Quotes and Sayings about Guilt
"He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections."
- Samuel Adams
(Related: Life, Country, Feeling, Man, Will)
"A god implants in mortal guilt whenever he wants utterly to confound a house."
- Aeschylus
(Related: God, Guilt)
"When we played softball, I'd steal second base, feel guilty and go back."
- Woody Allen
"More oftentimes than not, you're automatically guilty before innocent."
- Anthony Anderson
"When one person makes an accusation, check to be sure he himself is not the guilty one. Sometimes it is those whose case is weak who make the most clamour."
- Piers Anthony
"I don't want ever to be guilty of what my critics claim: doing formula without original elements."
- Piers Anthony
(Related: Formula, Want)
"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."
- Hannah Arendt
(Related: Crime, Discovery, Guilt, Nothing)
"Bosnia is under my skin. It's the place you cannot leave behind. I was obsessed by the nightmare of it all; there was this sense of guilt, and an anger that has become something much deeper over these last years."
- Paddy Ashdown
(Related: Anger, Guilt, Sense, Skin, Years)
"Well, I'm having a good time. Which makes me feel guilty too. How very English."
- David Attenborough
(Related: Time, English)
"Passion is the evil in adultery. If a man has no opportunity of living with another man's wife, but if it is obvious for some reason that he would like to do so, and would do so if he could, he is no less guilty than if he was caught in the act."
- Saint Augustine
(Related: Wife, Opportunity, Act, Adultery, Evil, Living, Man, Obvious, Passion, Reason)
"Repentant tears wash out the stain of guilt."
- Saint Aurelius Augustine
(Related: Guilt, Tears)
"Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery."
- Jane Austen
(Related: Guilt, Misery)
"A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over."
- Honore de Balzac
(Related: Wife)
"I've had lots of replies, we're into the double figures now. And the overall standard is very good. In fact I've been feeling a little guilty, because I haven't replied to anyone yet - it is something I will be doing."
- Peter Banks
(Related: Fact, Feeling, Now, Will)
"I call the discourse of power any discourse that engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient."
- Roland Barthes
(Related: Power, Blame, Guilt)
"You have been tried by twelve good men and true, not of your peers but as high above you as heaven is of hell, and they have said you are guilty."
- Roy Bean
(Related: Men, Heaven, Hell)
"Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself."
- Simone de Beauvoir
(Related: Truth, Duty, Guilt, Reward, Sense)
"Allowing children to show their guilt, show their grief, show their anger, takes the sting out of the situation."
- Martha Beck
(Related: Anger, Children, Grief, Guilt)
"It is better that ten guilty escape than one innocent suffer."
- William Blackstone
"How blunt are all the arrows of thy quiver in comparison with those of guilt."
- Robert Blair
(Related: Guilt)
"O Death, rock me asleep, bring me to quiet rest, let pass my weary guiltless ghost out of my careful breast."
- Anne Boleyn
(Related: Death, Quiet, Rest)
"Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving."
- Erma Bombeck
(Related: Giving)
"Parks said, he's guilty and that's the end of the story."
- Tommy Bond
(Related: End)
"I said to myself, where are we living? In the United States of America where you're innocent until proven guilty, or Nazi Germany with the Gestapo calling?"
- Tommy Bond
(Related: America, Germany, Living, states, United)
"Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety."
- Jorge Luis Borges
"Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them, must share the guilt for the dead."
- Omar N. Bradley
(Related: Guilt)
"I certainly have been guilty of trying to sweep things under the carpet."
- Kenneth Branagh
(Related: Trying)
"If the guilt of sin is so great that nothing can satisfy it but the blood of Jesus; and the filth of sin is so great that nothing can fetch out the stain thereof but the blood of Jesus, how great, how heinous, how sinful must the evil of sin be."
- William Throsby Bridges
(Related: Blood, Evil, Guilt, Nothing, Sin)
"If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends."
- Charlotte Bronte
(Related: Conscience, Friends, Guilt, World)
"The inspiration to write? Perhaps it's not so much inspiration, as a NEED to write. I get itchy and guilty and dissatisfied when I haven't written for a while. Ideas come to me and need to be written down."
- Eric Brown
(Related: Inspiration, Ideas)
"Trials are no longer about freeing the innocent, punishing the guilty, and making restitution to the injured. They have devolved into a contest over who will win."
