Most Ruthless Quotes & Sayings

There'll be people better and smarter than you, Adam. There always are. Your strength must be to want it more, and let nothing get in the way. They called Robert Kennedy ruthless. But for a few months before he died, when I joined his campaign, I knew Bobby very well, and I can tell you he was most ruthless with himself. That's how you should be. — Richard North Patterson

You will come across obstacles in life
fair and unfair. And you will discover, time and time again, that what matters most is not what these obstacles are but how we see them, how we react to them, and whether we keep our composure. You will learn that this reaction determines how successful we will be in overcoming
or possibly thriving because of
them. Where one person sees a crisis, another can see opportunity. Where one is blinded by success, another sees reality with ruthless objectivity. Where one loses control of emotions, another can remain calm. — Ryan Holiday

Sometimes the most ruthless heart speaks the most truth — Cassandra Clare

Hinduism comes closest to being a nature religion. Rivers, rocks, trees, plants, animals, and birds all play their part, both in mythology and everyday worship. This harmony is most evident in remote places like this, and I hope it does not loose its unique character in the ruthless urban advance. — Ruskin Bond

When it is established that government by right can take wealth from some and give it to others. When a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law, men will use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they have passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. — Ayn Rand

Frowning, Lillian stared at her sister's small ivory face, with its intelligent dark eyes and brows that were a shade too strongly marked. Not for the first time, she wondered how it was that the person most willing to join her reckless adventures was also the one who could most easily recall her to reason. Many people were often deceived by Daisy's frequent moments of whimsy, never suspecting the bedrock of ruthless common sense beneath the elfin facade. — Lisa Kleypas

Can it be entirely accidental that the most famous fictional spy of them all, James Bond, Number 007, deadly marksman, intriguer, the ultimate man behind the curtain, sexual athlete and ruthless patriot, is also a Scot, as was the author, whose wish-fulfilment he was? — Linda Colley

I had not then acquired the technique that I flatter myself now enables me to deal competently with the works of modern artist. If this were the place I could write a very neat little guide to enable the amateur of pictures to deal to the satisfaction of their painters with the most diverse manifestations of the creative instinct. There is the intense 'By God!' that acknowledges the power of the ruthless realist, the 'It's so awfully sincere' that covers your embarrassment when you are shown the coloured photograph of an alderman's widow, the low whistle that exhibits your admiration for the post-impressionist, the 'Terribly amusing' that expresses what you feel about the cubist, the 'Oh!' of one who is overcome, the 'Ah!' of him whose breath is taken away. — W. Somerset Maugham

Most alcoholics owe money. We do not dodge our creditors. Telling them what we are trying to do, we make no bones about our drinking; they usually know it anyway, whether we think so or not. Nor are we afraid of disclosing our alcoholism on the theory it may cause financial harm. Approached in this way, the most ruthless creditor will sometimes surprise us. Arranging the best deal we can we let these people know we are sorry. Our drinking has made us slow to pay. We must lose our fear of creditors no matter how far we have to go, for we are liable to drink if we are afraid to face them. — Alcoholics Anonymous

We like to see underdogs win. But there is no justice in history. Most past cultures have sooner or later fallen prey to the armies of some ruthless empire, which have consigned them to oblivion. Empires, too, ultimately fall, but they tend to leave behind rich and enduring legacies. Almost all people in the twenty-first century are the offspring of one empire or another. — Yuval Noah Harari

Mankind was, in reality, the most ruthless, dangerous, unforgiving species on earth. — Dean Koontz

The unnatural principle of human sacrifice was carried by the British Druids to a ruthless pitch. The mysterious priesthoods of the forests bound themselves and their votaries together by the most deadly sacrament that men can take. Here, perhaps, upon these wooden altars of a sullen island, there lay one of the secrets, awful, inflaming, unifying, of the tribes of Gaul. And whence did this sombre custom come? — Winston S. Churchill

There is nothing that dies so hard and rallies so often as intolerance. The vices and passions which it summons to its support are the most ruthless and the most persistent harbored in the human breast. They sometimes sleep but they never seem to die. Anything, any extraordinary situation, any unnecessary controversy, may light those fires again and plant in our republic that which has destroyed every republic which undertook to nurse it. — William Borah

