Pillage Quotes & Sayings

We had allowed ourselves to become distracted on the way to the Crusade, never laid eyes on a Turk, turned to pillage and rapine among the Hungarians and Greeks in order to reach the East ... all for the glory of God, of course, until defeated, — H.P. Lovecraft

The bees pillage the flowers here and there but they make honey of them which is all their own; it is no longer thyme or marjolaine: so the pieces borrowed from others he will transform and mix up into a work all his own. — Michel De Montaigne

This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living and hard dying ... but nobody thought so. This was a future of fortune and theft, pillage and rapine, culture and vice ... but nobody admitted it. This was an age of extremes, a fascinating century of freaks ... but nobody loved it. — Alfred Bester

I'm bored to death. Perhaps I should pillage one of my neighbors for my own amusement. It seems to work for Drowden. — Kristin Cashore

How DARE you and the rest of your barbarians set fire to my library? Play conqueror all you want, Mighty Caesar! Rape, murder, pillage thousands, even millions of human beings! But neither you nor any other barbarian has the right to destroy one human thought! — William Shakespeare

Bessie was News, Leaders, and Gossip; Enid was Features, Make-up and general Sub. Whenever they were at a loss for copy they would mercilessly pillage ancient copies of Punch or Home Chat. An occasional hole in the copy was filled with a ghoulish smudge - local block-making had clearly indicated that somewhere a poker-work fanatic had gone quietly out of his mind. In this way the Central Balkan Herald was made up every morning and then delivered to the composition room where the chain-gang quickly reduced it to gibberish. MINISTER FINED FOR KISSING IN PUBIC. WEDDING BULLS RING OUT FOR PRINCESS. QUEEN OF HOLLAND GIVES PANTY FOR EX-SERVICE MEN. MORE DOGS HAVE BABIES THIS SUMMER IN BELGRADE. BRITAINS NEW FLYING-GOAT. — Lawrence Durrell

One man may not kill. If he kills a fellow-creature, he is a murderer. If two, ten, a hundred men do so, they, too, are murderers. But a government or a nation may kill as many men as it chooses, and that will not be murder, but a great and noble action. Only gather the people together on a large scale, and a battle of ten thousand men becomes an innocent action. But precisely how many people must there be to make it so? - that is the question. One man cannot plunder and pillage, but a whole nation can. But precisely how many are needed to make it permissible? — Leo Tolstoy

The Brigands charged in with their weapons drawn.
"Who are you?" Young Bertie asked.
"We're the bad guys!" their leader announced.
"What are you going to do?"
"Plunder and pillage!" one of them yelled.
The others immediately shoved him. "Not in front of the kid, Ralph! Fer cryin' out loud ... "
"Oh, yeah. Sorry! We're here to take your candy! — Lisa Mantchev

But to us of a later generation ... it is inconceivable that millions of Christian men should have killed and tortured each other, because Napoleon was ambitious, Alexander firm, English policy crafty, and the Duke of Oldenburg hardly treated. We cannot grasp the connections between these circumstances and the bare fact of murder and violence, nor why the duke's wrongs should induce thousands of men from the other side of Europe to pillage and murder the inhabitants of the Smolensk and Moscow provinces and to be slaughtered by them. — Leo Tolstoy

They still refuse to spare the ocean of the pillage even in the night. You humans are truly persistent when self-interests are involved. — Shaine Lake

Unconditional love is like a contry of two with no laws and no government. Which is all fine if everyone is peaceful and law abiding. In the wrong hands, though, you got looting and crime sprees, and let me tell you, the people who demand unconditional love are usually the ones who will rob and pillage and then blame you because you left your door unlocked. — Deb Caletti

[Science fiction is] out in the mainstream now. You can tell by the way mainstream literary authors pillage SF while denying they're writing it! — Terry Pratchett

We will spend the rest of the day inventing a kind of love that no longer exists in the world, a kind of love no army can pillage at the outposts, no rumor could bring to its knees like a traitor. — Richard Jackson

Courage is the standing army of the soul which keeps it from conquest, pillage, and slavery. — Henry Van Dyke

What are you up to?"
"I was trying to climb that tree. But I fell. Now I'm bored. — Obert Skye

