Quotes & Sayings About Torturing

Slaveowners in America were torturing the Africans they enslaved for reading, but the British had discovered the hard way of truth of the maxim - Nature abhors a vacuum. Fill their minds with your stories and they will adore you; leave their minds free to roam and they will hatch plans to destroy you" (181). — Elizabeth Nunez

Take the example of people who are being most unrealistic - people who are beating monks to death and torturing them. Why shouldn't you be angry or hate that person? Well, the person who is doing that is very unhappy. They are being ordered by a higher-up. — Robert Thurman

I think she was mistaken when she said I was torturing myself. I think that she interpreted me fragmentarily, which is worse than not to interpret at all. — Leonora Carrington

Astrid and Taylor didn't like each other much. But Taylor was an extremely valuable person to have around. She had the ability to instantly transport herself from place to place. To "bounce," as she called it.
The enmity between them went back to Astrid's belief that Taylor had a crush of major proportions on Sam. No doubt Taylor would figure she had a golden opportunity now.
Not Sam's type, Astrid told herself. Taylor was pretty but a bit younger, and not nearly tough enough for Sam, who, despite what he might be thinking right now, liked strong, independent girls.
Brianna would be more Sam's style, probably. Or maybe Dekka, if she were straight.
Astrid shoved the list away irritably. Why was she torturing herself like this? Sam was a jerk. But he would come around. He would realize sooner or later that Astrid was right. He would apologize. And he'd move back in. — Michael Grant

The daily sight of her is going to be a torment, like God torturing Moses with a glimpse of Zion from the top of Mount Pisgah every single day of his life. — Michael Chabon

Custom! that skillful but unhurrying manager who begins by torturing the mind for weeks on end with her provisional arrangements; whom the mind, for all that, is fortunate in discovering, for without the help of custom it would never contrive, by its own efforts, to make any room seem habitable. — Marcel Proust

Torture produces unreliable evidence and therefore doesn't achieve and protect anybody. Torture corrupts those who are doing the torturing. — Cherie Blair

Your wits can't thicken in that soft moist air, on those white springy roads, in those misty rushes and brown bogs, on those hillsides of granite rocks and magenta heather. You've no such colours in the sky, no such lure in the distances, no such sadness in the evenings. Oh the dreaming! the dreaming! the torturing, heart-scalding, never satisfying dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming! — George Bernard Shaw

Love! What a searing, torturing, intolerably sweet thing it was - this possession of body, soul and mind! With something at its core as fine and remote and purely spiritual as the tiny blue spark in the heart of the unbreakable diamond. No dream had ever been like this. She was no longer solitary. She was one of a vast sisterhood - all the women who had ever loved in the world. — L.M. Montgomery

Something was wrong with Luke," Annabeth muttered, poking at the fire with her knife. "Did you notice the way he was acting?"
"He looked pretty pleased to me," I said. "Like he'd spent a nice day torturing heroes."
"That's not true! There was something wrong with him. He looked ... nervous. He told his monsters to spare me. He wanted to tell me something."
"Probably, 'Hi, Annabeth! Sit here with me and watch while I tear your friends apart. It'll be fun! — Rick Riordan

What did religion do to people, to provoke such obstinancy, such hysteria - how did it push people to the stage of torturing themselves and killing each other? — Manil Suri

What is the importance of human lives? Is it their continuing alive for so many years like animals in a menagerie? The value of a man cannot be judged by the number of diseases from which he escapes. The value of a man is in his human qualities: in his character, in his conscience, in the nobility and magnanimity, of his soul. Torturing animals to prolong human life has separated science from the most important thing that life has produced - the human conscience. — John Cowper Powys

Hairwoman is torturing us with essays. Do English teachers spend their vacations dreaming up these things? — Laurie Halse Anderson

I was torturing the fire, giving it life, and snuffing it out.
pg. 33 — Jeannette Walls

The king and queen were usually present, and the king or the dauphin would light a pyre. The cats were then tumbled into the flames from an overhead basket, and the crowd reveled in their cries. "Certainly this is not really a worse spectacle than the burning of heretics, or the torturings and public executions of every kind," Elias writes. "It only appears worse because the joy in torturing living creatures shows itself so nakedly and purposelessly, without any excuse before reason. The revulsion aroused in us by the mere report of the institution, a reaction which must be taken as 'normal' for the present-day standard of affect control, demonstrates once again the long term change of personality structure." 15 Elias argued that — Nicholas Wade

