Quotes & Sayings About Gladiators

Versace pythons. Louis Aviators. Balenciagas & they gotta be the gladiators. — Nicki Minaj

For too many generations of the common people of Rome were allowed no hand in governing, and their state religion had long since mummified into dry rituals that never touched ordinary passions. It was inevitable, proclaimed the dour scholars of the philosophical schools, that the Colosseum would become their chief temple and the fortunes of gladiators would be watched more closely than the rise and fall of nations. — Donna Gillespie

And be silent for the most part, or else make only the most necessary remarks, and express these in few words. But rarely, and when occasion requires you to talk, talk, indeed, but about no ordinary topics. Do not talk about gladiators, or horseraces, or athletes, or things to eat or drink - topics that arise on all occasions; but above all, do not talk about people, either blaming, or praising, or comparing them. — Epictetus

There is an old adage about gladiators, - that they plan their fight in the ring. — Seneca.

In his Philosophy of Style, Herbert Spencer gives two sentences to illustrate how the vague and general can be turned into the vivid and particular: In proportion as the manners, customs, and amusements of a nation are cruel and barbarous, the regulations of its penal code will be severe. In proportion as men delight in battles, bullfights, and combats of gladiators, will they punish by hanging, burning, and the rack. — William Strunk Jr.

We find an abundance of anger and the desire to destroy the opposition in any competitive human environment. Hate sparks contest, and in the modern world, attorneys are the paid gladiators of warring parties. Attorneys are for hire to the highest bidder. Attorneys ply their trade by dealing in the commerce of anger and hatred. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Gladiators seek to best all, it is how they survive — Spartacus

Back in the days when gladiators hacked away at each other, there was always the man who decided whether the defeated should live or die. The job is usually given to the Emperor in movies, but in fact any senior man could have been the designated thumbs-up-thumbs-down guy.
The official title for this fellow was ... the editor. (evil laughter in background) — Gary Corby

The battle of Iwo Jima would quickly turn into a primitive contest of gladiators: Japanese gladiators fighting from caves and tunnels like the catacombs of the Colosseum, and American gladiators aboveground, exposed on all sides, using liquid gasoline to burn their opponents out of their lethal hiding places.
All of this on an island five and a half miles long and two miles wide. An area smaller than Doc Bradley's hometown of Antigo, but bearing ten times the humanity. A car driving sixty miles an hour could cover its length in five and a half minutes. For the slogging, dying Marines, it would take more than a month. — James D. Bradley

I've always like watching competition and athleticism. Just seeing the average person going up against Gladiators, is always something I enjoy. I'm not really a big sports fan, but I do enjoy the show. — Laila Ali

Go back to bed, America. Your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control again. Here. Here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed, America. Here is American Gladiators. Here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go, America! You are free to do what we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you! — Bill Hicks

I'm scanning the sky for doo-doo missiles, when there's a bloodcurdling scream. An ugly thing with a human body, ears like a rabbit and a face so grotesque it would make gladiators wet their pants leaps off the roof of the houseboat. It lands right in front of me. — J.E. Fison

You'd think they were watching gladiators," he said. "I'd be the gladiator," Sophie replied. "You'd be whatever weakling they throw in there, who gets mutilated. — Lauren Layne

Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books. — Etienne De La Boetie

...for, though the instinct to fight and to kill is surely qualified by one's personal courage, the instinct to watch others fight and kill is evidently inborn. When the boxing fan shouts, 'Kill him! Kill him!' he is betraying no peculiar pathology or quirk but asserting his common humanity and his kinship, however distant, with the thousands upon thousands of spectators who crowded into the Roman amphitheaters to see gladiators fight to the death. — Joyce Carol Oates

We used to flock to watch gladiators, public torture and executions. In more recent times, our appetite for mortal violence has been sublimated in sports, photorealistic video games, film and literature. — Kenneth Oppel

Humiliating events have a way of capturing the public's imagination. So it has been since antiquity, when gladiators were pitted against each other and the legions of Spartacus were crucified in endless rows on the way to Rome. — Gary Weiss

corner into the Vicolo del Fiori. He faced four tall men dressed as gladiators, shoulder to shoulder, and at once he knew that something was wrong. "Stop — George McNeill

Sports plays a societal role in engendering jingoist and chauvinist attitudes. They're designed to organize a community to be committed to their gladiators. — Noam Chomsky

Two blue men the size of football players walking through a store wrapped in Roman gladiator armor was bound to attract attention. — Missy Lyons

Bourgeois do not even suspect that we serve them our hearts. The race of gladiators has not died: every artist is one. He amuses the public with his afflictions. — Gustave Flaubert

What sadist had invented the concept of skiing? Kira wondered. Who was the first person to decide it would be fun to rocket shakily down an icy mountain on two pieces of metal with wind attacking your face and snow spraying into your eyes and people whipping all around, waving spiky poles like gladiators closing in for a kill? She was shocked lawyers hadn't shut down the sport yet; the potential for catastrophe was rampant. — Sarah Pekkanen

On 'American Gladiators,' I got to pummel a lot of people off a pyramid with a giant Q-tip. It was so much fun to wrestle people with no risk of getting knocked out or choked out. — Gina Carano

I love Greek mythology, I love gladiators, I love war stuff. — Tyson Chandler

We are the modern day gladiators. — Tito Ortiz

What is the harm in returning to the point whence you came? He will live badly who does not know how to die well. So we must first strip off the value we set on this thing and reckon the breath of life as something cheap. To quote Cicero, we hate gladiators
if they are keen to save their life by any means; we favour them if they openly show contempt for it. — Seneca.

