Empty Promise Quotes & Sayings

The most significant thing is public participation. That assures the Afghan public that our promises are not empty. — Ashraf Ghani

Autocracy cannot do without its twin agents: a hangman and a priest, the first to suppress popular resistance by force, the second to sweeten and embellish the lot of the oppressed with empty promises of a heavenly kingdom. — Vladimir Lenin

When in Gregg v. Georgia the Supreme Court gave its seal of approval to capital punishment, this endorsement was premised on the promise that capital punishment would be administered with fairness and justice. Instead, the promise has become a cruel and empty mockery. If not remedied, the scandalous state of our present system of capital punishment will cast a pall of shame over our society for years to come. We cannot let it continue. — Thurgood Marshall

Promises are empty words if you're not keeping them. — Mike Ditka

Tradition whispers that in the sky is a bird, blue as the sky itself, which brings to its finders happiness. But everyone cannot see it; for mortal eyes are prone to be blinded by the glitter of wealth, fame, and position, and deceived by the mocking Will-o-Wisp of empty honors. But for the fortunate ones who seek with open eyes and hearts, with the artlessness, simplicity, and faith which are richest in childhood, there is an undying promise; and to them the Blue Bird lives and carols, a rejoicing symbol of Happiness and Contentment unto the end. — Venice J. Bloodworth

I shook my head, sweeping my lips across hers. Not good enough. "I need to hear you say it. I need to know you're mine."
"I've been yours since the second we
met," she said, begging. I stared into her eyes for a few seconds, and then felt my mouth turn up into a half smile, hoping her words were true and not just spoken in the moment. I leaned down and kissed her tenderly, and then she slowly pulled me into her. My entire body felt like it was melting inside of her.
"Say it again." Part of me couldn't believe it was all really happening.
"I'm yours." She breathed. "I don't ever want to be apart from you again."
"Promise me," I said, groaning with another thrust.
"I love you. I'll love you forever." She looked straight into my eyes when she spoke, and it finally clicked that her words weren't just an empty promise. — Jamie McGuire

For a trader - hell, for any American - being empty of promise is an abomination. — Katya G. Cohen

just because of its promise of unlimited possibilities technology is an empty form like the most formalistic logic and is unable to determine the content of life.that is why our time,being the most intensely technical,is also the emptiest in all human history. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Hope drives us to invent new fixes for old messes, which in turn create ever more dangerous messes. Hope elects the politician with the biggest empty promise; and as any stockbroker or lottery seller knows, most of us will take a slim hope over prudent and predictable frugality. Hope, like greed, fuels the engine of capitalism. — Margaret Atwood

Was she strong enough to allow both of them to be themselves? Bahama had instilled in her an honoring of promises, but she could not keep her promise unless she was willing to allow Nik to be Nik, not a projection of someone who could fill in all her empty spaces, heal all her wounds. — Madeleine L'Engle

sight. In his essay On The Sublime, Edmund Burke observes, "Represent the most sublime and affecting tragedy we have...and when you have collected your audience, just at the moment when their minds are filled with expectation, let it be reported that a criminal is on the point of being executed in the adjoining square..." And in a moment, the theater will be empty. In these bloody rituals of execution and repression, the leader becomes the ancient God-King stepping forward to save his people, a promise as dangerous as it is seductive. If there is one lesson we can take away from the extravagant lives of our tyrants it is the fragility of our democratic society which, after all, is the exception, not the norm, in that dark, violent story known as human history. — Daniel Myerson

And she just takes it, drinking me down, sucking my cock with sharp tugs that have me babbling demands. "God, honey, promise you'll marry me one day. I have to have this for the rest of our lives. Forever. Always. Fuck."
She releases me with a long pull, her finger sliding away. My skin prickles. I feel vaguely empty, my body sore in places I don't want to think about. And as she slowly kisses her way up my stomach, I'm still babbling. "Give it to me on Christmas. Birthdays." Her tongue flicks in my belly button. I grunt, my hips twitching. "My days off. Major holidays. Midnight surprises ... " Mac licks my nipple, and I shiver, my voice going raspy. "Twice on Tuesdays. — Kristen Callihan

Promises to love without putting those words into action are just empty proposals. It's not tangible until it is actually seen. Love is action. — Annie Lobert

