Axe To Grind Quotes & Sayings

I'm purely a popular writer, with no axe to grind apart from writing a good read' for entertainment and relaxation. — Mary Howard

It does the heart good to look at you. — W. Somerset Maugham

I have no axe to grind; only my thoughts to burnish. — George Santayana

If we are to define science, ... it does not consist so much in knowing, nor even in "organized knowledge," as it does in diligent inquiry into truth for truth's sake, without any sort of axe to grind, nor for the sake of the delight of contemplating it, but from an impulse to penetrate into the reason of things. — Charles Sanders Peirce

PU'RIST: one superstitiously nice in the use of words. — Samuel Johnson

To be suspicious is not a fault. To be suspicious all the time without coming to a conclusion is the defect. — Lu Xun

And no matter how good you are you have to work at it. It's non-stop every day, every day. The best the offensive line feels is when the season starts. — Russ Grimm

When you play it too safe, you're taking the biggest risk of your life. Time is the only wealth we're given. — Barbara Sher

We know that there are chiselers. At the bottom of every case of criticism and obstruction we have found some selfish interest, some private axe to grind. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Holly girl, you are all too human, I can assure you. Prickly and awkward and human, because that's what witches are - human, that is, not necessarily the prickly and annoying bit. That's just you. — J.S. Watts

Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man - there never has been another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronized; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them as "The women, God help us!" or "The ladies, God bless them!"; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unselfconscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything "funny" about woman's nature. Dorothy Day, Catholic social activist and journalist — Sarah Bessey

I've thrilled and shouted with patriotic pride, like everyone. Music and flags and men marching in step have bewitched me, as they do all of us. And then I've gone home and sworn to root this evil instinct out of my soul. God help us - let's love the world, love humanity - not just our own country! That's why I'm so keen about the part we're going to play at the Peace Conference. Our motto over there will be America Last! Hurrah for us, I say, for we shall be the only nation over there with absolutely no axe to grind. Nothing but a pax to grind! — Christopher Morley

Nima Shirazi's is an important progressive voice in the Iran debate in the West, often deconstructing the myths (and sometimes propaganda) we commonly encounter in the mainstream media. With succinct and elegant prose, and with no axe to grind, he exposes the hypocrisy of Western attitudes toward Iran. — Hooman Majd

Marriage is a contract unlike any other contract in life. You marry for love. But your signature on the marriage certificate is all about rights, duties, and property. It's a legally binding contract that knows nothing of love. If the love dies, all you have left is a resentful ex-spouse and the marriage certificate. There's nothing more terrible than an ex-spouse with a ten-ton axe to grind, and no agreement on how your common property is to be divided. It usually leads to all-out war that is more vicious than any legal battle in business and could easily lead to your financial and emotional ruin. Always get a prenup. It's just too risky not to. — Donald J. Trump

The Judge, whose eyes had gone in the general direction, recalled them, leaned back in his seat, and looked steadily at the man whose life was in his hand, as Mr. Attorney-General rose to spin the rope, grind the axe, and hammer the nails into the scaffold. — Charles Dickens

[T]he commitment of time, money and man power necessary for a capital case is enormous and it takes from other cases. But I think what bothers me most is that it offers to the families of the victims and the survivors a false sense of closure. — Richard Brown

Crisis and my experience of Punk Rock in Britain/Europe was anything and everything but "fun" and this sort of idea comes from people who were either not there at the time, or were and have an axe of some kind or another to grind about their own experiences with Crisis. The years between 1977 and 1980 were some of the hardest of my Life and they certainly contributed to Tony and I wanting to destroy the group in 1980 and head for sunnier pastures artistically, culturally, and whatever else we could find. — Douglas Pearce

When it comes to overcoming writing hurdles, getting sick is like suffering a review from a critic with an axe to grind; you can't let it get you down! — Max Hawthorne

I'm not interested in corporate magic or fame. — Ryan Tedder

I don't think I'm a gay icon. I have no axe to grind. I mean, I'm clearly not homophobic! I'm not pro or con. — Steve-O

The funny thing is, this is what everyone assumes, that anybody who talks has an axe to grind. I've been around a long time, and yes, there obviously are people who disagree with policy who talk to me, but it's less axes to grind than people who are really motivated. One of the terrible things about this Administration is that nobody wants to hear bad news. — Seymour Hersh

At 'SNL,' I wrote political stuff, but I never felt the show should have an axe to grind. But when I left in '95, I could let my own beliefs out. — Al Franken

When I talk to anyone or read the writings of anyone who has any axe to grind, I feel that intellectual honesty and balanced judgement have simply disappeared from the face of the earth. Everyone's thought is forensic, everyone is simply putting a "case" with deliberate suppression of his opponent's point of view, and, what is more, with complete insensitiveness to any sufferings except those of himself and his friends. — George Orwell

He had thought more than other men, and in matters of the intellect he had that calm objectivity, that certainty of thought and knowledge, such as only really intellectual men have, who have no axe to grind, who never wish to shine, or to talk others down, or to appear always in the right. — Hermann Hesse

For some reason our lives were marked by summers ... Summer was the time when our lives joined completely, when we all had our birthdays, when really important things happened — Ann Brashares

The idea of a terrorist attack that assaults innocent human beings in a building or a mall or a restaurant is bad enough. Yet the terrorist mind that looks at a passenger plane and sees the fuel and the intensity of the blast, and sees the rocket engines that will carry it into the heart of destruction like a cruise missile, but who does not see the humanity of one single soul on that airplane, is the chilling truth of what we're up against. — Alan Keyes

[I]t struck me how easy it is to bamboozle an uneducated audience if you have prepared beforehand a set of repartees with which to evade awkward questions."
...
"You can go on and on telling lies, and the most palpable lies at that, and even if they are not actually believed, there is no strong revulsion either. We are all drowning in filth. When I talk to anyone or read the writings of anyone who has an axe to grind, I feel that intellectual honesty and balanced judgment have simply disappeared from the face of the earth. Everyone's thought is forensic, everyone is simply putting a 'case' with deliberate suppression of his opponent's point of view, and, what is more, with complete insensitiveness to any sufferings except those of himself and his friends ... . But is there no one who has both firm opinions and a balanced outlook? Actually there are plenty, but they are powerless. All power is in the hands of paranoiacs. — George Orwell

The qualities that made for success in a fighter-pilot seemed to be just those sturdy qualities that made for success in other professions; observation, initiative, determination, courage, including the courage to run away. In course of time it appeared that men who had a private axe to grind beyond the public axe of the King's enemies were especially successful. — Jim Bailey

A politician has an axe to grind
With which he aims to chop off half your mind. — Chris I. Naylor