Top 100 Quotes About Abuses
#1. But because their ancestors were men of righteousness, shall we consent to the abuses of their degenerate descendants? Because they did us a great good, would we be guilty if we prevented them from doing us evil?
Jose Rizal
#2. Do not suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused. Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we then prohibit and abolish women?
Martin Luther
#3. Joe Arpaio needs no help from me getting attention. For years he has been a beacon of bigotry and intolerance for all the world to see. The list of human and civil-rights abuses he's committed in Maricopa County is long and well documented.
Conor Oberst
#4. We have won freedom, he brooded, but if we abuse it, or vote for cheap personal advantage, it won't be worth having. We are familiar with the abuses of kings, but because what we now attempt is new, we can't foresee its abuses. They'll come.
James A. Michener
#5. Had the Senate or House, or both, censured or somehow warned Richard Nixon, the tragedy of Watergate might have been prevented. Hopefully the Senate will not sit by while even more serious abuses unfold before it.
John Dean
#6. To those who think that liberty is a good thing, and that it may someday be possible for people to live in a society fit for free, fully human individuals, a thorough education in the nature of language, its uses and abuses, seems indispensable.
Aldous Huxley
#7. Everyone has a right to be stupid, but Comrade McDonald abuses the privilege.
Leon Trotsky
#8. As a candidate, Clinton had - as all candidates do - torn into his predecessor for coddling China and promised that he would get tough on China's human rights abuses. As president, Clinton had - as all presidents do - come to see that the reality was a bit more complicated.
Michael Tomasky
#9. In my opinion, one of the greatest animal-welfare problems is the physical abuse of livestock during transportation ... Typical abuses I have witnessed with alarming frequency are; hitting, beating, use of badly maintained trucks, jabbing of short objects into animals, and deliberate cruelty.
Temple Grandin
#11. That paper money has some advantages is admitted. But that its abuses also are inevitable and, by breaking up the measure of value, makes a lottery of all private property, cannot be denied.
Thomas Jefferson
#12. Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power.
James Madison
#13. My confidence is that there will for a long time be virtue and good sense enough in our countrymen to correct abuses.
Thomas Jefferson
#14. I have heard my fill of hurtful words. I think it's especially egregious when citizens like me, who point out abuses in their country, are referred to as 'do-gooders.' This is how a phrase that can be used to stop an argument dead becomes part of common usage.
Gunter Grass
#15. Out here everybody abuses everybody. It's just the way it is. So you'd better get used to it. - excerpt from: freefalling
Darlenne Susan Girard
#16. No country is 100 percent free of human rights abuses.
Raul Castro
#17. He [man] abuses equally other animals and his own species, the rest of whom live in famine, languish in misery, and work only to satisfy the immoderate appetite and the still more insatiable vanity of this human being who, destroying others by want, destroys himself by excess.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
#18. The growing wealth aquired by them corporations never fails to be a source of abuses.
James Madison
#19. Nothing short of a federal investigation can begin to disclose the abuses which have woven a fine web of mutually implicating relationships between businessmen and government officials.
Ralph Nader
#20. In light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, critics are arguing that abuses of Iraqi prisoners are being produced by a climate of disregard for the laws of war.
John Yoo
#21. I like a challenge. The fact that these are secret organizations, and also very important organizations that can engage in abuses that are so important to our national security - all that attracts me.
Ronald Kessler
#22. Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse!
Harriet Beecher Stowe
#23. To protest in the name of morality against 'excesses' or 'abuses' is an error which hints on active complicity. There are no 'abuses' or 'excesses' here, simpily an all-pervasive system.
Simone De Beauvoir
#24. I'm not sure why, but I seem to be drawn to stories about abuses of power. But I'm also drawn, not so much to victims' stories, as stories that tend to show how power works. Because if you don't understand the criminals, you can't figure out how to stop the crimes.
Alex Gibney
#25. It is more gratifying to bask in praise for courageously protesting the abuses of official enemies: a fine activity, but not the priority of a value-oriented intellectual who takes the responsibilities of that stance seriously.