MURRY: Resolutions are a complete waste of time. They're just this meaningless ritual, empty promises we make and break within hours of each other. — Hillary DePiano

She rolled over and stretched, blinking up at the blue sky. The tips of the long grasses swished gently in the breeze. The hot sun pressed down on her so that she felt hot and empty. Slowly, the meadow began to fulfill its promise. — Elizabeth George Speare

It wasn't the best place to go for a walk, really. There were all these things that people had thrown away back there - old cookers and broken dishes and dolls with no arms and no legs and empty cans and broken bottles. Mum and Dad made me promise not to go exploring back there, because there were too many sharp things, and tetanus and such. — Neil Gaiman

No person, collection of people, institution, government or organization of any kind can in any way promise to meet all of my needs for no person, collection of people, institution, government or organization possesses the array of resources necessary to do that. And so, I am left with the reality that either there is a God who can meet all of my needs, or I've been stranded in an existence that created me with needs that the existence itself cannot meet. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

In every life, no matter how full or empty ones purse, there is tragedy. It is the one promise life always fulfills. Thus, happiness is a gift, and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes, and to add to other peoples store of it. — Charles Dickens

I can't explain, maybe it isn't something that needs explaining, how the sight of a broken cage just puts you up on stilts. The promise that the cage will always be empty, that its days as a jailhouse are done. — Helen Oyeyemi

Soldiers' bellies are not satisfied with empty promises and hopes. — Peter The Great

The immense desert, empty as a bird's wing, inspired him with promise. — Mike Bond

Diets - the ultimate empty promise perpetuating the same cycle over and over again. We've all been victims of yo-yo dieting. We stick to some diets longer than others, but c'mon, just how much cabbage soup can a person eat? — Suzanne Somers

In the changing of the times," Abe wrote to one of his students, "they were like autumn lightning, a thing out of season, an empty promise of rain that would fall unheeded on fields already bare. — Dave Lowry

He's on the verge of it
we can tell. He is on the verge of finding that very hard truth
that it will never be complete, or feel complete. This is usually something you only have to learn once
that just like there is no such thing as forever, there is no such thing as total. When you're in the thrall of your first love, this discovery feels like the breaking of all momentum, the undermining of all promise. For the past year, Neil has assumed that love was like a liquid pouring into a vessel, and that the longer you loved, the more full the vessel became, until it was entirely full. The truth is that over time, the vessel expands as well. You grow. Your life wides. And you can't expect your partner's love alone to fill you. There will always be space for other things. And that space isn't empty as much as it's filled by another element. Even though the liquid is easier to see, you have to learn to appreciate the air. — David Levithan

I'll only ever worship these lips. I'll only ever worship this body." Gripping the back of her neck tighter, Gavin deepened the kiss. "When I look at you, I feel like I'm looking at the other half of myself. You've filled the empty space in my soul, and because of that, you're a goddess to me. That's the way I'm always going to treat you. For the rest of your life. I promise you that. I fucking promise. — Gail McHugh

An empty theater is a promise unfulfilled.In a few hours, everything around him would be light and noise. Laughter and applause. Colorful people packed together in their colorful finery. Tonight, the promise would be fulfilled. And then, after the curtain came down and the gaslights were snuffed out, there would be darkness again. That was the beauty of it. That was theater. — Seth Grahame-Smith

Griff held out his empty hand. "Pauline, I'm here asking you--begging you, if it comes to that--to take my hand. Just take my hand, and promise before God you will never let it go. I will vow the same. Can we arrange for that to happen, someday soon? In a church?" After a moment, he added in a quiet voice, "Please? — Tessa Dare

The raft finally got here," he said.
Calypso snorted. Her eyes might have been red, but it was hard to tell in the moonlight. "You just noticed?"
"But if it only shows up for guys you like-"
"Don't push your luck, Leo Valdez," she said. "I still hate you."
"Okay."
"And you are not coming back here," she insisted. "So don't give me any empty promises."
"How about a full promise?" he said. "Because I'm definitely-"
She grabbed his face and pulled him into a kiss, which effectively shut him up.
For all his joking and flirting, Leo had never kissed a girl before. Well, sisterly pecks on the cheeck from Piper, but that didn't count. This was a real, full-contact kiss. If Leo had had gears and wires in his brain, they would've short-circuited.
Calypso pushed him away. "That didn't happen."
"Okay." His voice sounded an octave higher than usual. — Rick Riordan