Everybody wants power. Power in some form or other. [ ... ] Some people want power to persecute other human beings; you expend your lust for power in persecuting words, twisting them, molding them, torturing them to obey you. — Aldous Huxley

When we see religion split into so many thousand of sects, and I may say Christianity itself divided into its thousands also, who are disputing, anathematizing and where the laws permit burning and torturing one another for abstractions which no one of them understand, and which are indeed beyond the comprehension of the human mind, into which of the chambers of this Bedlam would a man wish to thrust himself.
[Letter to George Logan, 12 November 1816] — Thomas Jefferson

Ernst Dwinger in his Siberian Diary
mentions a German lieutenant - for years a prisoner in a camp where cold and hunger were almost
unbearable - who constructed himself a silent piano with wooden keys. In the most abject misery,
perpetually surrounded by a ragged mob, he composed a strange music which was audible to him alone.
And for us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished
beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection
which bears witness, throughout the centuries, to the greatness of humanity. — Albert Camus

Man torturing man is a fiend beyond description. You turn a corner in the dark and there he is. You congeal into a bundle of inanimate fear. You become the very soul of anesthesia. But there is no escaping him. It is your turn now ... — Henry Miller

Colleges and universities, meanwhile, have no such qualms about torturing their applicants. Think about how much work a high-school student must do to even be considered for a spot at a decent college. The difference in college and job applications is especially striking when you consider that a job applicant will be getting paid upon acceptance while a college applicant will be paying for the privilege to attend. — Steven D. Levitt

Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why. — Nadine Gordimer

In Fascism, if you were a Jew, you were simply killed. Nobody had the idea of arresting Jews and torturing them to confess the Jewish plot. Because in Fascism, you are guilty for your whole being. — Slavoj Zizek

The rushed existence into which industrialized, commercialized man has precipitated himself is actually a good example of an inexpedient development caused entirely by competition between members of the same species. Human beings of today are attacked by so-called manager diseases, high blood pressure, renal atrophy, gastric ulcers, and torturing neuroses: they succumb to barbarism because they have no more time for cultural interests. — Konrad Lorenz

The only way to be a champion is by going through these forced reps and the torture and pain. That's way I call it the torture routine. Because it's like forced torture. Torturing my body. What helps me is to think of this pain as pleasure. Pain makes me grow. Growing is what I want. Therefore, for me pain is pleasure. And so when I am experiencing pain I'm in heaven. It's great. People suggest this is masochistic. But they're wrong. I like pain for a particular reason. I don't like needle's stuck in my arm. But I do like the pain that is necessary to be a champion. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

There are many, many serial sexual murders that have a history of killing cats, torturing cats, tormenting cats, — Jack Rosewood

I never want to be suspended in the limbo of non-decision again. It's like torturing yourself on purpose. — Siobhan Vivian

Afterwards the members of the little war party felt fine. Torturing whites was a splendid way to spend the afternoon. — Larry McMurtry

Do you have any idea how much you mean to me Layla? Any at all? Because I
sometimes think, if you did, you wouldn't keep torturing me like this. I can't keep watching you with him. The way you gaze into his eyes, the way he
kisses you and when you tell him you love him, I hate you. I hate you for loving him. I hate you for choosing him. I hate you for wanting him so badly.
But mostly, I hate myself for not being him! I can't hide it anymore. I've tried so fucking hard that I swear I'm going crazy sometimes. It's eating at me.
I can't sleep, can't think; I can't even function because I'm thinking about you so much. But I get it, I do, it's him you want and from now on I'm hands
off. But I have to let you know how I feel before I go nuts. — Marie Coulson

You must forgive everyone. Now many would say that "We cannot forgive, it's very difficult." But it's a myth whether you forgive or don't forgive. What do you do? You don't do anything. But when you don't forgive, then you are playing into wrong hands. That means you are torturing yourself, while those who have troubled you are quite happy. — Nirmala Srivastava

