153 quotes about torture follow in order of popularity. Be sure to bookmark and share your favorites!

The teacher pretended that algebra was a perfectly natural affair, to be taken for granted, whereas I didn't even know what numbers were. Mathematics classes became sheer terror and torture to me. I was so intimidated by my incomprehension that I did not dare to ask any questions.

Carl Jung

Families are about love overcoming emotional torture.

Matt Groening

The problem for the IOC is going to be when Saddam is overthrown and people walk into the Olympic headquarters and see the torture chamber and the blood on the floor. What will they say then?

Charles Forrest

Our report finds that there is a gap between policies leadership says it respects on paper, and behavior it actually tolerates in practice. That's not a way to stop torture from occurring, and it's not a winning strategy in the fight against terror.

Deborah Pearlstein

The spring ethnic cleansing of Albanians, accompanied by murders, torture, looting and burning of houses, has been replaced by the fall ethnic cleansing of non-Albanians, accompanied by the same atrocities.

Jiri Dienstbier

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.

Thomas Merton

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

Clarence B. Kelland

This is a very important victory ... because it ensures that the proceedings will be scrutinized by people in Canada and throughout the world, to make sure that the law is applied fairly and properly and, above all, to make sure that Bush doesn't get away with torture.

Gail Davidson

It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.

Henrik Ibsen

Life's the greates torture sould feel in hell, In hell: that they must live, and cannot die.

John Webster

Although the US government continues to assert its condemnation of torture and ill-treatment, these statements contradict what is happening in practice.

Curt Goering

This company will torture us for another 20 to 30 years, even if it doesn't get anything, ... There will be fear for any of our exhibitions and any of our property abroad. We should have taken care of this problem long ago.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky

The most notorious problem is the use of torture. It's basically beating confessions out of people.

Daniel Wilkinson

Our laws are reflection of our culture, and in our culture it's not acceptable to torture small animals.

Joseph Moore

They keep talking about the pain he might get from a needle. Look at the long, long torture of what he put her through, striking her in the head 23 times.

Barbara Christian

My heart goes out to people that have loved ones that go missing and are never found, because it was torture for us for those several days when he was missing.

Daniel Lynch

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.

James Anthony Froude

There already is a present law against torture.

Duncan Hunter

It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing.

John Henry Cardinal Newman

The girls we spoke to see Barbie torture as a legitimate play activity.

Agnes Nairn

New York has all that intense hatred and pain-just torture-where everything is 10 times as hard as it needs to be, and everything is terribly important.

Beth Anderson

We have documented the use of torture and mistreatment, widespread throughout the world. We have documented that the U.S. government is a leading purveyor and practitioner of the odious human rights violation.

William Schulz

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.

James Joyce

The shy man does have some slight revenge upon society for the torture it inflicts upon him. He is able, to a certain extent, to communicate his misery. He frightens other people as much as they frighten him. He acts like a damper upon the whole room, and the most jovial spirits become, in his presence, depressed and nervous.

Jerome K. Jerome

We told him that people in his city supported the idea of stopping the torture, but he told us he didn't give a damn, You support torture and do you go to church on Sunday?

Casey Davis

There's an intermediate risk of torture, ... It's not just a risk of jail, there's no doubt he'll be jailed.

David Matas

Put me on torture hell rides.

Wesley Willis

The United States must be clear that we do not support torture. It is immoral.

Steve Rothman

It was a very tough and brutal time. People's heads got chopped off for nothing. There is a torture scene and a murder scene in Act I.

Robert Mansell

The secret of torture, like the secret of French cuisine, is that nothing is unthinkable.

Phyllis Rose

He doesn't speak, the newborn? Why his entire being shouts out, "Don't touch me! Don't touch me!" And yet at the same time, imploringly, begging, "Don't leave me! Don't leave me!" This is birth. This is the torture, the Calvary.

Dr. Frederick Leboyer

Today we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction.

Barack Obama

We are aware that these crimes, though awful, pale in comparison to the crimes the regime is still perpetrating against the Iraqi people. Many of the hostages were subjected to appalling suffering, physical abuse and mental torture.

Ann Clwyd

These soldiers were tortured and subjected to torture repeatedly.

Jaswant Singh

Any carve-out that would allow any agency of government to engage in torture would be legitimizing the use of torture.

Arizona Republican

You really need the best people in the JAG Corp. Look at what's happened with torture and treatment of detainees. You want the best advisers to the political administration you can get.

