Quotes About Ruthlessness

#1. People go on blithely organizing and believing in the remedy of mass action, without the least consciousness of the fact that the most powerful organizations can be maintained only by the greatest ruthlessness of their leaders and the cheapest of slogans.

C. G. Jung

#2. The ruthlessness of the godly invalidated their claims of virtue.

Salman Rushdie

#3. He may have confused honor with with with ruthlessness.

T. J. Stiles

#4. Perhaps this war will pass like the others which divided us leaving us dead, killing us along with the killers but the shame of this time puts its burning fingers to our faces. Who will erase the ruthlessness hidden in innocent blood?

Pablo Neruda

#5. Baseball, like some other sports, poses as a sacred institution dedicated to the public good, but it is actually a big, selfish business with a ruthlessness that many big businesses would never think of displaying.

Jackie Robinson

#6. But such consummate skill, such ability, such adaptability, such numbing ruthlessness, such a use of weapons when anything could become weapon . . .

Iain M. Banks

#7. skyscraper would remain one of the most peculiarly American of white-collar institutions, much more a symbol of the prowess, even ruthlessness, of American-style capitalism than what it equally was: an especially tall collection of boring offices.

Nikil Saval

#8. It is important to have a perspective then only through seeing the world is it possible to transcend ideas such as the Flyers, and other aberrant thought forms. With ruthlessness, cunning patience and sweetness, it can be cracked.

Carlos Castaneda

#9. Ruthlessness and cold logic, it seems, can accomplish almost anything.

Veronica Roth

#10. A gentle boy with a gentle soul, but every soul contains its own opposite, and the opposite of gentleness was ruthlessness - the beautiful wreckage of mercy.

Cassandra Clare

#11. Within days they'd formed an unholy alliance with a foppish young French vampire in the Garden District who had implausibly golden hair and a streak of ruthlessness as wide as the Mississippi

Deborah Harkness

#12. He was the quintessential bad boy, complete with a ruthlessness that appeared to simmer dangerously close to the surface. Couple that with his devil-may-care swagger and panty-dropping smile, it was a small wonder she hadn't fainted from the sheer emotional overload.

B.B. Cruz

#13. Always Emma, the better, brighter half of him, who tempered his ruthlessness, who forced him to acknowledge the light when he saw only darkness. - Julian Blackthorn

Cassandra Clare

#14. The true lesson of the Vietnam War is: certainty of purpose and ruthlessness of execution win wars.

Ronald Reagan

#15. A ruthless man extends his ruthlessness from those he does not love to those he loves.

Confucius

#16. You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich. A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.

Nelson Algren

#17. He had the ease of an expert, so confident that it seemed casual, but it was the ease of a tremendous concentration, the concentration on one's task that has the ruthlessness of an absolute.

Ayn Rand

#18. Truthfulness so often goes with ruthlessness.

Dodie Smith

#19. I realized that if I was going to assume the responsibility of writing about my home, I needed narrative ruthlessness. I couldn't dull the edges and fall in love with my characters and spare them. Life does not spare us.

Jesmyn Ward

#20. Rigour and ruthlessness do not preclude sympathy with another's point of view.

Kiran Nagarkar

#21. Never underestimate the ruthlessness of the ego to keep you in a state of suffering in which you voluntarily participate.

Iyanla Vanzant

#22. Always, always, I had had to balance compassion with wisdom, love with judgment, humanity with ruthlessness.

Diana Gabaldon

#23. Economics dominates politics - and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.

Chris Hedges

#24. A part of him wanted to cram his reality down her throat, forcing her to accept him, with no excuses offered. A wiser part of him, the man he'd used to be, warned against such ruthlessness.

Karen Marie Moning

#25. I suspect that one of capitalism's crucial assets derives from the fact that the imagination of economists, including its critics, lags well behind its own inventiveness, the arbitrariness of its undertaking and the ruthlessness of the way in which it proceeds.

Zygmunt Bauman

#26. He was young, gorgeous, a Ruthledge, and just enough ruthlessness to put him on the right side of edgy.