It's absurd that the same word is used to describe someone raping, torturing, mutilating, and killing a child; and someone stopping that perpetrator by shooting him in the head. The same word used to describe a mountain lion killing a deer by one quick bite to the spinal column is used to describe a civilized human playing smackyface with a suspect's child, or vaporizing a family with a daisy cutter. The same word often used to describe breaking a window is used to describe killing a CEO and used to describe that CEO producing toxins that give people cancer the world over. Check that: the latter isn't called violence, it's called production. — Derrick Jensen

Some say that it is lack of imagination which makes men and women brutes. May it not be power of imagination? The interest of torturing is lessened, is almost lost, if we can not be the tortured as well as the torturer. — Robert Smythe Hichens

Michael Brown did not die as so many of his defenders supposed. And still the questions behind the questions are never asked. Should assaulting an officer of the state be a capital offense, rendered without trial, with the officer as judge and executioner? Is that what we wish civilization to be? And all the time the Dreamers are pillaging Ferguson for municipal governance. And they are torturing Muslims, and their drones are bombing wedding parties (by accident!), and the Dreamers are quoting Martin Luther King and exulting nonviolence for the weak and the biggest guns for the strong. Each time a police officer engages us, death, injury, maiming is possible. It is not enough to say that this is true of anyone or more true of criminals. The — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Two big hands cup my ass and pull me down onto his face. When his tongue glides over me, I almost come on the spot. Taking a breath, I grasp his cock in one hand and lower my mouth to his engorged head. I give a tiny lick, then breathe out, "Better?" His response is a hungry growl punctuated by the brush of his tongue on my clit. I wrap my lips around him and suck gently, the salty flavor of him tickling my tongue and heating my blood. He tastes delicious. He's thick and hard and throbbing in my mouth, and it's the hottest thing in the whole damn world. I don't know how long we lie in this position, torturing each other with greedy licks and deep sucks, but just as the first tingles of orgasm warm the base of my spine, Blake abruptly yanks me off of him and flips me over. "Cheezus!" he spits out. "If I don't fuck you right now, I'm gonna die, Jessie. — Sarina Bowen

Now I shall speak of evil as none has
Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;
The white-hosed moron torturing a black
Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;
Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;
Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;
Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx, Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds, and sharks. — Vladimir Nabokov

There is so much deep contradiction in my soul. Such deep longing for God - so deep that it is painful - a suffering continual - and yet not wanted by God - repulsed - empty - no faith - no love - no zeal. Souls hold no attraction - Heaven means nothing - to me it looks like an empty place - the thought of it means nothing to me and yet this torturing longing for God. Pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything. For I am only His - so He has every right over me. I am perfectly happy to be nobody even to God ...
Your devoted child in J.C.
M. Teresa — Brian Kolodiejchuk

The troblemakers in Hungary are the Jews ... they demoralize our country and they are the leaders of the revolutionary gang that is torturing Hungary. — Jozsef Mindszenty

I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom. — Edgar Allan Poe

The occupation is really terrible on a variety of levels. It's terrible on the "shooting people and torturing people in prison" level. But I think the thing that is very hard to convey is that it's also this bureaucratic grinding-down and daily humiliation that I think would probably be as horrible as the spectacular violence. — Molly Crabapple

You think your show of defiance will save you from my dominance? From my wrath? Trust me, you haven't seen my worst. There are ways of torturing a vampire that can drive them literately insane. I know ways of making you suffer that will last for months or years - not seconds. I want you to test me so that I can teach you who your master is. Now get the fuck up and follow me. If I have to tell you again, I'm going to cut off your hand and send it to the werewolves."

Theoden to Noel — Nicholas Bella

The harming of animals for any reason is shameful, but torturing them for mere vanity is senseless. Slaughtering animals for their fur or harming them for cosmetic purposes is disgusting and not worth the perfect shade of lipstick. — Laura Mennell

The world, being in the constant commission of vast quantities of injustice, is a little too apt to comfort itself with the idea that if the victim of its falsehood and malice have a clear conscience, he cannot fail to be sustained under his trials, and somehow or other to come right at last; 'in which case,' say they who have hunted him down, ' - though we certainly don't expect it - nobody will be better pleased than we.' Whereas, the world would do well to reflect, that injustice is in itself, to every generous and properly constituted mind, an injury, of all others the most insufferable, the most torturing, and the most hard to bear; and that many clear consciences have gone to their account elsewhere, and many sound hearts have broken, because of this very reason; the knowledge of their own deserts only aggravating their sufferings, and rendering them the less endurable. — Charles Dickens