Noam Chomsky
#26. Secrecy can spring from the best motives; but as it grows it begins to exist only for itself, only for its own sake, only to cover its own abuses.
Christopher Dodd
#27. A population that does not take care of the elderly and of children and the young has no future, because it abuses both its memory and its promise.
Pope Francis
#28. [David] Mamet is another hypocrite. His idea of Black man is a pimp who abuses women, [Edmond], yet his play Oleanna [1994] ends with a White professor slapping an uppity feminist, at least the version I saw at San Francisco's ACT.
Ishmael Reed
#29. To protect our country's economic future and the health and well being of all Americans, we must find a way to rein in out-of-control costs, provide quality, affordable health care choices to all, and make outrageous insurance industry abuses a thing of the past.
Michael Bennet
#30. Some, while deploring animal abuses, on the same breath approve 'benefits to humans from certain animal abuses'! Who would criticize the Jewish holocaust or Black slavery, and YET praise the benefits to Germans or Whites??? This convenient ambiguity at the expense of animals is unacceptable!!!
Adela Popescu
#31. Abuses of the freedom of speech ought to be repressed, but to whom are we to commit the power of doing it?
Benjamin Franklin
#32. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their future security -
James Madison
#33. Bill Clinton was impeached primarily for criminal conduct: lying under oath and misleading a federal grand jury about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Nixon would have been impeached for a wide array of criminal acts, as well as abuses of power.
Jonathan Turley
#34. This is a time when the protections of Americans' liberties are directly at risk, as are the checks and balances that have served to constrain abuses of power for more than 200 years. The Supreme Court is relied upon by all of to us protect our fundamental rights.
Patrick Leahy
#35. Each and every year, the United States loses an estimated $100 billion a year in tax revenues due to offshore tax abuses by the wealthy and large corporations.
Bernie Sanders
#36. Napoleon is great because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses, preserved all that was good in it - equality of citizenship and freedom of speech and of the press - and only for that reason did he obtain power.
Leo Tolstoy
#37. Richard Nixon as a 12-year-old was given a portrait of Lincoln that he hung over his bed. Nixon also justified what would later be seen as abuses of power by comparing America in the Vietnam era to the country during the Civil War.
Richard Norton Smith
#38. When it comes to reforming MPs' expenses, the answer is simply to keep it simple: show us receipts as they're claimed and, where there are abuses, enforce the law.
Heather Brooke
#40. As for wife beating, one survey found support for it from 62 percent of Indian village women themselves. And no group systematically abuses young women more cruelly than mothers-in-law, who serve as household matriarchs in much of the world and take charge of disciplining the younger women.
Nicholas D. Kristof
#41. The more powerful government becomes, the more abuses it commits and the more lies it must tell.
James Bovard
#42. The only true corrective of Constitutional abuses is education.
Thomas Jefferson
#43. Woe to the Revolution when the day comes, when the people, overburdened by contributions and consumed by abuses, turn to their enemies for salvation!
Apolinario Mabini
#44. A clamor for 'family values' requires deliberate blindness to the abuses that occur within families.
Bob Allen
#45. Let me quickly remind you that the allegation of being mentally incapable is a tried and tested method of silencing women dating back hundreds of years, a weapon to discredit us when we fought against abuses and stood up to authority.
Tom Rob Smith
#46. The only excuse from a man who abuses you are the ones we give him.
Selena Haskins
#47. It is impossible to correct abuses unless we know that theyre going on.
Julian Assange
#48. The Supreme Court must serve as an independent check on abuses by the executive branch and the protector of our liberties, not a cheerleader for an imperial presidency.
Edward Kennedy
#49. Persecution has not crushed it, power has not beaten it back, time has not abated its force, and, what is most wonderful of all, the abuses and treasons of its friends have not shaken its stability.
Horace Bushnell
#50. I don't think anyone would argue with the notion that there have been serious abuses on Wall Street.
Andrew Cuomo
#51. The pathological degree to which former Vice President Dick Cheney operated in secrecy led to government abuses that we'll probably spend years learning about.
Timothy Noah
#52. If one abuses or neglects internal powers, external forces will act accordingly.
