Gladiatorial Quotes & Sayings

There is a difference between movie actors and TV acting, especially with movie stars, which is they know their face is 20 feet high on the screen. They know they don't have to do much. — Noah Hawley

We need to recapture the gospel glow of the early Christians who were nonconformists in the truest sense of the word ... Their powerful gospel put an end to such barbaric evils as infanticide and bloody gladiatorial contests. Finally, they captured the Roman Empire for Jesus Christ. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being 'disturbers of the peace' and 'outside agitators.' But they went on with the conviction that they were a 'colony of heaven' and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be 'astronomically intimidated.' They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest. Things are different now. The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the archsupporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church's silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Truth had a way of coming out on top - and it was just as well for everybody that it did. If there ever came a day when truth was so soundly defeated that it never emerged, but sank, instead, under the sheer volume of untruth that the world produced, then that would be a sad day for Botswana, and for the people who lived in Botswana. It would be a sad day for the whole world, that day. — Alexander McCall Smith

When you're accustomed to doing stand-up, so often you're the only person onstage and it's all your thing. It's very gladiatorial. Obviously, when you're in a scene with somebody, you're supposed to listen and react - and that's a bit of a transition. — Jon Stewart

CONGS CATASTROPHE
In their primal gladiatorial tourney N. Baddesley jousting on their own bailiwick encountered the full and furious blast of Steeple Sinderby's New Look Lads spearheaded by Sid Swift, long-lost Shooting Star idol of Brum fans a handful of time ago. The Ringers clocked up eleven strikes and only the inexorable march of time muffled a full peal of twelve. — J.L. Carr

Getting a lousy education, then spending a lifetime pitted against your fellow workers in the gladiatorial theater of the free market economy does not make for optimism or open mindedness, both hallmarks of liberalism. It makes for a kind of bleak coarseness and inner degradation that allows working people to accept the American empire's wars without a blink. — Joe Bageant

I've been watching 'American Idol' since its debut season in 2002. Back then, America hadn't yet evolved into a gladiatorial cybernation of bloggers, tweeters, and self-ordained voice coaches. — Diablo Cody

The practice of that which is ethically best - what we call goodness or virtue - involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows ... It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence ... Laws and moral precepts are directed to the end of curbing the cosmic process. — Thomas Henry Huxley

It takes me about twenty seconds to forget about the staring faces and all that shiny, pulled-back hair and which of the girls on the bleachers may or may not be a better dancer than I am and the fact that I'm twice as big as anyone in this room. After that first thirty seconds, I disappear into the song. I become one with the music, one with the dance. — Jennifer Niven

To offer a man friendship when love is in his heart is like giving a loaf of bread to one who is dying of thirst. — Frank Frankfort Moore

Football is controlled violence, but it is violence, which people have loved to watch since the gladiatorial contests in ancient Rome. — Michael Mandelbaum

Public life has become so gladiatorial. Every day, another reputation bites the dust. — Tina Brown

The original games were gladiatorial fights to the death. We had to revise that after a few years because, well, people stopped signing up. — Craig Schaefer

Putting gloves on the fighters was a symbolic change that suggested that we were now making it a civilized sport, and it was no longer this crazy gladiatorial throwback to ancient Rome. It's even in our language: If you want to get serious and violent, what do you do? You "take the gloves off." Bare-fisted is supposedly a much more dangerous way to hit someone. But we've got it completely backward. The glove is a weapon. It massively accentuates the ability of the fist to do harm. — Jonathan Gottschall

They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Football is entertainment in which the audience is expected to delight in gladiatorial action that a growing portion of the audience knows may cause the players degenerative brain disease. — George Will

Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions. It is apparently unfelt by savages, except towards their pets. How little the old Romans knew of it is shewn by their abhorrent gladiatorial exhibitions. The very idea of humanity, as far as I could observe, was new to most of the Gauchos of the Pampas. This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As — Charles Darwin

Froi didn't know where home was anymore. He wanted to return to Lumatere, and he wanted to stay in Charyn. What strangeness was that? To belong in two kingdoms. He felt a sob rise within him that he swallowed hard the moment he felt Lirah and Gargarin at his shoulders. — Melina Marchetta

We live at a time that is notable for the polemical nature of discussions about identity, consciousness, rationality, agency, memory, and feeling. 'New atheists' and reductive materialists conduct gladiatorial debates against defenders of faith and enemies of reductionism. Lots of heat is produced, but, alas, little light is shed. How marvelous it is, then, to see this fine new book by Lenn E. Goodman and Gregory Caramenico. Here is a learned, illuminating, and decidedly non-polemical treatment of the classic questions of soul, mind, and brain-an exemplary work of scholarship. — Robert P. George

I felt a certain modicum of success because I had been paid well to be an actor for the first time in my life, but I felt like I had done adolescent work on the show, and stepping into the New York theater arena was the first time I felt like I'd come into my own. I felt like I was proving myself in a gladiatorial arena. — Chris Carmack

Television ... the new gladiatorial arena. — Josephine Hart

The worldly life has persisted due to imitation of worldly movements and by opposing them, one becomes free. — Dada Bhagwan

The Bible had been the weapon of choice in the spiritual gladiatorial arena of my youth. I knew how, wielded with intent and precision, the Bible can cut deeply, while on the one holding it can claim with impunity that this is from God. — Nadia Bolz-Weber