Quotes & Sayings About Collateral Damage

They go to work, attend a meeting
Write an equation, have a beer,
Hail colleagues with a cheerful greeting,
Are conscientious, sane and sincere,
Rational, able and fastidious.
Through hardened casing no invidious
Tapeworm of doubt, no guilt, no qualm,
Pierces to Sabotage their claim.
When something's technically attractive,
You follow the conception through,
That's all. What if you leave a slew
Of living dead, of radioactive
"Collateral damage" in its wake?
It's just a job, for heaven's sake. — Vikram Seth

In any war, a tremendous amount of collateral damage is inevitable. Black and brown people are the principal targets in this war; white people are collateral damage. — Michelle Alexander

The clothes are packed off to Goodwill
I said my good-byes up on the hill
The house is empty, the furniture sold
Soon your smell will decay to mold
Don't know why I bother calling, ain't nobody answering
Don't know why I bother singing, ain't nobody listening
"Disconnect"
Collateral Damage, Track 10 — Gayle Forman

The only time Republicans will shake fists and point fingers is over a war delayed, one that isn't led by the US, or a war waged without the necessary conviction (read collateral damage). — Ilana Mercer

The unfortunate thing, and the tragedy of this show [Revenge], is in exploring the theme of revenge. Absolutely everyone can find peace, at some point or another, but the interesting thing is how you find it, the collateral damage along the way and all the trauma that she indirectly causes all these other people in her circle. — Emily VanCamp

your mother
is in the habit of
offering more love
than you can carry


your father is absent


you are a war
the border between two countries
the collateral damage
the paradox that joins the two
but also splits them apart — Rupi Kaur

No," he said. "I don't want you to suffer. Much. But the next time you're in bed with Belikov, stop a moment and remember that not everyone made out as well as you did."
I turned back to face him. "Adrian, I never - "
"Not just me, little dhampir," he added quietly. "There's been a lot of collateral damage along the way while you battled against the world. I was a victim, obviously. But what about Jill? What happens to her now that you've abandoned her to the royal wolves? And Eddie? Have you thought about him? And where's your Alchemist? — Richelle Mead

Because when you kill 300 people, 400 people, who have nothing to do with the provocations Hezbollah staged, but you do it in effect deliberately by being indifferent to the scale of collateral damage, you're killing hostages in the hope of intimidating those that you want to intimidate. And more likely than not you will not intimidate them. You'll simply outrage them and make them into permanent enemies with the number of such enemies increasing. — Zbigniew Brzezinski

Free will always results in collateral damage. — J. Lincoln Fenn

Rachel knew what she was doing. And when she didn't, she could improvise on the fly, coming up with options that left a lot of collateral damage but usually only hurt herself, not the people around her. It was one of the things he would never admit that he admired about her. — Kim Harrison

We are the collateral damage of carnism; we pay for it with our health, our environment, and our taxes - $7.64 billion a year, to be exact. — Melanie Joy

A lot of my friends are gangsters. Not like gangsters - well, yeah, all sorts of levels of criminality - but not the types that are preying on innocent people. I have no interest in the type of criminality that has no respect for collateral damage. — Charlie Hunnam

We used to have a War Office, but now we have a Ministry of Defence, nuclear bombs are now described as deterrents, innocent civilians killed in war are now described as collateral damage and military incompetence leading to US bombers killing British soldiers is cosily described as friendly fire. Those who are in favour of peace are described as mavericks and troublemakers, whereas the real militants are those who want the war. — Tony Benn

I'm nobody. I'm collateral damage with a lot of training. — Kiersten White

The critical importance of honest journalism and a free flowing, respectful national conversation needs to be had in our country. But it is being buried as collateral damage in a war whose battles include political correctness and ideological orthodoxy. — Juan Williams

The moral was, in time of anarchy, tough leadership is the only solution - even though the collateral damage may be heartbreaking. Mrs. Thatcher's strident, take-no prisoners approach was in some ways repugnant, but it was surely necessary. — Nigel Hamilton

