Top 212 Torture Quotes

One of America’s greatest strengths is the soft power of our value system and how we treat prisoners of war, and we don’t torture.

America does not torture. We never have, and we never will.

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

This stuff on enemy combatants, the Bush Administration has fought like a tiger to avoid having to produce any evidence to a judge to show why somebody is locked up in perpetuity. Another example of that is the torture scandal.

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.

It is also asserted that the election settled the matters of the war and the torture of prisoners. These are dead issues that no longer need be addressed.

When we torture people, even if we win the battle, we’ve already lost the war for hearts and minds. Especially our own.

When my father was arrested, we didn’t know where they had him. My mother found him at the house of torture. It was called Villa Triste.

Torture goes against the very soul of our country. We are a democracy, established on the rule of law.

It’s the boredom that kills you. You read until you’re tired of that. You do crossword puzzles until you’re tired of that. This is torture. This is mental torture.

If we want to protect people against dictators or repression or torture, don’t you need that rule to be universal so as to not end up with a situation where we do so only when it is comfortable, profitable and safe?

Families are about love overcoming emotional torture.

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

We are not made safe from terrorists by helicopters, or missiles or boots on the ground. Nor is it drones, torture or digital dragnets that protect us. What makes us as individuals safe from a terror attack is the staggering probability that we will be elsewhere when one occurs.

I think I’m a tough person, but for sure, I would talk under torture.

What girls do to each other is beyond description. No chinese torture comes close.

To put the point sharply: If an informer in the French underground who sent a friend to the torture chambers of the Gestapo was equally a victim, then there can be no right or wrong in life that I understand.

In the future, torture will once again become the recreational sport of the rich.

I am a Muslim. I am born to Muslim parents. I have a Muslim son. I have been imprisoned and witnessed torture for my previous understanding of my religion.

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.

It makes me actually quite angry to think about people writing about torture with a sort of relish. Horrible.

One of the techniques terrorists employ is to allege torture and mistreatment when they are captured, regardless of whether it is true.

If you torture a man as I was tortured he will learn more about love than you could ever ­imagine, and that has left me ­vulnerable.

Oh, you ask me, what is the greatest torture of a person who does portraits for a living? I could fill several volumes with nice nasty stories. I don’t know.

If in my youth I had realized that the sustaining splendour of beauty of with which I was in love would one day flood back into my heart, there to ignite a flame that would torture me without end, how gladly would I have put out the light in my eyes.

I am (even after all the torture) amazed at British logic. Never in eight centuries have they succeeded in breaking the spirit of one man who refused to be broken. They have not dispirited, conquered, nor demoralised my people, nor will they ever.

‘Zero Dark Thirty’ is a disturbing, fantastically-made movie. It will make you hate torture.

You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.

My style of singing has always been referred to ‘soul’ singing when it fact it’s more influenced by English R&B Blues Shouting. I’m closer to Led Zeppelin as a vocalist than to Ella Fitzgerald. It was torture dealing with major labels.

In life eternal, there is perfect joy and light, without pain or torture, and there is communion with God Himself and His angels.

You cannot change the conclusion of the brain by torture, nor by social ostracism. But I will tell you what you can do by these and what you have done. You can make hypocrites by the million.

I grew up in the South, in New Orleans, where guys torture you all the time. So I didn’t really grow up on the self-esteem campaign. When you were lousy at something, they told you you were lousy, and they told you how to fix it.

I don’t believe in a recipe for success. You have to work hard; you may not always get it right – you have to bounce back from situations, and you have to be really focused and determined. It’s important to have fun as well. Work shouldn’t be a torture.

Donald Trump’s candidacy has been a source of anxiety for many reasons, but one stands out: the ability of the president to launch nuclear weapons. When it comes to starting a nuclear war, the president has more freedom than he or she does in, say, ordering the use of torture.

Going to the blackboard at school was the worst torture.

There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience.

The evidence is overwhelming that it should be deemed as such: solitary confinement in the U.S. is arbitrary, abused, and unnecessary in many situations. It is cruel, degrading, and inhumane and is effectively a ‘no touch’ torture.

Governments that block the aspirations of their people, that steal or are corrupt, that oppress and torture or that deny freedom of expression and human rights should bear in mind that they will find it increasingly hard to escape the judgement of their own people, or where warranted, the reach of international law.

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.

Make no mistake: conversion therapy is not about ‘praying away the gay.’ It’s an emotional torture against our most innocent citizens: our children.

Transplant is a life-changing ‘experience. Organ donation transforms lives. It is torture for you, torment for you as an individual in need.

To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness, But life without meaning is the torture Of restlessness and vague desire-It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

A lot of my close friends are musicians and are consumed by the idea of death; their heads are like a torture chamber. I’m not like that – I don’t have death anxiety and I don’t think about it all the time.

I’m against torture. I’m also against terrorism.

If you have total freedom to design, you won’t get anything interesting. So I give myself restraints in order to kind of push myself through, to create something new. It’s the torture that I give myself, the pain and the struggle that I go through.

WikiLeaks exposed corruption, war crimes, torture and cover-ups. It showed that we were lied to about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; that the U.S. military had deliberately hidden information about systematic torture and civilian casualties, which were much higher than reported.

There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information – the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified.

By 2003, if you didn’t understand that the United States was inflicting torture on those deemed enemy combatants, you weren’t paying much attention.

There was no terrorism in the Middle East until Washington brought it there with invasions, bombings, and torture.

Torture produces unreliable evidence and therefore doesn’t achieve and protect anybody. Torture corrupts those who are doing the torturing.

Looking back, I didn’t have the patience to work in fashion. I like women so much, but I was never qualified to torture them in photo shoots. You have to be really tough and brutal.

Sometimes you do a sound installation, and the first day or two it is very exciting. Then you are hearing this every day for a month, and it becomes like a torture.

I mean, we sit around and we go, you know, ‘Torture doesn’t work.’ Well, it’s been around for 5,000 years. Most stuff that doesn’t work goes the way of the dodo pretty quick, like waterbeds and 8-tracks and things like that.

I think certain people like to torture me because they think I’ve had it easier than I actually have and they think: ‘Oh, she’s got this, she’s got that, she’s always had everything perfect,’ and it’s sooo not true.

My parents were angry, but they were relieved that I was in good condition. They had been afraid the Russians would torture me. They told me not to do it again!