T.F. Hodge
#53. Fear, if it be not immoderate, puts a guard about us that does watch and defend us; but credulity keeps us naked, and lays us open to all the sly assaults of ill-intending men: it was a virtue when man was in his innocence; but since his fall, it abuses those that own it.
Owen Feltham
#54. There are significant human rights abuses in China. In some areas, the situation is worse today than in the past. In other areas, there have been improvements. We will recognize the latter, and be critical of the former.
Max Baucus
#55. The firmness with which the (American) people have withstood the ... abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false and to form a correct judgment between them.
Thomas Jefferson
#56. Quotation, like much better things, has its abuses. One may quote till one compiles. The ancient lawyers used to quote at the bar till they had stagnated their own cause.
Isaac D'Israeli
#57. To me, if you're lucky enough to make stuff that people will pay money for, do a good job. Really do a good job. Especially if you're talking about real stuff, like terror atrocities and human rights abuses and pencil-sharpening techniques.
David Rees
#58. The only sexual act that is sinful is the one that uses or abuses.
Pat Buckley
#59. Most people do not go to the dentist until they have a toothache; most societies do not reform abuses until the victims begin to make life uncomfortable for others.
Charles Issawi
#60. Should misfortune visit the Court, that can only be the result of its continued abuses. If the palace is attacked, that can only be the result of misgovernment. I can hardly be held responsible for the outcome.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#61. The legal toleration of abortion or of euthanasia can in no way claim to be based on respect for the conscience of others, precisely because society has the right and the duty to protect itself against the abuses which can occur in the name of conscience and under the pretext of freedom.
Pope John Paul II
#62. We won't tolerate abuses and crimes made every day in the name of freedom of speech. That is freedom of extortion and blackmail.
Rafael Correa
#63. Stop trying to change someone who does not want to change. Stop giving chances to someone who abuses your forgiveness. Stop walking back to the place where your heart ran from. Stop trusting their words and ignoring their actions. Stop breaking your own heart.
Trent Shelton
#64. My past haunts me, my present screws me, my future scares me. In a nutshell, time physically abuses me
Saurabh Sharma
#65. The powers of congress must be defined, but their means must be adequate to the purposes of their constitution. It is possible there may be abuses and misapplications; still, it is better to hazard something than to hazard at all.
Oliver Ellsworth
#66. The hand of benevolence is everywhere stretched out, searching into abuses, righting wrongs, alleviating distresses, and bringing to the knowledge and sympathies of the world the lowly, the oppressed, and the forgotten.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
#68. The lure of heady profits of the late 1990's spawned abuses and excesses. With strict enforcement and higher ethical standards, we must usher in a new era of integrity in corporate America.
George W. Bush
#69. The ceremonial and religious uses of psychedelics are much older than their recreational uses and abuses. For most of their history, they have been mysterious, dangerous substances and must be treated respectfully.
Humphry Osmond
#70. The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.
Thomas Jefferson
#71. The presumed causes of Americas troubles can be summed up simply: the evils of unlimited competition, and abuses by those with economic power.
Charles A. Reich
#72. If Bradley Manning was the person who copied the secret US diplomatic cables to WikilLeaks, he is a hero for exposing human rights abuses.
Peter Tatchell
#73. When exactly do the abuses that have been tolerated for so long become intolerable? When does the fear evaporate and the rage generate action that produces joy?
Rebecca Solnit
#74. I can understand better than most the contradiction between the idealistic civilisation and religious morals of Europe and what they did with the slaves, because the root of the evil is only two generations away from me. Maybe this has fed my need to fight against the abuses of modern civilisation.
J.M.G. Le Clezio
#75. One cannot read the New Testament without acquired admiration for whatever it abuses not to speak of the "wisdom of this world," which an impudent wind bag tries to dispose of "by the foolishness of preaching."
Friedrich Nietzsche
#76. I am one of the most successful economists, according to what markets tell us, though most of my professional colleagues, who are much keener to accept market outcomes than I am, would dismiss me as a crank or - the worst of all abuses among economists - a 'sociologist.'