And I wonder, in my last moments, if the planet does not mind that we wound her surface or pillage her bounty, because she knows we silly warm things are not even a breath in her cosmic life. We have grown and spread, and will rage and die. And when all that remains of us is our steel monuments and plastic idols, her winds will whisper, her sands will shift, and she will spin on and on, forgetting about the bold, hairless apes who thought they deserved immortality. — Pierce Brown

Another writer asserts that the tyranny of man over woman has its roots, after all, in his nobler feelings; his love, his chivalry, and his desire to protect woman in the barbarous periods of pillage, lust, and war. But wherever the roots may be traced, the results at this hour are equally disastrous to woman. Her best interests and happiness do not seem to have been consulted in the arrangements made for her protection. She has been bought and sold, caressed and crucified at the will and pleasure of her master. — Susan B. Anthony

Government is a kind of legalized pillage. — Elbert Hubbard

God loves violence. You understand that, don't you?" "No," Teddy said, "I don't." The warden walked a few steps forward and turned to face Teddy. "Why else would there be so much of it? It's in us. It comes out of us. It is what we do more naturally than we breathe. We wage war. We burn sacrifices. We pillage and tear at the flesh of our brothers. We fill great fields with our stinking dead. And why? To show Him that we've learned from His example. — Dennis Lehane

Liberals believe government should take people's earnings to give to poor people. Conservatives disagree. They think government should confiscate people's earnings and give them to farmers and insolvent banks. The compelling issue to both conservatives and liberals is not whether it is legitimate for government to confiscate one's property to give to another, the debate is over the disposition of the pillage. — Walter E. Williams

Dictatorships do cut down on rape, and pillage, not to mention sexual harassment, by the simple expedient of sending people to labour camps for life or cutting off their hands without a trial. — Barbara Amiel

To govern means to pillage, as everyone knows. — Albert Camus

What you must remember is that the magic itself is neither good nor bad, no more so than this ship might be used for right or wrong. It might be used by a fisherman to feed a village, for example. Or, the same vessel might be sailed by pirates to murder and pillage ... the lumber, rope, nails, cotton, and everything that goes into it-is created by the True One. Humans decide how it is to be put together and how it is used. — Derek Donais

This wretched body, the chain and prison of the soul, is tossed hither and thither; upon it punishment and pillage and disease wreak havoc: but the soul itself is holy and eternal, and it cannot be assailed with violence. — Seneca.

Mankind is a plague. Look at you. You rape and pillage, you suck the Earth dry and kill all your kindred. What species has prospered under man's dominion? — Sarwat Chadda

I am rather tired, and no longer young enough to pillage the night to make up for the deficit of hours in the day ... JRR Tolkien, Letter # 174 — J.R.R. Tolkien

I'm not a thief.' Snorri lowered his brows. 'All right, we'll call it pillage, — Mark Lawrence

We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage. — James Russell Lowell

It takes a pillage. — Nomi Prins

We tend to forget that unity is, at best, morally neutral and often a source of irrationality and groupthink. Rampaging mobs are unified. The Mafia is unified. Marauding barbarians bent on rape and pillage are unified. Meanwhile, civilized people have disagreements, and small-d democrats have arguments. Classical liberalism is based on this fundamental insight, which is why fascism was always antiliberal. Liberalism rejected the idea that unity is more valuable than individuality. For fascists and other leftists, meaning and authenticity are found in collective enterprises - of class, nation, or race - and the state is there to enforce that meaning on everyone without the hindrance of debate. — Jonah Goldberg

I'm here to rape, and pillage, and run off with all of your spoons. — Steven Scott Williamson

If all else fails, pillage the fridge. — Rene Gutteridge

War is a marvellous stimulus for the economy of a failing country. It takes young men out of unemployment and creates wealth for Arms dealers, construction companies and medical and drugs corporations. Said country can rape thieve and pillage with complete justification. World War III - coming to a TV screen near you soon. — Ken Scott

A soldier of fortune with twisted tongue will come to pillage the sanctuary of the gods; To the heretics he will open the gate, thus stirring up the Church militant. — Nostradamus

War is pillage versus resistance and if illusions of magnitude could be transmuted into ideals of magnanimity, peace might be realized. — Marianne Moore