Sylvia Day

#27. Recognize the malice, cunning, and hypocrisy that power produces, and the peculiar ruthlessness often shown by people from good families.

Marcus Aurelius

#28. In a sense life in the high-rise had begun to resemble the world outside - there were the same ruthlessness and agression concealed within a set of polite conventions.

J.G. Ballard

#29. She notices the unyielding ruthlessness of the storm; the crashing waves, the bitter sky kissing the water on the horizon, the keening laments of the sharp, cutting wind, and the relentless liquid deliverance of its somber showers. She'll never forgive the audacity of the storm's neglect.

Laura Kreitzer

#30. He was a longtime street thug who had just enough ruthlessness to rise to legitimate businesses and not quite enough intelligence to leave his dark life behind him. Aptly suited as a banker.

Brian McClellan

#31. Ruthlessness, charm, focus, mental toughness, fearlessness, mindfulness (living in the moment), and action. Who wouldn't, at certain points in their lives, benefit from kicking one or two of them up a notch? What was important was being able to turn them back down.

Kevin Dutton

#32. Armstrong was perfect for their goals - an extraordinary combination of athletic talent, drive, ambition, and ruthlessness. And once he began winning, he became the chairman and CEO of the business of making himself rich and famous.

Reed Albergotti

#33. In both cases, weakness and scruples had defeated strength and ruthlessness.

Ken Follett

#34. The hatred and cruelty which have their source in selfishness are ineffectual things compared with the venom and ruthlessness born of selflessness.

Eric Hoffer

#35. There is a ruthlessness to the creative act. It often involves a betrayal of the status quo.

Alan Watt

#36. We admire people who work hard, who are objective and thorough. We detest office politicians, toadies, bullies, and pompous asses. We abhor ruthlessness. The way up our ladder is open to everybody. In promoting people to top jobs, we are influenced as much by their character as anything else.

David Ogilvy

#37. Percival guessed that his prey preferred to listen, letting her friends carry on with whatever amusing nonsense filled their lives, while she privately assessed their habits, cataloging their strengths and faults with clinical ruthlessness.

Danielle Trussoni

#38. If greed were not the master of modern man, how could it be that the frenzy of economic activity does not abate as higher standards of living are attained, and that it is precisely the richest societies which pursue their economic advantage with the greatest ruthlessness?

E.F. Schumacher

#39. In your 20s - and these are generalizations of course - I feel like I didn't care about as many things or as many people, or even myself, as much. There's more recklessness and more ruthlessness; you're not as considerate of how things land with other people I think.

Naomi Watts

#40. He'd wanted me to believe in his ruthlessness.
Then I remembered his words from so long ago: Make me your villain.

Leigh Bardugo

#41. I learned to ambush the fear and I managed to turn vulnerability to ruthlessness.

Euginia Herlihy

#42. Today is built on tragedies, which no one wants to face, nightmares to humanities and morally disgraced. Tonight is filled with rage, violence in the air, children bred with ruthlessness because no one at home cares.

Tupac Shakur

#43. The Great War differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought.

Winston Churchill

#44. The price of being oneself is so high and involves so much ruthlessness toward others (or what looks like ruthlessness in our duty-bound culture) that very few people can afford it.

May Sarton

#45. He had the ruthlessness of uninterrupted success.

Barbara W. Tuchman

#46. There is no telling to what extremes of cruelty and ruthlessness a man will go when he is freed from the fears, hesitations, doubts and the vague stirrings of decency that go with individual judgment.

Eric Hoffer

#47. There's a ruthlessness to the city now that wasn't there before. I was in Dublin a few months ago, when we were shooting Breakfast on Pluto, and if I saw one kid throwing up on the street, I must have seen a hundred of them.

Liam Neeson

#48. Ruthlessness is the most practical of emotions, Reen's voice whispered. She ignored it.

Brandon Sanderson

#49. Selsdon Man is designing a system of society for the ruthlessness and the pushing, the uncaring. His message to the rest is: you're out on your own.