Cameras help to minimize collateral damage, and very often, without a camera a missile cannot fire. Certainly, without a camera a drone can't function, which means that the very ways in which we wage war are determined in part by how cameras work and whether they work at all. — Judith Butler

Collateral damage' is what it's called when innocent people are killed during war. It is expected and is irrelevant as long as a mission has been successful. To view it this way is easy for someone that is far away from the bloodshed, but when you're on the frontlines... the faces of the innocent will stay with you, forever. — John Lee

We are all collateral damage for someone's beautiful
Ideology, all of us inanimate in the face of the onslaught. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

How many times do I have to say I'm sorry before you believe it? That I acknowledge I made a terrible mistake and have done everything I know how to fix it? How can you just freeze me out after that and walk away from everything we had?"
Hurt and resentment swelled inside him, mixing with the anger in a toxic, chaotic mess. "You walked away first," he shot back. "That was your choice." Then I made mine. It was a low blow, even if it was true. But he refused to feel guilty about it, even under the circumstances. He hadn't wanted to have this conversation, but she'd insisted, and he wouldn't lie to her about the way things stood.
Honor's chin came up, her tears evaporating as her eyes sparked with fresh anger. "I did," she admitted quietly, her control merely emphasizing the loss of his own. "I did walk away and it was the absolute worst mistake of my life. I'm sorry, Liam. See? I'm a big enough person to admit it to your face. Are you? — Kaylea Cross

But the real show was offstage. Dozens of men lounged along the tables that circled the main attraction. They ranged from eighteen to eighty, skinny to fat, stout to lanky. I saw home in them. I saw fathers, grandfathers, brothers, boyfriends, professors, bosses, and preachers. I imagined their houses, their families, their jobs, the coffee shops where they bought breakfast pastries, the hospitals their children were born in, and their neighborhood route for their dog's morning walk. I saw the gleam in their eyes as the girls swiveled around poles, sashayed in their direction, and sat atop their laps like children visiting Santa Claus. They seemed to love their oriental dolls with a toddler's English fluency. They had their happy endings. They would soon be boarding planes, flying far away from the poverty, the mental and emotional collateral damage, and the possible babies they conceived. Thailand was theirs. It was their escape, their medicine, and their sanctuary of sin. — Maggie Young

Fear and anger, the two emotions that most people came to him to reduce - emotions that he'd worked so hard to overcome in his own life - were fuel for politicians. Maybe candidates and congressmen thought that sowing discord among countrymen, even family members, was an unfortunate type of collateral damage. Maybe they didn't think about it at all. — Gudjon Bergmann

We are absolutely right to condemn the suicide bomber's targeting of innocent civilians and mourn his victims. But as we have seen, in war the state also targets such victims; during the 20th century, the rate of civilian deaths rose sharply and now stands at 90 percent. In the West we solemnize the deaths of our regular troops carefully and recurrently honor the memory of the soldier who dies do his country. Yet the civilian deaths we cause are rarely mentioned, and there has been no sustained outcry in the West against them. Suicide bombing shocks us to the core; but should it be more shocking than the deaths of thousands of children in their homelands every every year because of land mines? Or collateral damage in a drone strike? — Karen Armstrong

Islamic law is clearly against terrorism, against any kind of deliberate killing of civilians or similar 'collateral damage.' — Feisal Abdul Rauf

Guns are part of the American psyche, aren't they? This is collateral damage for having a Wild West mentality. It's intrinsic to the American psyche. It's never going to change. — Nick Cave

My grandmother lived a remarkable life. She watched her nation fall to pieces; and even when she became collateral damage, she believed in the power of the human spirit. She gave when she had nothing; she fought when she could barely stand; she clung to tomorrow when she couldn't find footing on the rock ledge of yesterday. She was a chameleon, slipping into the personae of a privileged young girl, a frightened teen, a dreamy novelist, a proud prisoner, an army wife, a mother hen. She became whomever she needed to be to survive, but she never let anyone else define her.
By anyone's account, her existence had been full, rich, important - even if she chose not to shout about her past, but rather to keep it hidden. It had been nobody's business but her own; it was still nobody's business. — Jodi Picoult