His straight and perfect figure, muscled as the best of the ancient Roman gladiators must have been muscled, and yet with the soft and sinuous curves of a Greek god, told at a glance the wondrous combination of enormous strength with suppleness and speed. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

It takes a great deal of behind the scenes work so the fans can see two gladiators square off in the ring or cage. That final moment of confrontation stands on the shoulders of so many men and women who never expect any notoriety. In fact, they don't even crave it, because when two fighters put on an amazing display of heart and skill for the fans, us behind-the-scenes guys know that we played a role in making it happen. — Jacob "Stitch" Duran

Here is what they got out of their hoax. Their friends and families scorned them. Their social standing, possessions, and political privileges were stolen from them by both Jews and Romans. They were persecuted, imprisoned, whipped, tortured, exiled, crucified, eaten by lions, and cut to pieces by gladiators. So some silly Jews invented the whole elaborate, incredible lie of Christianity for absolutely no reason, and millions of Gentiles believed it, devoted their lives to it, and died for it - for no reason. It was only a fantastic practical joke, a hoax. — Peter Kreeft

Perhaps Western civilization is in a post-decline phase, or maybe the decline is just taking a really long time, like the Roman Empire's did. The Romans had gladiators and Christian-hungry lions and that sort of thing. We have MTV. — Tom Shales

Most people think Marv is crazy, but I don't believe that.
I'm no shrink and I'm not saying I've got Marv all figured out or anything, but "crazy" just doesn't explain him. Not to me. Sometimes I think he's retarded, a big, brutal kid who never learned the ground rules about how people are supposed to act around each other. But that doesn't have the right ring to it either. No, it's more like there's nothing wrong with Marv, nothing at all
except that he had the rotten luck of being born at the wrong time in history. He'd have been okay if he'd been born a couple of thousand years ago. He'd be right at home on some ancient battlefield, swinging an ax into somebody's face. Or in a roman arena, taking a sword to other gladiators like him.
They'd have tossed him girls like Nancy, back then. — Frank Miller

After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to the spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the slaughter of men, to the gladiators. — Michel De Montaigne

We don't catch hold of an idea, rather the idea catches hold of us and enslaves us and whips us into the arena so that we, forced to be gladiators, fight for it. — Anna Funder

I love this word decadence, all shimmering in purple and gold. It suggests the subtle thoughts of ultimate civilization, a high literary culture, a soul capable of intense pleasures. It throws off bursts of fire and the sparkle of precious stones. It is redolent of the rouge of courtesans, the games of the circus, the panting of the gladiators, the spring of wild beasts, the consuming in flames of races exhausted by their capacity for sensation, as the tramp of an invading army sounds. — Paul Verlaine

Linux had paid little attention to the games themselves. The sport of blood had never held him. Linux had a warrior's scorn for gladiators and the maiming of man or beast as entertainment. But for Jacob, a young Judean lad with no concept of Roman games, it clearly had been a terrible shock. The boy's occasional shudder indicated the level of his distress. — Janette Oke

Victims have succumbed to defeat, and their spirit has been conquered and crushed. We survivors are fearless gladiators, and our spirit can never be broken. — Robert Palasciano

You can't walk around here half naked in Roman warrior costumes or every woman in a fifty-mile radius will be on you like flies on honey. — Missy Lyons

We were in chaos and world were watching us while we were killing each other like gladiators in arena. — M.F. Moonzajer

Let me face bare-handed a dozen highly trained and fully armed gladiators, each with a personal grudge against me, than a lawyer with a single pointed question. — Stephen Baxter

People who want to live like Olympian gods must have slaves whom they throw into their fishponds and gladiators who fight during their masters sumptuous banquets-and the pleasure-seekers never care if some blood splatters on them. — Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

We regard our parties as interesting groups of gladiators. — Archibald Primrose

Cannes is a sort of gladiators' arena, and that's the fun part of it. When you accept to come here to open the festival, you know you are going to be criticised. I have no problem with the fact that I expose myself and the movie, and it's normal that I can disagree with the way some people feel. — Olivier Dahan

I am Athena. Before that I was Thea, singer and slave and lover of gladiators. Before that I was Leah, daughter of Benjamin and Rachael of Masada. I am as mortal as you, you common little man. And I fear no one! — Kate Quinn