It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom is an universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life. — Gregory David Roberts

Xhex couldn't stop herself from torturing them both. She sent him a mental scene, drilling the image right into his head : the two of them in a private bathroom, him up on the sink and leaning back, her with one foot planted on the counter, his sex deep in hers, the two of them panting. While he stared accross the crowded room, John's mouth parted, and the flush on his cheeks had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with the orgasm that was no doubt pounding up his shaft. God, she wanted him. His buddy, the readhead, snapped her out of the madness. Blaylock came back to the table with three beers hanging from their necks, and as he took a look at John's hard, sexep-up face, he stopped short and glanced over at her in surprise.
Shit.
Xhex waved off the bouncers who were coming up to her and walked out of the VIP section so fast, she nearly bowling-pinned a waitress. Her office was the only place that was safe, and she headed there at a dead run. — J.R. Ward

Well, the years from 10 to 20, when your body, mind and everything is like changing every five minutes, can be pretty torturing. And most of the interesting characters, I think, are somewhat tortured or torturous. I'm 20 now, so I'm only just an adult. — Anna Paquin

keep torturing yourself? It is what it is. — Karen McQuestion

Utilitarianism: If we Britiash were Utilitarians we would have to believe that imprisoning the innocent and torturing suspects was justified if the Home Secretary thought it a good thing for our peace of mind. — William Donaldson

The brown earth, the torn, blasted earth, with a greasy shine under the sun's rays; the earth is the background of this restless, gloomy world of automatons, our gasping is the scratching of a quill, our lips are dry, our heads are debauched with stupor - thus we stagger forward, and into our pierced and shattered souls bores the torturing image of the brown earth with the greasy sun and the convulsed and dead soldiers, who lie there - it can't be helped - who cry and clutch at our legs as we spring away over them. We have lost all feeling for one another. We can hardly control ourselves when our glance lights on the form of some other man. We are insensible, dead men, who through some trick, some dreadful magic, are still able to run and to kill. — Erich Maria Remarque

He talked to people and fooled them into liking him, trusting him. He talked to them while he was killing them, torturing and turning the knife. It was only when there was no one to talk to that he whistled, which was why he did so after a murder ... — Markus Zusak

If you're worried arresting my sister will come between us - really, that's not a problem. I'm pretty sure it will bind us tighter together. Besides, we made plans ... involving Missy's desk."
"You know I was only torturing your sister."
"So you were just using me?" He actually sounded wounded. "Like a whore?"
"Mace ... " She stopped and rubbed her eyes. Of all the places he could be doing this, her precinct should not be one of them.
"You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"Trying to make me crazy."
The look he gave her was pure predatory male. "I like you crazy. — Shelly Laurenston

I didn't sleep at all last night, my heart and mind plagued and conflicted and I cant feel my limbs, I cant taste the food I'm not eating and I cant see straight, I cant focus on the things I'm supposed to be hearing. All I can think about are all the casualties and Warner's lips on my neck, his hands on my body, the pain and passion in his eyes and the many possible ways I could die today. I can only think about Warner touching me, kissing me, torturing me with his heart and Adam sitting beside me, not knowing what I've done. — Tahereh Mafi

The idea that any personal deity could find pleasure or profit in torturing a poor woman, by accident, with a fiendish cruelty known to man only in perverted and insane temperaments, could not be held for a moment. For pure blasphemy, it made pure atheism a comfort. — Henry Adams

And in the flush of the first few days of joy I confidently tell myself (not expecting what I'll do in three weeks only) 'no more dissipation, it's time for me to quietly watch the world and even enjoy it, first in woods like these, then just calmly walk and talk among people of the world, no booze, no drugs, no binges, no bouts with beatniks and drunks and junkies and everybody, no more I ask myself the question O why is God torturing me, that's it, be a loner, travel, talk to waiters, walk around, no more self-imposed agony ... it's time to think and watch and keep concentrated on the fact that after all this whole surface of the world as we know it now will be covered with the silt of a billion years in time ... Yay, for this, more aloneness — Jack Kerouac

