Bullying quotes
384 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside bullying — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"You should be nicer to him,' a schoolmate had once said to me of some awfully ill-favored boy. 'He has no friends.' This, I realized with a pang of pity that I can still remember, was only true as long as everybody agreed to it."
"I'm very sad about Mitch McConnell probably getting to be Senate majority leader, if only for two years. To me, he is just everything that is wrong with the world, a bullying obstructionist blowhard liar (not to put too fine a point on it)."
"If they don't like you for being yourself, be yourself even more."
"A bully is playing a game, one that he or she enjoys and needs. You're welcome to play this game if it makes you happy, but for most people, it will make you miserable."
"Not everyone has been a bully or the victim of bullies, but everyone has seen bullying, and seeing it, has responded to it by joining in or objecting, by laughing or keeping silent, by feeling disgusted or feeling interested."
"Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant."
"In fact, my courage and my bravery at a young age was the thing I was bullied for, a kind of 'Who do you think you are?'"
"Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts."
"I sent my ex-husband a bully card: You held hate in one heart and spoke niceties with the other, you laid warm hands upon me in public and wounded me in private, your noble face hid your filthy ways, and your sorrow was but laughter."
"Things will get easier, people's minds will change, and you should be alive to see it."
"I always try to be myself. Ever since I was an introverted kid, I'd get on stage and be able to break out of my shell."
"I used to think I had no will to power. Now I perceive that I vented it on thoughts, rather than people. Conquering an unknown province of knowledge. Getting the better of a problem. Forcing ideas to associate or come apart. Bullying recalcitrant words to assume a certain pattern. All the fun of being a dictator without any risks and responsibilities."
"In his play depicting the Salem Witch Trials, the author illustrates profound psychological bullying. The ringleader of young girls suspected of unsavory conduct, frightens her friends into silence by warning: Now, look you; All of you. We danced. And Tituba conjured Ruth Putnam's dead sisters, and that was all. ... Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night, and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you."
"Far off, men swell, bully, and threaten; bring them hand to hand, and they are feeble folk."
"I abhor unjust war. I abhor injustice and bullying by the strong at the expense of the weak, whether among nations or individuals. I abhor violence and bloodshed. I believe that war should never be resorted to when, or so long as, it is honorably possible to avoid it. I respect all men and women who from high motives and with sanity and self-respect do all they can to avert war. I advocate preparation for war in order to avert war; and I should never advocate war unless it were the only alternative to dishonor."
"There is one regard in which bullies show real perception when compared with their victims; it is their silent good-natured pleasure of the moment."
"There really is no difference between the bully and the victim."
"He was a hero to his valet, who bullied him, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn. Only England could have produced him, and he always said that the country was going to the dogs. His principles were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices."
"Everybody deserves fair treatment, equal treatment in the eyes of the law and the state. And that includes gays, lesbians, transgender persons. I am not a fan of discrimination and bullying of anybody on the basis of race, on the basis of religion, on the basis of sexual orientation or gender. This is actually part and parcel of the agenda that's also going to be front and centre, and that is how are we treating women and girls."
"It doesn't prove anything except that you're bullying us. Which, as I recall, is a sign of cowardice."