Joseph Zengerle

In international law, states are required to prevent acts of torture, and not turn a blind eye to it.

Paul Green

That'll be the day. This is just organized torture, that's what it is, like Vacation Bible School. And Vacation Bible School would be better than this!

Ruby Lavender

What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer.

Bertrand Russell

Since the start of the war on terror, the intelligence community, led by the CIA, has revived the use of torture, making it Washington's weapon of choice.

Alfred Mccoy

The tape shows experimenters using their power over the monkeys to torture and torment them, while lab supervisors stand by or even join in.

Ingrid Newkirk

When Salah was arrested, it was a very public event. It would not have been smart for Israeli officials to subject Salah to the torture he is claiming.

Steve Landes

What has always separated us from terrorists is that we do not torture people or send them to be tortured. That is the standard we need to maintain.

James Welch

No true Witches today practice human sacrafice, torture, or any form of ritual murder.Anyone who does is not a Witch, but a psychopath.

Starhawk

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins commited in previous lives.

James Joyce

There is no question that US interrogations have resulted in deaths. High-ranking officials who knew about the torture and sat on their hands and those who created and endorsed these policies must be held accountable.

Anthony D. Romero

If there is a substantial risk in a certain country like Algeria, Jordan, Egypt, etc., then diplomatic assurances cannot be used. If a country usually and systematically practices torture, then of course they would deny they were doing it because it is absolutely prohibited.

Manfred Nowak

I played 'Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road' by Loudon Wainwright III. We played 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' by Cyndi Lauper; 'I Like Big Butts' by Sir Mix-a-Lot. I think people are just trying to torture us.

Bobby Russell

The political consequences of deliberately telling untruths are very serious, and we have made it very clear here that we don't send people to countries that practice torture. Jack Straw (Britain's foreign minister) said that to Parliament.

David Bentley

We're not talking about torture in the abstract, but the real thing. U.S. personnel and officials may be criminally liable, and a special prosecutor is needed to investigate.

John Sifton

If we are to truly repair America's standing in the world, the Bush administration must hold accountable high-ranking officials who allow the continuing abuse and torture of detainees.

Anthony D. Romero

Amnesty International calls today on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior U.S. officials involved in the torture scandal.

William Schulz

Many asylum seekers are highly traumatized people who have survived torture and other severe abuses for whom prolonged detention in jail is particularly harmful.

Bill Frelick

What he wasn't sentenced to was torture and rape, and that's what this case is about.

Tim Hoffman

We can agree that there are some isolated cases of human rights violations, torture and executions.

Philippe Nzobonariba

For the other guys, this is probably torture right now. But for me, I'm just anxious to be out here and do what I've got to do.

Cory Boyd

I did not torture anyone.

Frank Spinner

It's tough on a different level. This is not a physical movie, in that sense, but I think the mental torture of this movie was much harder. I'd rather run on rooftops; that's easy to do.

Michelle Yeoh

The principles of the common law, standing alone, in my opinion compel the exclusion of third-party torture evidence as unreliable, unfair, offensive to ordinary standards of humanity and decency and incompatible with the principles which should animate a tribunal seeking to administer justice.

Lord Bingham

It was like a slow torture of death. There were opportunities, we worked hard to make them work for us, but we just couldn't get there. We got back in touch thanks to a fortuitous weather change at the Horn, but slowly let it slip slide away from us. It was very hard work, psychologically very hard.

Neal Mcdonald

We knew The Torture Question would be a timely subject.

Michael Kirk

Torture should have been kept where it belonged, in the 16th century, instead of being imported into the 21st.

Irene Khan

Alberto Mora sacrificed an illustrious legal career in government to oppose a policy that condoned the torture and abuse of prisoners in violation of international law. Their courage has inspired others to follow their example, and our government is fortunate to have public servants with such integrity.

Caroline Kennedy

Ray Allen has been fully punished, more than if he'd been executed in a quick and efficient way. It's just a kind of torture to do it like this.

Michael Satris

If the U.S. refuses to comply with the universal human rights principles, what reason do other nations have to comply? Torture is counter productive and the indefinite detention of prisoners without trial does not make America safer.

Jamil Dakwar

The US government is not only failing to take steps to eradicate torture, it is actually creating a climate in which torture and other ill-treatment can flourish.

Curt Goering

Many of these stories are completely fabricated. ... There was no torture. Prison wardens are forbidden to physically abuse inmates.