Children and pets are collateral damage in love relationships at war. — Carolyn Moncel

It truly amazes me how easily you delude yourself into believing I actually give a shit.-Cyrus DCCD — Bianca Sommerland

Wealth and power are also often disasters, with casualties and wreckage. Maybe what often gets called wealth in booms should mostly be imagined as impoverishment of the majority who don't become wealthy and often become displaced or priced out locally, served up with the collateral damage from the concentration of power, resources, and the control of place. — Rebecca Solnit

On Collateral Damage: "Every limb lost, every hovel burned, every wife left husbandless, and every child orphaned created ripples of anger and resentment. Create enough of them, and we'll one day wind up with a wave that will wash us off the map. — Chris Holm

We want to detect malware, regardless of its source or purpose. Politics don't even enter the discussion, nor should they. Any malware, even targeted, can get out of hand and cause 'collateral damage' to machines that aren't the intended victim. — Mikko Hypponen

Know what 'collateral damage' means?" "People get hurt because they happen to be near something that somebody needs to happen? — William Gibson

Music wasn't about learning how to love. It was about learning what to disown and when to disown it. Even the most magnificent piece would end up as collateral damage in the endless war over taste. — Richard Powers

A common strand appeared to unite these conflicts, and that was the advancement of a small coterie's concept of American interests in the guise of the fight against terrorism, which was defined to refer only to the organized and politically motivated killing of civilians by killers not wearing the uniforms of soldiers. I recognized that if this was to be the single most important priority of our species, then the lives of those of us who lived in lands in which such killers also lived had no meaning except as collateral damage. This, I reasoned, was why America felt justified in bringing so many deaths to Afghanistan and Iraq, and why America felt justified in risking so many more deaths by tacitly using India to pressure Pakistan. — Mohsin Hamid

Just then, Larry recalled a conversation he had with a friend in Ireland, about the situation in Nepal between the King and the Maoists. The friend was sided with the Maoists, which was more or less his political leanings in any case, and stated that at least they were trying to help the people. So Larry had remarked upon the rising death rate, and how the Maoists are just as brutal as the security forces, yet the friend simply shrugged and said you have to expect some collateral damage in a revolution.
Oh how he hates that phrase, as that makes it sound like the people's lives are meant to be expendable, something that a person's life should never be. Of course, it is very easy to disregard people you have never met, and who are certainly not your friends or family members. After all, in the eyes of an outsider, who is in no danger whatsoever, the people caught up in the situation are nothing more than simply statistics. — Andrew James Pritchard

You crossed the water, left me ashore
It killed me enough, but you wanted more
You blew up the bridge, a mad terrorist
Waved from your side, through me a kiss
I started to follow but realized too late
There was nothing but air underneath my feet"
- from the song "Bridge" on the Collateral Damage album — Gayle Forman

Indeed, the very premise of extrinsic incentives is that we'll always respond rationally to them. But even most economists don't believe that anymore. Sometimes these motivators work. Often they don't. And many times, they inflict collateral damage. In short, the new way economists think about what we do is hard to reconcile with Motivation 2.0. — Daniel H. Pink

According to the Talmud, loshon hara kills three people: the one who speaks it, the one who hears it, and the one about whom it is told. 'Kill' may strike the modern reader as a bit hyperbolic, but when you think of all the friendships lost, careers stunted, and opportunities thwarted as a result of gossip among women, violent language seems appropriate. We cause serious collateral damage to the advancement of our sex each time we perpetuate the stereotype that women can't get along. — Rachel Held Evans

Sexual pleasure was not only superior, in refinement and violence, to all the other pleasures life had to offer; it was not only the one pleasure with which there is no collateral damage to the organism, but which on the contrary contributes to maintaining it at its highest level of vitality and strength; it was in truth the sole pleasure, the sole objective of human existence, — Michel Houellebecq