The sweets of pillage can be known To no one but the thief, Compassion for integrity Is his divinest grief. — Emily Dickinson

My assistant says I'm an eBay auction waiting to happen. I have a very large collection of T-shirts ... about 4,000 now. Maybe I'll pillage it someday. I have resisted the offers to do a line of T-shirts. — Bruce Vilanch

Giving men marriage tips is a little like offering Vikings a free booklet titled How Not to Pillage. — Robert Wright

Put a petty criminal in maximum security prison and he'll come out knowing how to rape and pillage. — Michelle Hodkin

The new science takes us from a colonial vision of nature as an enemy to pillage and enslave, to a new vision of nature as a community to nurture. The right to exploit, harness, and own nature in the form of property is tempered by the obligation to steward nature and treat it with dignity and respect. The utility value of nature is slowly giving way to the intrinsic value of nature. — Jeremy Rifkin

I would have handled it differently than the mayor of Baltimore, that's for sure. I think it's a mistake to say, hey, guys, you can pillage the city for a while and we'll let that go, and we'll be sort of standing back. I think it's also important to know some of the underlying causes of why there's unease in our country. — Rand Paul

The US was forced to withdraw troops from Iraq after an extremely costly decade-long military occupation, leaving in place a regime more closely allied to Iran, the US' regional adversary. The Iraq war depleted the economy, deprived American corporations of oil wealth, greatly enlarged Washington's budget and trade deficits, and reduced the living standards of US citizens. The Afghanistan war had a similar outcome, with high external costs, military retreat, fragile clients, domestic disaffection, and no short or medium term transfers of wealth (imperial pillage) to the US Treasury or private corporations. The Libyan war led to the total destruction of a modern, oil-rich economy in North Africa, the total dissolution of state and civil society, and the emergence of armed tribal, fundamentalist militias opposed to US and EU client regimes in North and sub-Sahara Africa and beyond. Instead — James F. Petras

Let the corporations do as they please
pillage the environment, falsify their advertising, rig the securities markets
and it is none of the federal government's business to interfere with the will of heaven. — Lewis H. Lapham

Toshaway had been right: you had to love others more than you loved your own body, otherwise you would be destroyed, whether from the inside or out, it didn't matter. You could butcher and pillage but as long as you did it for people you loved, it never mattered. — Philipp Meyer

The institution of monarchy developed during the Middle Ages against the backdrop of the previously endemic struggles between feudal power agencies. The monarchy presented itself as a referee, aa power capable of putting an end to war, violence, and pillage and saying no to these struggles and private feuds. It made itself acceptable by allocating itself a juridical and negative function, albeit one whose limits it naturally began at once to overstep. — Michel Foucault

I believe Christianity is at its core a gospel of life. I believe great breakthrough and healing are available. I believe we can prevent the thief from ransacking our lives if we will do as our Shepherd says. And when we can't seem to find the healing or the breakthrough, when the thief does manage to pillage, I believe ours is a gospel of resurrection. Whatever loss may come, that is not the end of the story. Jesus came that we might have life. — John Eldredge

Contemporary fantasists all bow politely to Lord Tennyson and Papa Tolkien, then step around them to go back to the original texts for inspiration
and there are a lot of those texts. We have King Arthur and his gang in English; we've got Siegfried and Brunhild in German; Charlemagne and Roland in French; El Cid in Spanish; Sigurd the Volsung in Icelandic; and assorted 'myghtiest Knights on lyfe' in a half-dozen other cultures. Without shame, we pillage medieval romance for all we're worth. — David Eddings

The historical system of mutual pillage and extortion stops here on Arrakis," his father said. "You cannot go on forever stealing what you need without regard to those who come after. The physical qualities of a planet are written into its economic and political record. — Frank Herbert

We, with our propensity for murder, torture, slavery, rape, cannibalism, pillage, advertising jingles, shag carpets, and golf, how could we be seriously considered as the perfection of a four-billion-year-old grandiose experiment? perhaps as a race, we have evolved as far as we are capable, yet that by no means suggests that evolution has called it quits. in all likelihood, it has something beyond human on the drawing board. we tend to refer to our most barbaric and crapulous behavior as "inhuman," whereas, in point of fact, it is exactly human, definitively and quintessentially human, since no other creature habitually indulges in comparable atrocities. this negates neither our occasional virtues nor our aesthetic triumphs, but if a being at least a little bit more than human is not waiting around the bend of time then evolution has suffered a premature ejaculation. — Tom Robbins