The Korean private market had unbundled education down to the one in-school variable that mattered most: the teacher. It was about as close to a pure meritocracy as it could be, and just as ruthless. In hagwons, teachers were free agents. They did not need to be certified. They didm;t have benefits or even guaranteed base salary; their pay was determined by how many students signed up for their classes, by their students' test-score growth, and, in many hagwons, by the results of satisfaction surveys given to students and parents. — Amanda Ripley

the mob is the most ruthless of tyrants; — Friedrich Nietzsche

The newly created Darth Vader flexes his Force-muscle as the Emperor's enforcer to maintain order and obedience in a galaxy reeling from civil war and the destruction of the Jedi Order. To the galaxy at large, Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker - the Chosen One - died on Coruscant during the siege of the Jedi Temple. And, to some extent, the was true - Anakin was dead. But from the site of Anakin Skywalker's last stand - on the molten surface of the planet Mustafa, where he sought to destroy his friend and former master, Obi-Wan Kanobi - a fearsome spectre in black has risen. Once the most powerful Knight ever known to the Jedi order he is not a disciple of the dark side, a lord of the dreaded Sith, and the avenging right hand of the galaxy's ruthless new Emperor. Seduced, deranged and destroyed by the machinations of the Dark Lord Sidious, Anakin Skywalker is dead ... and Darth Vader lives ... — James Luceno

He was a curious mixture of things to me on that first occasion: he had the general physique of a bull, the tenacity of a vulture, the agility of a leopard, the tenderness of a lamb, and the coyness of a dove. He had a curious overgrown head which fasdnated me and which, for some reason, I took to be singularly Athenian. His hands were rather small for his body, and overly delicate. He was a vital, powerful man, capable of brutal gestures and rough words, yet somehow conveying a sense of warmth which was soft and feminine. There was also a great element of the tragic in him which his adroit mimicry only enhanced. He was extremely sympathetic and at the same time ruthless as a boor. He seemed to be talking about himself all the time, but never egotistically. He talked about himself because he himself was the most interesting person he knew. I liked that quality very much - I have a little of it myself. — Henry Miller

If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, it can become abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless. — Henry A. Kissinger

He appeared into the scene like an otherworldly being, providing no indication nor declaration. He did not even issue a warning of what his presence would entail. He may have been the wind, a caress, or a ghost, invading others' most precious convictions and still haunting mine like a ruthless despot. — Jeni Dhodary

People kill for money or for power. But the most ruthless murderers are those who kill for their ideas. — Anthony De Mello

Making out an invitation list for a party brings out the worst in everyone. It is then that our most ruthless estimates of the people we know come into play. — Sydney J. Harris

My husband is my most ruthless critic ... sometimes he will say, 'It's been said better before.' Of course it has. It's all been said better before. If I thought I had to say it better than anybody else, I'd never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said; by me; ontologically. We each have to say it, to say it our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes out through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn't what human creation is about. It is that we have to try; to put it down in pigment, or words, or musical notations, or we die. — Madeleine L'Engle

[Norm said,] 'To all those who argue this war is a mistake, I'd like to point out that we've removed from power one of history's most ruthless and belligerent tyrants. A man who cold-bloodedly murdered thousands of his own people. Who built palaces for his personal pleasure while schools decayed and his country's health care system collapsed. Who maintained one of the world's most expensive armies while he allowed his nation's infrastructure to crumble. Who channeled resources to his cronies and political allies, allowing them to siphon off much of the country's wealth for their own personal gain. — Ben Fountain

books were girls, and reading was s-ss-ssss - fucking, this would be the biggest whorehouse in the county and I'd be the most ruthless pimp you ever met. — Joe Hill

That doctrine of peace at any price has done more mischief than any I can well recall that have been afloat in this country. It has occasioned more wars than any of the most ruthless conquerors. It has disturbed and nearly destroyed that political equilibrium so necessary to the liberties and the welfare of the world. — Benjamin Disraeli