Harold Wilson

#50. Head-on. With unwavering conviction and ruthlessness. Aomame

Haruki Murakami

#51. The ruthlessness born of self-seeking is ineffectual compared with the ruthlessness sustained by dedication to a holy cause. God wishes, said Calvin, that one should put aside all humanity when it is a question of striving for His glory..

Eric Hoffer

#52. I admire people who are very successful. But if that success has been achieved through too much ruthlessness, then I may admire that person, but I can't respect him.

Ratan Tata

#53. In the long run everything with the most minute vulnerability breaks, given the ruthlessness of time.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#54. Traits that are common among psychopathic serial killers
a grandiose sense of self-worth, persuasiveness, superficial charm, ruthlessness, lack of remorse, and the manipulation of others
are also shared by politicians and world leaders.

Kevin Dutton

#55. Jim and I hit it off immediately, partly because our interests were astonishingly similar and partly, I suspect, because a certain youthful arrogance, a ruthlessness, an impatience with sloppy thinking can naturally to both of us.

Francis Crick

#56. Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.

Aldous Huxley

#57. Thomas had inherited his father's reason without his ruthlessness and his mother's love of good without her tendency to pursue it. His plan for all practical action was to wait and see what developed.

Flannery O'Connor

#58. The problem is that the things demanded by an empire, which is staying power, ruthlessness, the ability and the willingness to use its power around the world, it's something that democracies tend to be quite skeptical about.

Mark Danner

#59. The polite conversation that carried over from cocktails into dinner was so stifling that it carried a certain ruthlessness,

Bret Easton Ellis

#60. It is possible that the distinction between moral relativism and moral absolutism has sometimes been blurred because an excessively consistent practice of either leads to the same practical result - ruthlessness in political life.

Richard Hofstadter

#61. Like one of those fake-smart, middlebrow TV shows, the speciousness of The Social Network is disguised by topicality. It's really a movie excusing Hollywood ruthlessness.

Armond White

#62. Throughout the history of the Deutschritter the German genius is very evident, romantic idealism implemented with utter ruthlessness.

Desmond Seward

#63. You have ruthlessness in your bones and ice in your heart, Clarissa. Don't tell me any differently.

Cassandra Clare

#64. Mordak has the mental clarity to recognise that when it comes to running a bureaucracy, Elves can achieve a degree of blinkered ruthlessness that makes goblins look like teddy-bears.

Tom Holt

#65. Is it not necessary for each to know for oneself what is the right means of livelihood? If we were avaricious, envious, seeking power, then our means of livelihood will correspond to our inward demands and so produce a world of competition, ruthlessness, oppression, ultimately ending in war.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

#66. Success always necessitates a degree of ruthlessness. Given the choice of friendship or success, I'd probably choose success.

Sting

#67. The bodies in my floor all trusted someone. Now I walk on them to tea.

Victoria Schwab

#68. They are as smart as they are ruthless. That's why they've been around for all five years.

Joe Reyes

#69. Unless they're utterly heartless, people put a certain value on human life. It keeps us from killing each other off for no reason. But for leaders like you and me, a moral high ground is too absolute. There are choices to be made.

Amanda Bouchet

#70. Disregard for the consequences and for right and wrong nowadays passes as energy.

Franz Grillparzer

#71. You must firmly, absolutely and ruthlessly protect your safety and sanity.

Bryant McGill

#72. He'd been given an assignment to write about teen beauty pageants [ ... ], which he'd accepted because he enjoyed blood sports as much as the next person.

David Baldacci

#73. He jumped at the Giants face, clambered up his lip and nose, and began to dig in the Giant's eye.

Orson Scott Card

#74. 'I could kill you like this,' Peter whispered. 'Just press and press until you're dead'.

Orson Scott Card

#75. 'So if we can we'll kill every last of the buggers, and if they can they'll kill every last one of us. As for me,' said Ender, 'I'm in favor of surviving'.

Orson Scott Card

#76. His eyes were the same color as steel and not nearly as soft.

P.N. Elrod

#77. To save our imperiled honor everything must be sacrificed, even virtue.

Jean Racine