responsible for all their woes. It doesn't have to be a real enemy; it doesn't even have to make sense. Just tell it to them often enough, and they will come to believe it. Once they do, you can rob them of their money, time, and freedom, so long as you keep their eyes fixed on the 'enemy' you have created for them. — Aaron Lee Yeager

Some people tried to hurt us to protect themselves, their family and communities ... This was one of the consequences of civil war. People stopped trusting each other, and every stranger became an enemy. Even people who knew you became extremely careful about how they related or spoke to you. — Ishmael Beah

Safe. No one ever is. No matter how hard we try. No matter how much we plan and prepare. There will always be an enemy at the door and a storm trying to knock us down. Life's not about security. It's about picking up the peices after it's all over and carrying on. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Outcast!" When he'd disappeared into the bushes, Juniper wiped her eyes. "I'm sorry, Percy. I didn't mean to get you involved. Leneus is still a lord of the Wild. You don't want to make an enemy of him." "No problem," I said. "I've got worse enemies than overweight satyrs." Nico walked back to us. "Good job, Percy. Judging from the trail of goat pellets, I'd say you shook him up pretty well. — Rick Riordan

My galley, charged with forgetfulness,
Thorough sharp seas in winter nights doth pass
'Tween rock and rock; and eke mine enemy, alas,
That is my lord, steereth with cruelness;
And every oar a thought in readiness,
As though that death were light in such a case.
An endless wind doth tear the sail apace
Of forced sighs and trusty fearfulness.
A rain of tears, a cloud of dark disdain,
Hath done the weared cords great hinderance;
Wreathed with error and eke with ignorance.
The stars be hid that led me to this pain.
Drowned is reason that should me consort,
And I remain despairing of the port. — Thomas Wyatt

An intimate friend and a hated enemy have always been indispensable requirements for my emotional life; I have always been able to create them anew, and not infrequently my childish ideal has been so closely approached that friend and enemy coincided in the same person. — Sigmund Freud

To a friend, achievement is good news, to an enemy, it's bragging. — Vanna Bonta

The most powerful force that can transform an enemy into a friend is simple kindness. — Debasish Mridha

[12] It is dreadful to have mercy as a witness against anyone. His final thesis is one of warning. When you've made an enemy, even of mercy, then you're hosed. Mercy is your only hope. Don't fight it. — Anonymous

If it had been a great necessity, if it had been contingents of an army meeting to overwhelm the enemy by stealth, it might not have worked out so neatly. But fate it would seem is a perfect strategist and will work miracles of timing to assist our destruction. — Sebastian Barry