Falun Gong

Being put on top of each other and forced to masturbate, being naked in front of each other — it's all a form of torture.

Bernard Haykel

There is nothing remotely fashionable about the torture and death of animals killed for fur.

Yvonne Taylor

I managed to survive the repression and the torture, but many others found it much more difficult. I saw people who were tortured so badly they ultimately lost their sanity.

Ahmed Herzenni

The sexual abuse of women inmates is torture, plain and simple. Shackling and medical neglect of women in prison constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

William Schulz

The one overriding reason for such a facility is to torture those in detention. So that they are away from any prying eyes from the public and from the media.

Mark Garlasco

That defined torture and showed that these acts were not torture and that these prisoners were not subject to the Geneva Conventions.

Guy Womack

The U.S. government is hiding Ramzi Binalshibh to torture him and to prevent him to speak the truth.

Ramzi Binalshibh

Recognize the rough spot. Once we try to ignore it, it keeps coming back. Address it and say 'OK, so how would I feel if I pressed through and did this?' Don't say 'I'm going to make myself do this' - then it just becomes like torture. Have a mind, body, soul conversation at the plateau to check in with yourself and see how you're feeling. Then you'll generally be ready to move forward.

Katrina Bee

Torture is defined, with reasonable certainty, severe pain and suffering, physical or psychological. It is defined about as well as legal terms can be defined.

David Rivkin

It's apparently not enough to merely ask judicial staff to change their mindset. Necessary measures are also needed to curb inquisition by torture.

Yu Min

If you wish to drown, do not torture yourself with shallow water.

Bulgarian Proverb

I think it'll be time at the end of this year for them to go off and try something new, ... It'll be torture. It'll be torture.

Leslie Cohen

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.

James A. Froude

The girls we spoke to see Barbie torture as a legitimate play activity, and see the torture as a 'cool' activity. The types of mutilation are varied and creative, and range from removing the hair to decapitation, burning, breaking and even micro-waving.

Agnes Nairn

Nicole showed up to meet me in an airport once wearing a sweatsuit, with a leopard-print neck pillow tied around her neck, an 'I Love L.A.' cap, and her hair in pigtails, ... I think she was doing it to torture me.

Rachel Zoe

I try not to torture myself that much and realize there are a lot of teams that get beat at the buzzer. We lost to a good team and a good player.

Todd Macculloch

Hell has no benefits, only torture.

John Milton

Flying detainees to countries where they may face torture or other ill treatment is a direct and outright breach (of) international law.

Claudio Cordone

[The] report, with its detailed description of acts of torture, makes for difficult reading, but it is extremely important that it is now part of the record of this inquiry.

Paul Cavalluzzo

If you were going to have yourself killed wouldn't you rather have someone shoot you? I certainly would. You don't hire someone to torture you and then stab you.

William Kissel

An act of torture by a public official anywhere in the world is an offense under United Kingdom law. It becomes simply facile to argue that these offenses are a matter for Chile and no one else.

Alun Jones

Any nation that is party to the Geneva Conventions ... is obligated under international law to investigate those who are alleged to be involved with the formulation of a policy of torture or with its carrying out.

William Schulz

I take the most wrenchingly painful moments of my life, brush them off and present them for the amusement of others. Luckily for me, my childhood was torture.

Aisha Tyler

One navy doctor came and put the tube in his nose and down his throat. Until finally Abdul- Rahman started violently throwing up blood. [He] tried to resist the 'torture' from this physician, but he could not breathe.

Julia Tarver

Jordan's General Intelligence Department, prisons and ordinary police stations all have known records of abuse. By seeking Jordanian promises to treat these returned persons differently, the U.K. is confirming that the risk of torture continues.

Joe Stork

If you really want to torture me, sit me in a room strapped to a chair and put Mariah Carey's records on.

Cameron Diaz

This is a very important year for Democrats, nationally and locally. Many national issues ? like the war, like torture, like the response to Katrina, like Medicare Part D, like the incompetence of the Bush administration ? have a very real impact locally, in our quality of life and what we expect from our country.

Stuart Davis

Market nerves are ragged. Its like Chinese water torture. We thought we'd have resolution from Blix, then we thought (U.S. Secretary of State Colin) Powell was going to give the definitive statement and now its dragging on until next Friday.

Anais Faraj

That's how I torture myself.

Robert Johnson

Unless a capacity for thinking be accompanied by a capacity for action, a superior mind exists in torture.

