Theodore Roosevelt
Politician, Author
"When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not guilty.'"
Guilt quotes
Guilt
803 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Che Guevara
Revolutionary, Guerrilla Leader
"To execute a man we don't need proof of his guilt. We only need proof that it's necessary to execute him. It's that simple."
Lucy Stone
Abolitionist, Women's Rights Advocate
"If, while I hear the wild shriek of the slave mother robbed of her little ones, I do not open my mouth, am I not guilty?"
Alan Cohen
Author
"Guilt: punishing yourself before God doesn't."
William Shakespeare
Playwright, Poet
"All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand! Oh, oh, oh!"
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside guilt — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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Guilt quotes (page 1 of 41)
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"Maybe there's more we all could have done, but we just have to let the guilt remind us to do better next time."
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"On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean."
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"So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt."
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"I am haunted by the demon of error - error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die."
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"When a nation has allowed itself to fall under a tyrannical regime, it cannot be absolved from the faults due to the guilt of that regime."
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"Shine without guilt. Modesty was invented by the mediocres who think you should be the same as them."
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"True redemption is...when guilt leads to good."
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"Pack your bags, we're going on a guilt trip!"
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"Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing."
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"We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin."
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"But I have my life, I’m living it. It’s twisted, exhausting, uncertain, and full of guilt, but nonetheless, there’s something there."
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"I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed."
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"Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt."
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"I am in blood Stepp'd in so far, that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er."
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"Say "NO" without guilt. Say "YES" without fear."
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"where everybody is guilty, nobody is."
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"Whoever shall now contend that it is unjust to put heretics and blasphemers to death will knowingly and willingly incur their very guilt."
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"we are human beings, we are born full of guilt; we feel terrified when happiness becomes a real possibility."
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"I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?"
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"A guilty conscience is the mother of invention."
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