What is and isn't justified by military necessity is, naturally, open to interpretation. One of the key concepts, though, is the law of proportionality. A military attack that results in civilian casualties - 'collateral damage' - is acceptable as long as the military benefits outweigh the price that is paid by humanity. — Sebastian Junger

You cannot have your news instantly and have it done well. You cannot have your news reduced to 140 characters or less without losing large parts of it. You cannot manipulate the news but not expect it to be manipulated against you. You cannot have your news for free; you can only obscure the costs. If as a culture we can learn this lesson, and if we can learn to love the hard work, we will save ourselves much trouble and collateral damage. We must remember: There is no easy way. — Ryan Holiday

I have no formal proof, but I dare not believe that Jean-Marie Le Pen would treat me as collateral damage in the battle he is having with the party. — Marion Marechal-Le Pen

Gun control laws don't work. What is worse, they act perversely. While legitimate users of firearms encounter intense regulation, scrutiny and bureaucratic control, illicit markets easily adapt to whatever difficulties a free society throws in their way. Also, efforts to curtail the supply of firearms inflict collateral damage on freedom and privacy interests that have long been considered central to American public life. — Daniel D. Polsby

The world changes! So we're in a situation today where the only policymakers that have flexibility are central banks. But they don't have the instruments! So they've had to experiment, and the more you experiment, the more uncertainty and the higher the risk of collateral damage. — Mohamed El-Erian

A single strand appeared to unite these conflicts, and that was the advancement of a small coterie's concept of American interests in the guise of the fight against terrorism... I recognized that if this was to be the single most important priority of our species, then the lives of those of us who lived in lands in which such killers also lived had no meaning except as collateral damage. — Mohsin Hamid

Language is power. When you turn "torture" into "enhanced interrogation," or murdered children into "collateral damage," you break the power of language to convey meaning, to make us see, feel, and care. — Rebecca Solnit

Society, because it is composed of living humans, is organic and if healthy, supple. It is like a rubber band. As long as the groups that compose society are flexible and social and emotionally supporting, it serves its constituency well. It bends, weaves, twists, turns, and envelops everyone in diverse manners. If opposing forces become too locked into their polarized viewpoints, though, other things happen.

Like two grumpy siblings, they hold their views with anger or self-righteousness and utter vulgar and crass words, but it amounts to the same thing. The two groups pull on the rubber band and rigidly hold to their position without empathy.

The rubber band (society) grows taut and then eventually it snaps and collateral damage ensues and the proverbial baby is thrown out with the bath water. — Leviak B. Kelly

My parents, particularly my father, had been used by commentators, political journalists and political commentators, to attack me, and the collateral damage was the reputations of my father and my mother. — Karl Rove

It is the most painful thing to see how young children become collateral damage of wars, but when peace treaties are signed landmines do not respect any of these accords. And as long as these silent killers linger after wars, children will never know peace — Danny Glover

The idealism of the left is a very selfish idealism. In their war against 'the rich' and big business, they don't care how much collateral damage there is to workers who end up end up unemployed. — Thomas Sowell

I oppose piracy and want to see intellectual property protected because that is what fosters and rewards innovation. But SOPA won't accomplish a meaningful reduction in piracy and causes massive collateral damage to the Internet ecosystem. — Jared Polis

If we take out one, we have to take out all. We can't risk collateral damage."
"Say 'collateral damage' again. That sounded sexy. — Brigid Kemmerer

Asymmetrical warfare is a euphemism for terrorism, just like collateral damage is a euphemism for killing innocent civilians. — Alan Dershowitz

Barrel of the gun, rounds one two three
She says I have to pick: choose you, or choose me
Metal to the temple, the explosion is deafening
Lick the blood that covers me
She's the last one standing
"Roulette"
Collateral Damage, Track 11 — Gayle Forman

Ever since Hugo Waverly had returned to London, he had been keeping on eye on Cedric's sisters, particularly Horatia. Waverly had a way of creating collateral damage and Lucien would do anything to keep these innocent ladies safe. But she mustn't know he was watching over her. He'd spent the last six years being outwardly cold to her, praying she'd stop gazing at him in that sweet, loving way of hers.
It was cruel of him, yes, but if he did not create some distance, he'd have had her on her back beneath him. She was too good a woman for that, and he was far too wicked to be worthy of her. Rather like a demon falling for an angel.