Benedetto Croce

I think that anyone who comes upon a Nautilus machine suddenly will agree with me that its prototype was clearly invented at some time in history when torture was considered a reasonable alternative to diplomacy.

Anna Quindlen

Today's announcement fails to answer the fundamental question: Will the government's deportation plans result in suspects being sent to countries with a known record of torture? What has always separated us from the terrorists is that we do not torture people or send them to be tortured - that is the standard we need to maintain.

James Welch

Chess is mental torture.

Garry Kasparov

It was really nice working with her, ... She's a very sweet little girl. We had a lot of rehearsal time together. When we were just getting to know each other she would tell me stories about her dog and her grandma before we got on with doing scenes together. She worked really hard but seemed to enjoy it. I hope we didn't torture her too much.

Jennifer Connelly

The Bush administration policy is against torture of any kind; it's prohibited by federal criminal law.

John Yoo

There is still torture in Jordan, especially with regard to security suspects, ... All the good reasons that prevented the U.K. from deporting people to Jordan before August 10 remain unchanged by this agreement.

Joe Stork

The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

Carl Jung

This case is about a torture victim who fled to this country seeking asylum and who was locked up for years even though he kept winning his asylum case. The court's ruling strongly confirms that the government cannot lock up people for years indefinitely and without good reason.

Ahilan Arulanantham

Torture is practiced systematically by the security forces, ... This was admitted by high officials of both the army and police.

Manfred Nowak

They are very marked by three years of ill treatment and torture.

Gareth Peirce

Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason.

Octavio Paz

These documents confirm that the torture of detainees and its subsequent cover-up was part of a larger clandestine operation, in all likelihood, authorized by senior government officials. Despite mounting evidence of systemic abuse authorized or endorsed from above, however, not a single high level official has thus far been brought to justice.

Amrit Singh

This is a momentous case. The UK is at an important crossroads. It can reaffirm its stand against torture, which is absolutely banned, or slide towards illegality by its tacit acceptance that torture is sometimes OK.

Kate Allen

We need full disclosure by our government. If, in fact, people are being moved from a jurisdiction where torture is illegal to a jurisdiction where torture is permissible, that seems to me to be wholly contrary to international law.

Sir Menzies Campbell

Torture has been privatized now, so you have obviously the whole scandal in America about the abuse of prisoners and the fact that, army people might be made to pay a price, but who are the privatized torturers accountable too?

Arundhati Roy

We have been demanding that particularly in the case of minors you must have a time-bound system. Because of witnesses changing, the victims do not want justice because of the torture that she undergoes.

Brinda Karat

Not only has the Iraqi government failed to provide minimal protection for its citizens, it has actively pursued a policy of rounding up and torturing innocent men and women. Its failure to punish those who have committed acts of torture has added to the breakdown of the rule of law and to spiraling human rights violations in Iraq.

Dr. William F. Schulz

The universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture-garden. Passions, greed, hatred, and lies; law, social institutions, justice, love, glory, heroism, and religion: these are its monstrous flowers and its hideous instruments of eternal human suffering.

Octave Mirbeau

That was brutal. It was torture, only because we really wanted to see where we were going to go.

Beckie Francis

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

George Orwell

As for torture, it was tolerated if not actively encouraged, ... He (the emissary) knew exactly what went on during the night.

Paul Aussaresses

To torture a man you have to know his pleasures.

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

CLARIONET, n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments that are worse than a clarionet - two clarionets.

Ambrose Bierce

If it appears that the hostages are being treated well, if food and medicines are allowed into the location and there are no reports of abuse or torture, then we will give this every possible opportunity to be resolved in a peaceful manner.

Ricardo Puno

I never think about being different. It's good to be different. If everyone was the same, it would be torture.

Muna Osman

They have caused havoc. They do basically as they please. They arrest people, they torture people, they execute people, they detain people, they negotiate ransom and they do that with impunity.

John Pace

A six-week regime of sleep deprivation, forced exercises, stress positions, white noise, and sexual humiliation amounts to acts that were specifically intended to cause severe physical pain and suffering and severe mental pain and suffering. That's the legal definition of torture.

Joanne Mariner

This is probably the most important newspaper capitulation since the New York Times yielded to John F. Kennedy's call for them to not run the full story of planning for the Bay of Pigs. By withholding the country names, the Post is directly enabling the rendition, secret detention, and torture of prisoners at these locations to continue. That is a ghastly responsibility.