They were known to pillage and plumage leaving few survivors — Maia Starr

Her youngest daughter shrugged. "Ain't got no money, do we?" "I don't understand. Why aren't you pillaging like the rest of your kin?" "It was the Northlands, Da. Ain't nothin' to pillage but the crows in the trees." "And snow," their eldest added. "Lots and lots of snow." Bram motioned to his study. "You know where I keep the gold coin." As if on fire, their offspring made a desperate run for their father's study, climbing over the table and fighting each other through the door. It wasn't pretty. — G.A. Aiken

When humans act like animals, they become the most dangerous of animals to themselves and other humans, and this is because of another critical difference between humans and animals: Whereas animals are usually restrained by the limits of physical appetites, humans have mental appetites that can be far more gross and capacious than physical ones. Only humans squander and hoard, murder and pillage because of notions. — Wendell Berry

First, we must face that unexpected revelation, the strip-tease of our humanism. There you can see it, quite naked, and it's not a pretty sight. It was nothing but an ideology of lies, a perfect justification for pillage; its honeyed words, its affection of sensibility were only alibis for our aggressions. A fine sight they are too, the believers in non-violence, saying that they are neither executioners nor victims. — Jean-Paul Sartre

It has not been stylish to pay attention to those warrior castes who neither planted nor herded, but devoted their lives to pillage and forgotten causes: the illiterate Greek chieftains on their decade-long excursion to the plains of Asia Minor; the tribal bands of Northern Europeans who raided Rome and then its Christian outposts; the Asiatic "hordes" who swept through medieval Europe; the Crusaders who looted the Arab world; the elite officership of European imperialism; and so on. These were men - not counting their conscripts and captives - who lived only parasitically in relation to the production of useful things, who lived for perpetual war, the production of death — Anonymous

Strife brings all things into being on her battlefield. This I know. I have been there many times," says Vashanka, lord of sack and pillage. "I have died before. — Janet Morris

How do you choose between your kids and your parents? I feel like we're all just a bunch of vikings, moving around so we can pillage and burn, make a better living.
Some choose their kids, some their parents, and some both. Some people just choose themselves, — Joe Coomer

To exist is to defy all that threatens you. To be a rebel is not to accumulate a library of subversive books or to dream of fantastic conspiracies or of taking to the hills. It is to make yourself your own law. To find in yourself what counts. To make sure that you're never "cured" of your youth. To prefer to put everyone up against the wall rather than to remain supine. To pillage whatever can be converted to your law, without concern for appearance. — Dominique Venner

Sexual frenzy is our compensation for the tedious moments we must suffer in the passage of life. 'Nothing in excess,' professed the ancient Greeks. Why if I spend half the month in healthy scholarship and pleasant sleep, shouldn't I be allowed the other half to howl at the moon and pillage the groins of Europe's great beauties? — Roman Payne

The state - or, to make matters more concrete, the government - consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting 'A' to satisfy 'B'. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advanced auction on stolen goods. — H.L. Mencken

Why do people want to kill and maim and pillage? We're all in it together. — Phyllis Logan

Go pillage the pretty pink birds, Sparrow. Before they come back to life and peck our eyes out. — Anonymous

Good day, ladies," he said with a distinctly American accent when all the women were above decks and the hatches closed. With a grin that took some of the edge off his fierce looks, he surveyed the crowd and added, "We've come to rescue you."
His words were so unexpected, so completely self-assured that Sara bristled. After all his blatant methods of intimidation, after he'd stood there surveying the women like cattle before the slaughter, he had the audacity to say such a thing!
"Is that what they're calling thievery, pillage, and rape these days?" she snapped. — Sabrina Jeffries

You'll see me differently in the morning, after I've fucked some sense into you. — Virginia Wade

The older generation of Vikings no doubt complained that the younger generation were getting soft and did not rape and pillage with the same dedication as in years gone by. — C. Peter Herman