When they tear a workingman's hand in a machine or kill him, you can understand
the workingman himself is at fault. But in a case like this, when they suck a man's blood out of him and throw him away like a carcass
that can't be explained in any way. I can comprehend every murder; but torturing for mere sport I can't comprehend. And why do they torture the people? To what purpose do they torture us all? For fun, for mere amusement, so that they can live pleasantly on the earth; so that they can buy everything with the blood of the people, a prima donna, horses, silver knives, golden dishes, expensive toys for their children. YOU work, work, work, work more and more, and I'LL hoard money by your labor and give my mistress a golden wash basin — Maxim Gorky

She sat in the dew-damp grass and ripped up clumps of it, tossing them in the air and feeling vaguely guilty about it. Some gnome ought to pop out of the tree and scold her for torturing the lawn. — Holly Black

I had no idea where I was going, but at that point, walking straight into the sea didn't seem like such a bad idea. For months I'd been torturing myself, wondering if Archer kissing me had just been part of his act. But he was right, he hadn't kissed me. I had kissed him, and he'd just...responded.God, I was a moron.
Archer caught up with me,but I kept looking straight ahead.
"Mercer-"
"Look,forget it," I said. "Just show me whatever it was you dragged me out here to see."
"Fine," he replied, his voice clipped.
We walked down the beach in total silence. In the moonlight, our shadows stretched out before us, almost touching. — Rachel Hawkins

It takes me awhile to find something that I'm passionate about. I'm reading a lot and thinking a lot, and torturing myself a lot because I'm feeling really guilty for not writing something today. — Paul Haggis

I'm not in the torturing business, but I am in the monster-killing business. — Reyna Pryde

Yet heaven bless thee, my dearest Justine, with resignation, and a confidence elevated beyond this world. Oh! how I hate its shews and mockeries! when one creature is murdered, another is immediately deprived of life in a slow torturing manner; then the executioners, their hands yet reeking with the blood of innocence, believe that they have done a great deed. They call this retribution. Hateful name! When that word is pronounced, I know greater and more horrid punishments are going to be inflicted than the gloomiest tyrant has ever invented to satiate his utmost revenge. Yet this is not consolation for you, my Justine, unless indeed that you may glory in escaping from so miserable a den. — Mary Shelley

The scapegoat has always had the mysterious power of unleashing man's ferocious pleasure in torturing, corrupting, and befouling. — Francois Mauriac

I'm not going to stop torturing myself till I figure out the cause of my pain. — Matt Groening

Afraid of a needle." he muttered to himself under his breath, shaking his head. "Oh, a sadistic vampire, intent on torturing her to death, sure, no problem, she runs off to meet him. An IV, on the other hand ... "
Edward Cullen — Stephenie Meyer

And death hasn't come. It never does come when you call it. It enjoys torturing us. I've been calling for it for years and it pays me no attention — Agota Kristof

I was sprawled out in my usual position on the couch, half asleep but entirely drunk, torturing myself by tearing memories out of my mind at random like matches from a book, striking them one at a time and drowsily setting myself on fire. — Jonathan Tropper

in this you have failed
you have invalidated your dysfunctional efforts
of innocence
of perverted virginity
with a mangy face before the eye of God
not even summations of crawling
not even rust cutters or combustion
as if to test your blue vaginal mirrors
inside a Protestant Crimea
listening to your fallacious absorption neurosis

you've forfeited your flames
you've cast into the moat
salacious bonfire bathing
you've given up the power of deepened torturing rums
of magnetic chromosomal nerves
for a weakly neutered clairaudience of failure — Will Alexander

And they are torturing Muslims, and their drones are bombing wedding parties (by accident!), and the Dreamers are quoting Martin Luther King and exulting nonviolence for the weak and the biggest guns for the strong. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

The god of Moses would call for other tribes, including his favorite one, to suffer massacre and plague and even extirpation, but when the grave closed over his victims he was essentially finished with them unless he remembered to curse their succeeding progeny. Not until the advent of the Prince of Peace do we hear of the ghastly idea of further punishing and torturing the dead. — Christopher Hitchens

When one creature is murdered, another is immediately deprived of life in a slow torturing manner; then the executioners, their hands yet reeking with the blood of innocence, believe that they have done a great deed. — Mary Shelley

It's not a pleasure torturing actors, although some of them enjoy it. — Ang Lee

Why do you enjoy torturing yourself? Do you feel life has been too good to you?"
Tatiana stared at him. "Life has," she said slowly, "been too good to me. — Paullina Simons

One of the few times I'm hit emotionally is when I listen to the tapes sadists make of torturing their victims. There the person is currently suffering, you can hear them suffer, and that calls out for an empathic response. But when they're dead, when they're no longer suffering, when it's over, it's hard to feel empathetic for the corpse. — Park Dietz

As Ruth only knows one priest (one male priest that is) she's not that surprised to find Father Hennessey waiting for her at one of the long tables, a cappucino in front of him. 'Hallo Ruth, sorry to call in on you like this.'