For whatever reason, we relate to anything godlike with an English accent. The English are very proud of that. And with anything Roman or gladiators, they have an English accent. For an audience, it is an easy trick to hook people in. — Chris Hemsworth

None of us really cheer for glory, prizes, tourneys. None of us, maybe, know why we do it at all, except it is like a rampart against the routine and groaning afflictions of the school day. You wear that jacket, like so much armor, game days, the flipping skirts. Who could touch you? Nobody could. My question is this: The New Coach. Did she look at us that first week and see past the glossed hair and shiny legs, our glittered brow bones and girl bravado? See past all that to everything beneath, all our miseries, the way we all hated ourselves but much more everyone else? Could she see past all of that to something else, something quivering and real, something poised to be transformed, turned out, made? See that she could make us, stick her hands in our glitter-gritted insides and build us into magnificent teen gladiators? — Megan Abbott

I have been happy ... in believing that ... whatever follies we may be led into as to foreign nations, we shall never give up our Union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators. — Thomas Jefferson

I started off in drama, and there are so many women that I admire. Women in this industry are gladiators. Cicely Tyson, Viola Davis, Taraji Henson, Regina Hall, Regina King. — Bresha Webb

I think of most pro athletes as these creatures that are just there for my amusement, like animals in a zoo, or gladiators fighting for me, their king. — A.D. Aliwat

If we are to elevate the game of chess to a popular sport, grandmasters must become gladiators, otherwise the game will languish on the periphery, a voice crying in the wilderness, condemned to live and die on a cold arctic shore. — Michael Basman

Sacred cows make very poor gladiators. — Nikki Giovanni

In my training in the Army, I'd been exposed to a variety of weapons. Rifles. Handguns of all makes and models. RPG launchers. I'd shot a fifty-cal a few times - now, that's a weapon. The fifty's legit. So I think you can understand, Cordero, when I say that a sword was a little disappointing.
Sword fighting was fine in the movies, for gladiators or fighting trolls or whatever. But actually using a sword in combat? Nope. It felt tardy by a couple of centuries. Of course I'd just been in an epic fistfight, but everyone knows fisticuffs is a timeless art. Point is I wasn't thrilled about the sword, but it was better than no sword, so I rolled with it. — Veronica Rossi

From my governor, to be neither of the green nor of the blue party at the games in the Circus, nor a partisan either of the Parmularius or the Scutarius at the gladiators' fights; from him too I learned endurance of labor, and to want little, and to work with my own hands, and not to meddle with other people's affairs, and not to be ready to listen to slander. — Marcus Aurelius

These bastards see their dogs as warriors, gladiators who, with every win, increase their standing in the community. But, the more realistic reason is money. — Kathleen Brooks

I'm a big fan of historical fiction stuff. Historical battles - 'Gladiators,' 'The Patriot.' — Andrew Luck

I felt bolstered by their friendship. By their loyalty. By the idea that I had these amazing friends, these members of my tribe, these gladiators at my back. — Shonda Rhimes

The real gladiators of the world are so humble in their origins and unremarkable in appearance that when we stand next to them in a grocery-store line, we never guess how brightly their souls can burn in the dark. — James Lee Burke

Tolstoy teaches us that compassion is of value and enriches our life only when compassion is severe, which is to say when we can perceive everything that is good and bad about a character but are still able to feel that the sum of us as human beings is probably a little more good than awful. In any case, good or bad, it reminds us that life is like a gladiators' arena for the soul and so we can feel strengthened by those who endure, and feel awe and pity for those who do not. — Norman Mailer

What freaking year were you born in? You can't be much younger than me. They had all of those shows about Amazon chicks and Greek gods, gladiators ... "
"You watched shows about Amazons and Greek gods." It was more of a flat statement than a question.
"Screw you. Them bitches were fierce."
"You're a bizarre person."
"Says the guy in the bodysuit."
Mr. Greek's mouth sunk at the sides. "It's protective armor."
"Like I fucking said. — Santino Hassell

The echo of two boys playing in a pool testing each other to see who could hold their breath the longest.
... Whadda ya wanna do now? - I know, we could wrestle like the Roman gladiators - Okay - What do we fight for? - Loser has to do the victor's homework for a week - Nah, raise the stakes. Loser has to suck the victor's johnny - Trenton recalled the long ago memory of two boys wrestling, butt naked in the back yard and the battle went on forever locked in each other's grip. A stalemate tangle in each other's arm. And they kissed finding each other's tongue. The taste of it so good and frightening at the same time and they pulled apart fearfully - Deez - Yeah Trent - I don't think we should tell anyone about this, okay? - Yeah okay - — Talon P.S.

I have always considered tennis as a combat in an arena between two gladiators who have their racquets and their courage as their weapons. — Yannick Noah

In those days, boxing was very glamorous and romantic. You listened to fights on the radio, and a good announcer made it seem like a contest between gladiators. — Joseph Barbera