Peter Kornbluh

What torture, this life in society! Often someone is obliging enough to offer me a light, and in order to oblige him I have to fish a cigarette out of my pocket.

Karl Kraus

Outside the museum window was an empty space with a sign, 'You are standing on the grounds of the former torture chamber of the Gestapo. That in a way was the start of the debate about what to do there.

Andreas Nachama

We continue to see undeniable evidence that abuse and torture has been widespread and systematic, yet high level government officials have not been held accountable for creating the policies that led to these atrocities.

Anthony D. Romero

I'm against this war, I'm against the torture. We're doing this for the people of Iraq.

Martha Conrad

The prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment ... is absolute and nonnegotiable, ... It is wrong to suggest that this ... has changed as a result of the recent terrorist threats. There cannot be any question of ?striking the right balance? when absolute rights are at stake.

Terry Davis

There is no government policy of subcontracting torture, as has been alleged, ... Some of these issues are going to be examined. When people make allegations like this, of course we're concerned.

Alex Swann

We had to learn in just six weeks what geishas spend their whole lives learning. There were seven torture rooms, ... But we were lucky that Kaori and Ken were there to keep an eye on us to make sure we were doing it properly. Please forgive us if we did anything wrong.

Michelle Yeoh

Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procrustes turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The heaviest sentence imposed on anyone to date for a torture-related death while in US custody is five months -- the same sentence that you might receive in the US for stealing a bicycle. In this case, the five-month sentence was for assaulting a 22-year-old taxi-driver who was hooded and chained to a ceiling while being kicked and beaten until he died.

Curt Goering

A cord was wrapped around his neck. A metal pipe was used to beat him with. It was a gruesome torture.

Tandra Simonton

At one point he said, 'Do you want to torture me?'

Gregory Allen

I do not wish to be associated, however remotely, with an agency engaged in torture.

Ray Mcgovern

If (EU) member or candidate states actively contributed to, or connived in, illegal transports and torture, or illegal prisons on their territory, that must be investigated and the necessary consequences drawn.

Martin Schulz

That torture is still practiced in Iraq after Saddam Hussein, that is no secret. It is shocking, but on the other hand, we have received allegations of these secret (detention) places in Iraq already for quite a long time.

Manfred Nowak

Although we are not saying that torture is widespread in the UK at all, there are instances.

Kate Allen

Torture and ill treatment are systematically practiced in Nepal by the police, armed police and the Royal Nepal Army in order to extract confessions and to obtain intelligence, among others things.

Manfred Nowak

There's no question that what's described in the report counts as torture under the European convention and shouldn't exist in Turkey or anywhere in Europe.

Richard Howitt

The vast majority of bodies showed signs of summary execution - many with their hands tied behind their back. Some showed evidence of torture, with arms and leg joints broken by electric drills.

John Pace

The president made it clear that we do not torture. The world has seen that we are someone who takes the treatment prisoners very seriously.

Scott Mccormick

America cannot hold itself as a moral beacon to the world if it violates the rule of law by engaging in illegal spying, torture and secrecy. The ACLU is committed to making sure that our government complies with universally recognized human rights principles and upholds our Constitution.

Jamil Dakwar

Bind, torture and kill.

Boy Scout

(Performing live) invigorates you, but life on the road wears you down. The frequencies hitting your ears and the volume can tire you, but you're so elated onstage you don't notice it. The next morning you implode. You do five gigs in a row, have a day off, then seven in a row, day off -- it's a strange kind of torture. You love it, but it destroys you.

Lisa Gerrard

QUILL, n. An implement of torture yielded by a goose and commonly wielded by an ass. This use of the quill is now obsolete, but its modern equivalent, the steel pen, is wielded by the same everlasting Presence.

Ambrose Bierce

Anything that will give the officer's wife peace. It would give our family peace so he doesn't torture himself.

Melanie Schweinhardt

This work is a torture on the rump but a joy to the heart.

Eduardo Galeano

Torture is not American, it's un-American; arbitrary detention is un-American and what these young men have suffered and continue to suffer is something for which we, the American justice system, need to hold these people accountable.

Eric Lewis

The coward wretch whose hand and heart Can bear to torture ought below, Is ever first to quail and start From the slightest pain or equal foe.

Eliza Cook

We read some pretty moving s that string lines from torture to sexual and physical abuse. It resonates with you and you want to make a difference. It's hard; we live such privileged lives, (it's) hard to sit there and do nothing once you become aware.

Eddie Drake