'That's OK.'

'Are you going to get yourself a drink? This coffee's really very good. It's truly terrible, the stuff they serve at the police station.'

'I know.' Ruth has had her own experience of Nelson's coffee. She wonders if it's a way of torturing suspects until they confess. In contrast, the coffee at the university is excellent. Ruth gets herself an espresso. She thinks that she is going to need the energy. She has a feeling that, like the visit from Nelson all those years ago, this conversation is going to complicate her life. — Elly Griffiths

Accordingly he^ says, the Lord is to be feared in order to edification, but not the devil to destruction. And again, the works of the Lord - that is, His commandments - are to be loved and done; but the works of the devil are to be dreaded and not done. For the fear of God trains and restores to love; but the fear of the works of the devil has hatred dwelling along with it. The same also says " that repentance is high intelligence. For he that repents of what he did, no longer does or says as he did. But by torturing himself for his sins, he benefits his soul. Forgiveness of sins is therefore different from repentance; but both show what is in our power." CHAPTER XIIL — Anonymous

You made a decision given your life circumstances and you have to be ok with that. Regrets that can't be change is just torturing yourself. — Michelle Singletary

The future needed service, not pity, not piety; but in the past lay darkness, confusion, waste, and all the cramped primitive minds, bewildered, torturing one another in their stupidity, yet one and all in some unique manner, beautiful. — Olaf Stapledon

Our love affairs with sin are not just a matter of morality, though, but of joy. This is not just about faithfulness to God, but about finding our deepest, most satisfying fulfillment. Many people think following Jesus means surrendering our happiness. You can either enjoy a fun, passionate, and exciting life here for a short time or live a bland, boring, but safe life forever with God. That lie is a quiet, but violent concentration camp, fencing men and women in, keeping them away from God, and torturing them with lesser pleasures that only lead to a swift and yet never-ending death. If you want to be truly happy - even in this life, surrounded by everything beautiful, fun, and exciting in this world - you want to be found with Jesus. — Marshall Segal

Human beings have become a virus to planet Earth. Our way of life consists of constant pollution of natural resources, violence between nations, oppression of populations, torturing of animals, and the destruction of our own health and wellness. Our society is not sustainable and the people in control have no interest in the well being of the people or the planet. — Joseph P. Kauffman

But *why* do clean torture and democracy appear to go hand in hand? This is an important puzzle (though by no means the only one suggested by the data). My explanation for this pattern generally is this: Public monitoring leads institutions that favor painful coercion to use and combine clean torture techniques to evade detection, and, to the extent that public monitoring is not only greater in democracies, but that public monitoring of human rights is a core value in modern democracies, it is the case that where we find democracies torturing today we will also be more likely to find stealthy torture. — Darius M. Rejali

We have still not answered the question of when an experiment might be justifiable. It will not do to say "Never!" Putting morality in such black-and-white terms is appealing, because it eliminates the need to think about particular cases; but in extreme circumstances, such absolutist answers always break down. Torturing a human being is almost always wrong, but it is not absolutely wrong. If torture were the only way in which we could discover the location of a nuclear bomb hidden in a New York City basement and timed to go off within the hour, then torture would be justifiable. — Peter Singer

When the horrors of anarchy force us to set up laws that forbid us to fight and torture one another for sport, we still snatch at every excuse for declaring individuals outside the protection of law and torturing them to our hearts content. — George Bernard Shaw

Save the world by torturing one innocent child? Which innocent child? — William Stafford

After they stopped torturing him they locked him in the jail cell again and pretended they would forget him ... Then, eventually, and unexpectedly, release. Into ignominy, oblivion, married life. — Salman Rushdie

The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their 'vital interests' are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the 'sanctity' of human life, or the 'conscience' of the civilized world. — James A. Baldwin

On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind. Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President, author, scientist, architect, educator, and diplomat — George Washington