The afflicted are almost upon them. The air is a din of hypersonic bursts, snarls and empty shell casings. But still I hear him. As his people start to fall. As his pistol clicks empty. As he rises with only his knuckles left between him and the sheer brutality of mathematics. As the music swells above the carnage, still I hear him breathe the words. "Tell them I was thinking of them. At the end." They pile onto him. All snarls and teeth and fists. But as he falls, I am holding his hand. Easing him into his long good night. "I will tell them, David." The last words he will ever hear. 'I promise. — Amie Kaufman

There are mornings when everything brims with promise, even my empty cup. — Ted Kooser

If economic progress means that we become anonymous cogs in some great machine, then progress is an empty promise. — Charles Handy

Since Don Quixote de la Mancha is a crazy fool and a madman, and since Sancho Panza, his squire, knows it, yet, for all that, serves and follows him, and hangs on these empty promises of his, there can be no doubt that he is more of a madman and a fool than his master. — Miguel De Cervantes

The Barry Goldwater movement excited the depths because the apocalypse was brought more near, and like millions of other whites, I had been leading a life which was a trifle too pointless and a trifle too full of guilt and my gullet was close to nausea with the empty promises of an empty liberal center. — Norman Mailer

Talent without discipline is only an empty promise - the glitter of an unworked crystal. It is nothing of itself. — Stephen R. Lawhead

I totally remember what it felt like to be so full ... Full of promise, full of dreams, full of shit. Mostly just full of yourself. So full you're bursting. And then you get out into the world, and people empty you out, little by little, like air from a balloon ... You try like hell to fill yourself up with fresh air, from you and from other people. But back then ... it was so damn effortless to feel full, you know? All you had to do was breathe — Jonathan Tropper

Barack Obama's campaign of empty self-contradictory promises has apparently hoodwinked the state of Wyoming ... — Charles Foster Johnson

Haven't we all heard some irritating person saying that if so-and-so is elected, then he/she is absolutely definitely leaving the country? There must be some reason why it is mainly liberals who tend to say this, but the chief thing to note about the promise is that it is usually an empty one. — Christopher Hitchens

Srinagar is a medieval city dying in a modern war. It is empty streets, locked shops, angry soldiers and boys with stones. It is several thousand military bunkers, four golf courses, and three book-shops. It is wily politicians repeating their lies about war and peace to television cameras and small crowds gathered by the promise of an elusive job or a daily fee of a few hundred rupees. It is stopping at sidewalks and traffic lights when the convoys of rulers and their patrons in armored cars, secured by machine guns, rumble on broken roads. It is staring back or looking away, resigned. Srinagar is never winning and never being defeated. — Basharat Peer

FINISTERRE
The road in the end taking the path the sun had taken,
into the western sea, and the moon rising behind you
as you stood where ground turned to ocean: no way
to your future now but the way your shadow could take,
walking before you across water, going where shadows go,
no way to make sense of a world that wouldn't let you pass
except to call an end to the way you had come,
to take out each frayed letter you brought
and light their illumined corners, and to read
them as they drifted through the western light;
to empty your bags; to sort this and to leave that;
to promise what you needed to promise all along,
and to abandon the shoes that had brought you here
right at the water's edge, not because you had given up
but because now, you would find a different way to tread,
and because, through it all, part of you could still walk on,
no matter how, over the waves. — David Whyte

nothing but a testament of his ownership of me. A daily reminder of the golden cage I'd be trapped in for the rest of my life. Until death do us part wasn't an empty promise as with so many other couples that entered the holy bond of marriage. There was no way out of this union for me. I was Luca's until the bitter end. The last few words of the oath that men swore when they were inducted into the mafia could just as well have been the closing of my wedding vow: "I enter alive and I will have to get out dead." I should have run when I still had the chance. — Cora Reilly

ghost. No way am I gonna get bullied by anyone or anything - especially ghosts. "Mattie, you okay?" Mrs. Olson is eyeballing me with concern. I haven't moved to get out of the car. "All good, Mrs. O," I smile weakly at her. "Just tired." Taking a deep breath, I open the door and force myself out. I am not afraid, I chant over and over. The other kids are still at school, so the house is pretty empty. Mrs. O had told me earlier we had a new foster kid in the house, but I'm betting he's at school too. She sends me upstairs with the promise to bring me a sandwich and a glass of milk. The doctors said no caffeine for a while, so my favorite drink in the world, Coke, is off limits. At least until I can escape and get to a gas station. I need it like an addict needs crack. My room is exactly as I left it, the bed turned down and my clothes thrown into a corner. A simple white dresser and mirror, desk, and a twin bed covered in my worn out quilt decorate the room. — Apryl Baker