The house of the Plantagenets, from Henry II to Richard III himself, was brimming with blood. In their lust for power the members of the family turned upon one another. King John murdered, or caused to be murdered, his nephew Arthur; Richard II despatched his uncle, Thomas of Gloucester; Richard II was in turn killed on the orders of his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke; Henry VI was killed in the Tower on the orders of his cousin, Edward IV; Edward IV murdered his brother, Clarence, just as his own two sons were murdered by their uncle. It is hard to imagine a family more steeped in slaughter and revenge, of which the Wars of the Roses were only one effusion. It might be thought that some curse had been laid upon the house of the Plantagenets, except of course that in the world of kings the palm of victory always goes to the most violent and the most ruthless. It could be said that the royal family was the begetter of organized crime. — Peter Ackroyd

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that - the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance. That is, to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is ... curiosity to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does. And if you have that, then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got that or not.
[Press conference, University of Virginia, May 20, 1957] — William Faulkner

To-day if ye shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts" (Heb. 4:7). That is evangelical preaching. Is this ruthless speed? Nothing could be more ruthless than to make men think there is still plenty of time to mend their ways. To tell men that the cause is urgent, and that the kingdom of God is at hand is the most charitable and merciful act we can perform, the most joyous news we can bring. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I have no idea whether parents can be of help, and I do not blame mine. It was my own affair to come to terms with myself and to find my own way, and like most well-brought-up children, I managed it badly.
Everyone goes through this crisis. For the average person this is the point when the demands of his own life come into the sharpest conflict with his environment, when the way forward has to be sought with the bitterest means at his command. Many people experience the dying and rebirth - which is our fate - only this once during their entire life. Their childhood becomes hollow and gradually collapses, everything they love abandons them and they suddenly feel surrounded by the loneliness and mortal cold of the universe. Very many are caught forever in this impasse, and for the rest of their lives cling painfully to an irrevocable past, the dream of the lost paradise - which is the worst and most ruthless of dreams. — Hermann Hesse

It may interest for you to know that most Canadians in 2036 are some of the most efficient, ruthless and dangerous people I know. God help Quebec. — John Titor Foundation

Napoleon was one of the most complex personalities in history.He was ruthless, small in stature, a bully, vulnerable, unfaithful and I think he was the first person to shoot prisoners of war so that he had food for his own army. He was absolutely single-minded but he also obviously had charm. How else could a man like him have come back as he did and have the nation rise to a man! — David Suchet

If people decide thin is out, the fashion industry won't have thin models anymore. Have you spent time with fashion people? They are ruthless. They want money. And the one thing they know is people want clothes to cover their bodies. Unfortunately, most people aren't comfortable with their bodies. — Kelly Cutrone

Knowledge follows us everywhere, like a concerned friend or a persuasive lover. It's the discreet noise in our head, whose meaning we think we understand. It asks that our ears ignore what we hear and our eyes deny what we see. It attempts to tell our hearts whom to love and what to hate. At its most intrusive, knowledge is a ruthless autocrat. It will abuse us and demand that we abuse others. One thought can take us far from our normal instincts and compassions. One idea can justify atrocities. It's a simple thing to say that we are knowledge, swept from our own authenticity by words and meanings, but not so simple a thing to grasp, and to change. It's challenging, of course, but faith in ourselves makes it possible, even inevitable. — Miguel Ruiz

The core of ethics runs deep in our species and is common to human beings everywhere. It survives the most appalling hardships and the most ruthless attempts to deprive human beings of their humanity. Nevertheless, some people resist the idea that his core has a biological basis which we have inherited from our pre-human ancestors. — Peter Singer

Generally speaking, by the way, that is the moral of the opponents of violence in politics: they renounce violence when it comes to introducing changes in what already exists, but in defense of the existing order they will not stop at the most ruthless acts. — Leon Trotsky