There are those who say that when civilization progresses a bit further transportation facilities will move into the skies and under the ground, and that our streets will again be quiet, but I know perfectly well that when that day comes some new device for torturing the old will be invented. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki

Torturing innocents, murdering civilians and destroying public property; they are all the gifts we have been given by religion. — M.F. Moonzajer

Probably Verrari," muttered the senior, who was methodically torturing a piece of ivory with a slender carving knife. He wanted it to come out like a sculpted terrace he'd seen at the Temple of Iono, alive with lovely relief and fantastical representations of drowned men taken by the Lord of the Grasping Waters. What he seemed to be producing more closely resembled a lump of white dogshit, life-size. "Sooner trust a sailing ship to a blind drunkard with no hands than a Verrari. — Scott Lynch

And yet she hadn't the air of a woman whose life had been touched by uncertainty or suffering. Pain, fear, and grief were things that left their mark on people. Even love, that exquisite torturing emotion, left its subtle traces on the countenance. — Nella Larsen

Hindsight must surely be the most useless function of the human brain, torturing yourself over the unalterable past. — Peter F. Hamilton

It's not just the look, the cost, and the time involved in putting sunscreen on a child, it's the battle. My kids have no idea why they would have to wait to have fun while they are smeared with chemicals all over their face and body. They scream. They cry. "It burns!" The process of applying sunscreen just highlights the preposterousness of raising pale kids on a planet that revolves around a hot burning star that emits poisonous UV rays. I can never tell if the concerned looks from strangers are because they think I am torturing my children or because I am dressed like an out-of-shape Superman at the beach. Does anyone know where I can get a red swim cape? — Jim Gaffigan

rogue state: a country that violates international law by committing armed aggression, torturing prisoners, assassinating opponents, and possessing weapons of mass destruction. — Mike Lofgren

You are interfering in my business, warlock."
Magnus spat blood into his face. "You are torturing a child in my city, Shadowhunter. [ ... ] I thought we were playing a game where we said what the other person was and what we were doing." Magnus told him. "Did I get it wrong? Can I guess again? are you breaking your own sacred Laws, asshole? — Cassandra Clare

Elizabeth, when you look into the darkness you have two choices. You either fall into it, so you'll never fear the unknown again. Or you stay on the ledge, always wondering what's there. Torturing yourself over it. Elizabeth, I live in the abyss, and would like you to leap into the unknown with me. Will you join me? — LeeAnn Whitaker

Which would enable him to prolong for the time being, and to renew for one day more the disappointment, the torturing deception that must always come to him with the vain presence of this woman, whom he might approach, yet never dared embrace. — Marcel Proust

Abby wouldn't want you to suffer because of some jerk that kidnapped her. She would want you to go on your trip so that she would have fun torturing you for not being a puddle on the ground with a box of tissues and an empty gallon of ice cream by your side. Then afterwards to hit you for thinking she was seriously hoping you would be doing that. — Ottilie Weber

Some memories have the ability to heal, the ability to light up the dark, because the beauty of the memory is so bright, you're still able to bask in it.But the memories of us are killing me slowly. They remind me that for one moment, I had everything, while reminding me it's gone. It's the realization that we're done that's torturing me. The realization that I can see him but can't touch him, that he exists but he's not mine, is agonizing. — Aurora Rose Reynolds

I was torturing her. Guilt was her poison, and I was pouring it down her throat. — Rebecca Donovan

I write nothing for publication, and last of all things should it be on the subject of religion. On the dogmas of religion as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarrelling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind. Were I to enter on that arena, I should only add an unit to the number of Bedlamites.
[Letter to Mathew Carey, 11 November 1816] — Thomas Jefferson

She liked him, so she was torturing him. Her Grace in a nutshell. — Ilona Andrews

My art teacher had said that if you breathed deeply and imagined something, you could be there. You could see it, feel it. During our standoffs with the NKVD, I learned to do that. I clung to my rusted dreams during the times of silence. It was at gunpoint that I fell into every hope and allowed myself to wish from the deepest part of my heart. Komorov thought he was torturing us. But we were escaping into a stillness within ourselves. We found strength there. — Ruta Sepetys

I had a slightly inferior endgame that probably should have been drawn, but Kortchnoi kept torturing me with little threats until finally, exhausted and exasperated, I made a losing mistake. — Pal Benko