-Lucien's thoughts. His Wicked Seduction (The League of Rogue's book 2) — Lauren Smith

I'm collateral damage. I'm road kill. And in 72 hours, nobody is going to remember who I am nor are they going to care. — Eric Massa

President Obama has never summarized the Obama Doctrine with such clarity, but here is what it would look like: 'I will undertake any military attack against our enemies, regardless of the risks and collateral damage, so long as it is over by the time I have to announce it.' — Elliott Abrams

Nothing in Chomsky's account acknowledges the difference between intending to kill a child, because of the effect you hope to produce on its parents (we call this "terrorism"), and inadvertently killing a child in an attempt to capture or kill an avowed child murderer (we call this "collateral damage"). In both cases a child has died, and in both cases it is a tragedy. But the ethical status of the perpetrators, be they individuals or states, could not be more distinct ... For Chomsky, intentions do not seem to matter. Body count is all. — Sam Harris

My aim here is to put a human face - a child's face - on the "collateral damage" of gun violence in America. — Gary Younge

Ruined land was accepted as the collateral damage of progress. — Robin Wall Kimmerer

When everything you love has been stolen from you, sometimes all you have left is revenge.Sometimes, the innocent get hurt. But one by one, the guilty will pay. Nothing ever goes exactly as you expect. And mistakes are life and death. Collateral damage is inescapable. — Emily Thorne

Soldier and civilian, they died in their tens of thousands because death had been concocted for them, morality hitched like a halter round the warhorse so that we could talk about 'target-rich environments' and 'collateral damage' - that most infantile of attempts to shake off the crime of killing - and report the victory parades, the tearing down of statues and the importance of peace.
Governments like it that way. They want their people to see war as a drama of opposites, good and evil, 'them' and 'us', victory or defeat. But war is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death. It represents a total failure of the human spirit. — Robert Fisk

The coyly nicknamed explosive Key4 had been developed by Special Forces specifically for opening locked doors with minimal collateral damage. Consisting primarily of cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine with a diethylhexyl plasticizer, it was essentially a piece of C-4 rolled into paper-thin sheets for insertion into doorjambs. In the case of the library's reading room, the explosive had worked perfectly. — Dan Brown

In all the debate about Afghanistan, we don't hear much about our obligation to the wretched lives of Afghan women. They are being treated as collateral damage as the big boys discuss geopolitical goals. — Tina Brown

So David and my baby were 'collateral damage'?" Eve took small, sharp breaths. — Debra Anastasia

This was how it had to go-she was a sacrifice he had to make, collateral damage in his quest for retaliation - but this wasn't how it was suppose to end. He wasn't supposed to lose it all. — J.M. Darhower

So here we have it. The equivocating distinction between civilisation and savagery, between the "massacre of innocent people" or, if you like, "a clash of civilisations" and "collateral damage". The sophistry and fastidious algebra of infinite justice. — Arundhati Roy

All that happens is that the destruction of human beings - unless they're Americans - is called collateral damage. — Harold Pinter

I absolutely refuse to associate myself with anyone who cannot discern the essential night-and-day difference between theocratic fascism and liberal secular democracy, even less do I want to engage with those who are incapable of recognizing the basic moral distinction between premeditated mass murder and unintentional killing. — Christopher Hitchens

Many of us, myself, included, considered our souls necessary collateral damage to get done the things we felt we simply had to get get done - because of other people's expectations, because we want to be know as highly capable, because we're trying to outrun an inner emptiness. And for a while we don't even realize the compromise we've made. We're on autopilot, chugging through the day on fear and caffeine, checking things off the list, falling into bed without even a real thought or feeling or connection all day long, just a sense of having made it through. — Shauna Niequist