An empty bottle of Jack is almost just as beautiful as a new and unopened bottle ... in the same sense as looking down at muddied feet, and looking back the way you came. The journey you've taken to get to this point, the experiences and sights and music listened to, the shit scrolled down on paper. An empty bottle may hold more promise than a full one in that regard ... — Dave Matthes

Promise me," he whispers, "that you won't go. For me. Do this one thing for me." Could I do that? Could I stay here, fix things with him, let someone else die in my place? Looking up at him, I believe for a moment that I could. And then I see Will. The crease between his eyebrows. The empty, simulation-bound eyes. The slumped body. Do this one thing for me. Tobias's dark eyes plead with me. But if I don't go to Erudite, who will? Tobias? It's the kind of thing he would do. I feel a stab of pain in my chest as I lie to him. "Okay." "Promise," he says, frowning. The pain becomes an ache, spreads everywhere - all mixed together, guilt and terror and longing. "I promise. — Veronica Roth

Hannah didn't see Robbie again for weeks after that. She thought he'd forgotten his promise to lend her his book of poetry. It was just like him, she suspected, to charm his way into a dinner invitation, make empty promises, then vanish without honoring them. She was not offended, merely disappointed in herself for being taken in. — Kate Morton

Decide yourself who was right: you or the one who questioned you then? Recall the first question; its meaning, though not literally, was this: 'You want to go into the world, and you are going empty-handed, with some promise of freedom, which they in their simplicity and innate lawlessness cannot even comprehend, which they dread and fear - for nothing has ever been more insufferable for man and for human society than freedom! But do you see these stones in this bare, scorching desert? Turn them into bread and mankind will run after you like sheep, grateful and obedient, though eternally trembling lest you withdraw your hand and your loaves cease for them. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If you ask people to do things and they usually don't get around to them, stop asking yourself, "What's the matter with people these days?" Instead, ask yourself, "What's the matter with me? What am I doing or failing to do that causes people to give me empty promises?" — Ed Bliss

I am a lover of love and I am a lover of words, and the two together spin visions of airy castles, but also may pierce the heart of hope. And so I remind you that I am a fool, a poet, and what matters is reality, not lovely words. Words are full of promise, yet empty of matter. — Waylon H. Lewis

Never underestimate the power of temptation to disarm your better senses. Throughout the ages good people surrendered their honor for the empty promise that wealth or power would bring fulfillment and their dignity, good name and self-esteem for the passing pleasures of sex and drugs. — Michael Josephson

Christ never promises peace in the sense of no more struggle and suffering. Instead, he helps us to struggle and suffer as he did, in love, for one another. Christ does not give us security in the sense of something in this world, some cause, some principle, some value, which is forever. Instead, he tells us that there is nothing in this world that is forever, all flesh is grass. He does not promise us unlonely lives. His own life speaks loud of how, in a world where there is little love, love is always lonely. Instead of all these, the answer that he gives, I think, is himself. If we go to him for anything else, he may send us away empty or he may not. But if we go to him for himself, I believe that we go away always with this deepest of all our hungers filled. — Frederick Buechner

There's so much more to life than finding someone who will want you, or being sad over someone who doesn't. There's a lot of wonderful time to be spent discovering yourself without hoping someone will fall in love with you along the way, and it doesn't need to be painful or empty. You need to fill yourself up with love. Not anyone else. Become a whole being on your own. Go on adventures, fall asleep in the woods with friends, wander around the city at night, sit in a coffee shop on your own, write on bathroom stalls, leave notes in library books, dress up for yourself, give to others, smile a lot. Do all things with love, but don't romanticize life like you can't survive without it. Live for yourself and be happy on your own. It isn't any less beautiful, I promise. — Emery Allen

Look ... it's empty ... as empty as a politician's promise! — Harry Blackstone Jr.

All promises are empty - until they are fulfilled. — Amy Dickinson