Cutting quotes
5.2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside cutting — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Whatever the source of emotion that drives me to create, I want to give it a form which has some connection with the visible world, even if it is only to wage war on that world....I want my paintings to be able to defend themselves to resist the invader, just as though there were razor blades on all surfaces so no one could touch them without cutting his hands."
"There is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and he wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on."
"The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head."
"I have discovered, passionate grief does not link us with the dead but cuts us off from them. This becomes clearer and clearer. It is just at those moments when I feel least sorrow - getting into my morning bath is usually one of them - that H. rushes upon my mind in her full reality, her otherness. Not, as in my worst moments, all foreshortened and patheticized and solemnized by my miseries, but as she is in her own right. This is good and tonic."
"I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class."
"Keep your tax-cutting, greedy hands off our medicare"
"Sense is our helmet, wit is but the plume; The plume exposes, 'tis our helmet saves. Sense is the diamond, weighty, solid, sound; When cut by wit, it casts a brighter beam; Yet, wit apart, it is a diamond still."
"The President's policy proposal, known as 'chained CPI,' would re-calculate the cost of living for Social Security beneficiaries. That new number won't keep up with inflation on things like food and health care -- the basics that we need to live. In short, 'chained CPI' is just a fancy way to say 'cut benefits for seniors, the permanently disabled, and orphans.'"
"And we certainly don't have full conversations on cellphones. You know? Usually the reception is so bad, but it's only bad on your side. The person talking to you has no clue. They're just rambling on and on. You've got your finger jammed in your ear, you're shushing people on the streets. You're ducked behind a dumpster so you can hear about your friend's new hair cut. What about the bangs are they shorter?! Are the bangs shorter?! The bangs!"
"Everything that I think that I need to do, is all in order to propel me to some place, that when I get there I think I will be happier. So, everything that I am doing, no matter what it is, all of my lists of rights and wrongs, are all about me getting to a manifestation, that I believe I will then be happier... So why don't I just take the short cut and just be happy?"
"You don't wanna go eggin' him on. It'll never be my chair that your on, crown so tight that it cuts off circulation to the brain no oxygen. Other words there's no heir to the throne."
"Truly world-class firms are always examining their business processes and continuously seeking solutions to improve in key areas, such as lead time reduction, cost cutting, exceeding customer expectations, streamlining processes, shortening time to market for new products, and managing the global operation."
"In [family snapshots] the flow of profane time has been stopped and a sacred interval of self-conscious revelation has been cut from it by the edge of the picture frame and the light of the sun or the flash."
"We need nearly every department, with the exception of police, fire and rescue, to look at what they can cut. Maybe there are some projects we need to put on hold."
"[GEICO] got to thinking that, because they were making a lot of money, they knew everything. And they suffered huge losses. All they had to do was to cut out all the folly and go back to the perfectly wonderful business that was lying there."
"The next time someone tells you we can trim the budget by cutting aid, I hope you will ask whether it will come at the cost of more people dying."
"To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today."
"For a moment, or a second, the pinched expressions of the cynical, world-weary, throat-cutting, miserable bastards we've all had to become disappears, when we're confronted with something as simple as a plate of food."
"An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes."
"No man may initiate the use of physical force against others. No man-or group or society or government-has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man. Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense."
