Turncoat Quotes & Sayings

You're so loyal to him. Why is that?"
"I'm not a turncoat Akielon dog," said
Aimeric. — C.S. Pacat

Wine is a turne-coate (first a friend, then an enemy).
[Wine is a turncoat, first a friend, then an enemy.] — George Herbert

Time and again, my sociobiological colleagues have upbraided me as a turncoat, because I will not agree with them that the ultimate criterion for the success of a meme must be its contribution to Darwinian "fitness". At bottom, they insist, a "good meme" spreads because brains are receptive to it, and the receptiveness of brains is ultimately shaped by (genetic) natural selection. — Richard Dawkins

Sooner or later, if there isn't a turncoat, the people make one. — Stephen King

For the first time it strikes me that it must be hard to spend your life in exile and finally win your kingdom by a thread, by the action of a turncoat in battle, and to know that most of the country does not celebrate your luck, and the woman that you have to marry is in love with someone else: your dead enemy and the rightful king. I have been thinking of him as triumphant; but here I see a man burdened by an odd twist of fate, coming to victory by a sneaking disloyalty, on a hot day in August, uncertain even now, if God is with him. I — Philippa Gregory

Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted: and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none.
Beatrice: A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me. -Much Ado About Nothing — William Shakespeare

What good is all this free-thinking, modernity, and turncoat flexibility if at some gut level you are still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a priest! — Friedrich Nietzsche

What's the deal with this Malachai?" Xevikan
"I don't know. I just joined him myself. But he seems level. Decent even." Zavid
"He's with a half-daeve turncoat, a Charonte, and an Aamon, and you don't find that off?" Xevikan
"Wait until you meet his Arel girlfriend, lunatic mother, and the two human homicidal maniac he calls family. Buddy, everything about the Malachai ain't right." Zavid — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Before anyone could be delivered, everybody betrayed everybody. The Jews no longer knew which current to swim, and brother turned against brother. It seems that Josephus was quick in putting all the blame on the Zealots, himself having deserted the mission. He was a turncoat, and nothing he said can be taken at face value without carefully reading between the lines. Josephus did not recognize that the same guys he cursed in failure would have been his heroes in success. But then, the failure might have come about through those who abandoned the mission - those like himself. It is the age-old question: has the freedom fighter turned terrorist, or has the terrorist turned freedom fighter? — A.J. Deus

As zookeepers, the Zabinskis understood both vigilance and predators; in a swamp of vipers, one planned every footstep. Shaped by the gravity of wartime, it wasn't always clear who or what could be considered outside or inside, loyal or turncoat, predator or prey. — Diane Ackerman

Would it be such a terrible thing for us to fall in love?" he asked.
...
"Ask me again in the morning. — Donna Thurland

Wine is a turncoat; first a friend and then an enemy. — Henry Fielding

I'm a Browncoat, man." "More like turncoat," Daltry said, and laughed. Flecks of spittle hit Bilbo in the face. — Joe Hill

I guess I'm like Grandfather Street was in his religion. He thought the Baptists were wonderful until he joined them and then the Presbyterians looked more interesting to him. After he'd been with them a while he couldn't see how anybody could be a Presbyterian, so he joined the Unitarians. People thought he was a turncoat, but he wasn't - he was just a sort of religious Mormon. One church wasn't enough for him. — Jarvis Hall

Offered a job as book critic for Time magazine as a young man, Bellow had been interviewed by Chambers and asked to give his opinion about William Wordsworth. Replying perhaps too quickly that Wordsworth had been a Romantic poet, he had been brusquely informed by Chambers that there was no place for him at the magazine. Bellow had often wondered, he told us, what he ought to have said. I suggested that he might have got the job if he'd replied that Wordsworth was a once-revolutionary poet who later became a conservative and was denounced by Browning and others as a turncoat. This seemed to Bellow to be probably right. More interesting was the related question: What if he'd kept that job? — Christopher Hitchens