Ha-Joon Chang
#77. My nature is that when I see abuses of power, I want to expose those abuses.
Glenn Greenwald
#78. We are in the twilight of this earth. The societies and civilizations of human beings will not endure much longer because of their abuses of power.
Frederick Lenz
#79. I believe that a concept that may have some flaws is nonetheless important as a tool to critique abuses on all sides of the political spectrum. In the end, I think that a more useful 'universal' concept than that of a 'right', though, is a 'need'.
Alison Assiter
#80. To destroy abuses is not sufficient; customs must be modified. The mill is there no longer; the wind is still there.
Victor Hugo
#81. The failure of the family court system in America is a national scandal. Sadly, the mainstream media, whether out of ignorance or fear, refuses to cover it. That media silence means that every day, these American human rights abuses continue to occur.
Garland Waller
#82. One who abuses his power, unaware that one day will be the victim of his own abuses
Miguel El Portugues
#83. Being overly critical of yourself is like having a relentless, inescapable bully who follows you everywhere you go and abuses you.
Bryant McGill
#84. Of all the depressing abuses of language in business, there is none that gets me so incensed as the rampant overuse of the word 'passionate' in company slogans, marketing blurbs, mission statements and on the sides of vans.
Tom Hodgkinson
#85. Third issue, and again I think it is important to note, anyone can make a mistake and any administration can make a mistake once in a while, but this is just a long train of abuses, an unbroken chain of following special interests rather than the health of the American people.
Jay Inslee
#86. The ecclesiastical establishments of Europe which serve to support tyrannical governments are not the Christian religion but abuses and corruptions of it.
Noah Webster
#87. More than ever, Romania now needs to see that a force exists that puts an end to Ponta and Antonescu's abuses and coup d'etat. This force is none other than the Romanian people.
Traian Basescu
#88. I do not think that war is always wrong: sometimes it is necessary to stop a dictator, prevent massive human-rights abuses, or expel an invader. But I have also seen that in the modern world, civil wars are the greatest threat to humanitarian security.
Jonathan Powell
#89. Speaker Newt Gingrich says that what is wrong with the present system is not that people abuse welfare but that welfare abuses people.
Daniel Schorr
#90. The idea of 'Voice of Witness' is to let survivors and witnesses of human-rights abuses tell their story at length. It started with a course that I co-taught at U.C. Berkeley journalism school back in 2003.
Dave Eggers
#91. I knew from my years of writing about NSA abuses that it can be hard to generate serious concern about secret state surveillance: invasion of privacy and abuse of power can be viewed as abstractions, ones that are difficult to get people to care about viscerally.
Glenn Greenwald
#92. Companies should have a due diligence process to determine the likelihood that their technologies will be used to carry out human rights abuses before doing business with a particular country or distributor.
Rebecca MacKinnon
#93. Since January 2002, when the United States began detaining at Guantanamo Bay enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other fronts in the war on terror, critics have complained of human rights abuses.
Linda Chavez
#94. Sex is a fact of life ... and while it may lead to abuses ... no words need be spoken ... for people to know that the subject is one pleasantly interwoven in all human activities and involves the very substance of creation itself.
Hugo Black
#95. There were stories coming out of Thailand that slave labor was being used to catch and process the seafood we eat. They were nearly all from Miramar. Because of reports of widespread labor abuses, several countries are now considering a ban on imports of Thai seafood.
Lourdes Garcia-Navarro
#96. It is this dependency that became, and is, the breeding ground for abuses of power.
Bell Hooks
#97. He that abuses his own profession will not patiently bear with any one else who does so. And this is one of our most subtle operations of self-love. For when we abuse our own profession, we tacitly except ourselves; but when another abuses it, we are far from being certain that this is the case.
Charles Caleb Colton
#98. if someone abuses you a little less than you abuse yourself, you will probably stay in the relationship and tolerate it endlessly. If
Miguel Ruiz
#99. I think it's wrong for the government to subpoena records from journalists involved in national-security reporting (particularly since I do it myself). I do believe it has a chilling effect on the ability to gather news about potential abuses masked by inappropriate classification.
Kurt Eichenwald