He told them that they must live their most creative lives as a means of fighting back against the ruthless furnace of this world. Most of all, though, he asked his students to be brave. Without bravery, he instructed, they would never be able to realize the vaulting scope of their own capacities. Without bravery, they would never know the world as richly as it longs to be known. Without bravery, their lives would remain small - far smaller than they probably wanted their lives to be. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Nothing weighs more heavily on age than time. Nothing has more meaning ... Now time becomes, with a kind of ruthless honesty, what it has always been: life's most precious commodity. The only difference is that, finally, we know it. — Joan D. Chittister

Wondering how one went about forcing one's mind into blankness, particularly after a lifetime lived on the axiom that the constant, clearest, most ruthless function of his rational faculty was his foremost duty. — Ayn Rand

Only the strong survived. Only the strong were rewarded. For the longest time, Four was another conquest. A prize Three had won. Then he'd realized Four was the one who dominated. He'd tamed the dragon, the monster, and given a conscience to Stone's most ruthless killer. — Adrienne Wilder

In this job, you handpick your people. You need the best. You need the most loyal. You need the most ruthless. — Karen Traviss

We're the sons appalled by violence, with no capacity for inflicting physical pain, useless at beating and clubbing, unfit to pulverize even the most deserving enemy, though not necessarily without turbulence, temper, even ferocity. We have teeth as the cannibals do, but they are there, imbedded in our jaws, the better to help us articulate. When we lay waste, when we efface, it isn't with raging fists or ruthless schemes or insane sprawling violence but with our words, our brains, with mentality, with all the stuff that produced the poignant abyss between our fathers and us and that they themselves broke their backs to give us. — Philip Roth

If books were girls and reading was s-ss-ssss-fucking, this would be the biggest whorehouse in the county and I'd be the most ruthless pimp you ever met. Whap the girls on the butts and send them off to their tricks as fast and often as I can. — Joe Hill

The world. You're cut out for failure, and you know it. Though you're capable of being a son-of-a-bitch, you're not quite ruthless enough to be so consistently. Though you're not precisely the most honest man I've ever known, neither are you heroically dishonest. On the one hand, you're capable of work, but you're just lazy enough so that you can't work as hard as the world would want you to. On the other hand, you're not quite so lazy that you can impress upon the world a sense of your importance. And you're not lucky - not really. No aura rises from you, and you wear a puzzled expression. — John Edward Williams

There's a misconception that survival of the fittest means survival of the most aggressive. The adjective 'Darwinian' used to refer to ruthless competition; you used to read that in business journals. But that's not what Darwinian means to a biologist; it's whatever leads to reproductive success. — Steven Pinker

The insatiable need for heartless power and ruthless control is the telltale sign of an uninitiated man - the most irresponsible, incompetent and destructive force on earth. — Michael Leunig

Donald Rumsfeld is the most ruthless man I have ever met? and I mean that as a compliment. — Henry A. Kissinger

The animals themselves are incapable of demanding their own liberation, or of protesting against their condition with votes, demonstrations, or bombs. Human beings have the power to continue to oppress other species forever, or until we make this planet unsuitable for living beings. Will our tyranny continue, proving that we really are the selfish tyrants that the most cynical of poets and philosophers have always said we are? Or will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels or terrorists, but because we recognize that our position is morally indefensible? The way in which we answer this question depends on the way in which each one of us, individually, answers it. — Peter Singer

I'm the best ever. I'm the most brutal and vicious, the most ruthless champion there has ever been. No one can stop me. Lennox is a conqueror? No! I'm Alexander! He's no Alexander! I'm the best ever. There's never been anyone as ruthless as me. I'm Sonny Liston. I'm Jack Dempsey. There's no one like me. I'm from their cloth. There is no one who can match me. My style is impetuous, my defense is impregnable, and I'm just ferocious. I want his heart! I want to eat his children! Praise be to Allah! — Mike Tyson

Where there is no danger of overt action there is rarely any interference with freedom. That is why there has so often been amazing freedom of opinion within an aristocratic class which at the same time sanctioned the ruthless suppression of heterodox opinion among the common people. When the Inquisition was operating most effectively against the bourgeois who had lapsed into heresy, the princes of the Church and the nobles enjoyed the freedom of the Renaissance. — Walter Lippmann

When the first mechanical clocks were invented, marking off time in crisp, regular intervals, it must have surprised people to discover that time flowed outside their own mental and physiological processes. Body time flows at its own variable rate, oblivious to the most precise hydrogen master clocks in the laboratory. In fact, the human body contains its own exquisite time-pieces, all with their separate rhythms. There are the alpha waves in the brain; another clock is the heart. And all the while tick the mysterious, ruthless clocks that regulate aging. — Alan Lightman

O neglectful Nature, wherefore art thou thus partial, becoming to some of thy children a tender and benignant mother, to others a most cruel and ruthless stepmother? I see thy children given into slavery to others without ever receiving any benefit, and in lieu of any reward for the services they have done for them they are repaid by the severest punishments. — Leonardo Da Vinci

I'm the most brutal and ruthless conquerer there has ever been. — Mike Tyson

The flaw is when the "might makes right" rule vests property rights in whichever local actors can be the most ruthless or terrifying. That first step is the flaw that any market system worthy of the name must correct. — Christopher Heath Wellman

I have this theory," says Andy Stone, seated in his office at Prudential-Bache Securities. "Wall Street makes its best producers into
managers. The reward for being a good producer is to be made a
manager. The best producers are cutthroat, competitive, and often
neurotic and paranoid. You turn those people into managers, and they go
after each other. They no longer have the outlet for their instincts that
producing gave them. They usually aren't well suited to be managers.
Half of them get thrown out because they are bad. Another quarter get
muscled out because of politics. The guys left behind are just the most
ruthless of the bunch. That's why there are cycles on Wall Street - why
Salomon Brothers is getting crunched now - because the ruthless people
are bad for the business but can only be washed out by proven failure. — Michael Lewis

Most of the heroes we remember we remember only because they won. To win you must be ruthless. Single-minded ... which was why he had no friends just admirers. — David Gemmell

There it was: the tactless severity of vital male youth, not a single doubt about his coherence, blind with self-confidence and the virtue of knowing what matters most. The ruthless sense of necessity. The annihilating impulse in the face of an obstacle. Those grand grandstand days when you shrink from nothing and you're only right. Everything is a target; you're on the attack; and you, and you alone, are right. — Philip Roth

How people are often merciless
on those they love the most — Maggie Nelson

Your brother was wrong about you...He said you were gentle. The most gentle person he knew...You are not gentle. You have a ruthless heart...Remember it. — Cassandra Clare

If people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive? My hunch is yes. It would certainly do something for those who are most ruthless, who tend to make others most miserable. Some sort of greater awareness of their own finiteness and what their time on earth really is, and what they really want to do with their lives, could help improve them. — Irvin D. Yalom

There's definitely evidence that capitalism at its most ruthless rewards psychopathic behavior. When you look at the worst corners of the American health insurance industry or the sub-prime banking market, it really feels like the more psychopathically someone behaves, the more it's rewarded. — Jon Ronson

At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes
an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. — Carl Sagan

In the early twelfth century century the Virgin had been the supreme protectress of civilisation. She had taught a race of tough and ruthless barbarians the virtues of tenderness and compassion. The great cathedrals of the Middle Ages were her dwelling places upon earth. In the Renaissance, while remaining the Queen of Heaven, she became also the human mother in whom everyone could recognise qualities of warmth and love and approachability ...
The stabilising, comprehensive religions of the world, the religions which penetrate to every part of a man's being
in Egypt, India or China
gave the female principle of creation at least as much importance as the male, and wouldn't have taken seriously a philosophy that failed to include them both ... It's a curious fact that the
all-male religions have produced no religious imagery
in most cases have positively forbidden it. The great religious art of the world is deeply involved with the female principle. — Kenneth Clark

Clive's point was that the criminal justice system is supposed to repair harm, but most prisoners - young, black - have been incarcerated for acts far less emotionally damaging than the injuries we noncriminals perpetrate upon one another all the time - bad husbands, bad wives, ruthless bosses, bullies, bankers. — Jon Ronson

The most ruthless of all humans are the ones cornered in by death. — Yuu Watase

When a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law, men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims, then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter. — Ayn Rand