- Tammy Bruce
(Related: Trials, Will)
"If I agree to dispose of any part of our land to the white people I would feel guilty of taking food away from our children's mouths, and I do not wish to be that mean."
- Sitting Bull
(Related: Food, People, Children, Land)
"I suffer from Irish-Catholic guilt. Guilt is a good reality check. It keeps that 'do what makes you happy' thing in check."
- Edward Burns
(Related: Guilt, Irish, Reality)
"Any government that supports, protects or harbours terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent and equally guilty of terrorist crimes."
- George W. Bush
(Related: Government, Murder)
"I'm a bit of a worrier, to an extreme. I'll crack a joke, then worry if I've offended someone - even when they're laughing. I have a guilt complex, always worrying."
- Sophia Bush
(Related: Extreme, Guilt, Worry)
"We will that all men know we blame not all the lords, nor all those that are about the king's person, nor all gentlemen nor yeomen, nor all men of law, nor all bishops, nor all priests, but all such as may be found guilty by just and true inquiry and by the law."
- Jack Cade
(Related: Men, Blame, Gentlemen, Law, May, Will)
"I hope and trust the infinite, the eternal, and merciful and loving God. I worship Him and feel no guilt in my heart before him for what I am going to do."
- Alex Campbell
(Related: Trust, God, Heart, Hope, Guilt, Infinite, Worship)
"A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession."
- Albert Camus
(Related: Art, Work, Confession, Conscience, Needs)
"He who is obsessed by death is made guilty by it."
- Elias Canetti
(Related: Death)
"Look, we know we screwed up when we were in the majority. We fell in love with power. We spent way too much money - especially on earmarks. There was too much corruption when we ran this place. We were guilty. And that's why we lost."
- Eric Cantor
(Related: Love, Money, Power, Corruption, Majority)
"Hollywood people are filled with guilt: white guilt, liberal guilt, money guilt. They feel bad that they're so rich, they feel they don't work that much for all that money - and they don't, for the amount of money they make."
- Drew Carey
(Related: Money, Work, People, Guilt, Hollywood, Liberal)
"The man of life upright has a guiltless heart, free from all dishonest deeds or thought of vanity."
- Thomas Carlyle
(Related: Life, Thought, Heart, Deeds, Man, Vanity)
"What I have in common with the character in 'Truman' is this incredible need to please people. I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started."
- Jim Carrey
(Related: Success, People, Character, Care, Guilt, Want)
"I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started."
- Jim Carrey
(Related: Success, Care, Guilt, Want)
"I refuse to feel guilty. I feel guilty about too much in my life but not about money. I went through periods when I had nothing, so somebody in my family has to get stinkin' wealthy."
- Jim Carrey
(Related: Family, Life, Money, Nothing)
"Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death."
- Coco Chanel
(Related: Death, Guilt)
"The guilty think all talk is of themselves."
- Geoffrey Chaucer
(Related: Talk)
"Rather leave the crime of the guilty unpunished than condemn the innocent."
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
(Related: Crime)
"The denominational world tries to pressure its members to focus on the birth of Christ, but in doing so layers of guilt are imposed, and competition gets complicated as one Christmas program tries to outdo the other."
- John Clayton
(Related: Christ, Christmas, Competition, Focus, Guilt, Pressure, World)
"Guilt: punishing yourself before God doesn't."
- Alan Cohen
(Related: God)
"One threatens the innocent who spares the guilty."
- Edward Coke
"Men tend to feel threatened; women tend to feel guilty."
- Edwin Louis Cole
(Related: Men, Women)
"One is often guilty by being too just."
- Pierre Corneille
(Related: Being)
"Glory, built on selfish principles, is shame and guilt."
- William Cowper
(Related: Glory, Guilt, Principles, Shame)
"I am having so much fun performing, I feel almost guilty. I think, my God, I hope no one comes and busts me for this."
- David Crosby
(Related: God, Hope, Fun)
"The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed, it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach."
- Aleister Crowley
(Related: Science, People, Conscience, Study, World)
"Part of the public horror of sexual irregularity so-called is due to the fact that everyone knows himself essentially guilty."
- Aleister Crowley
(Related: Fact, Horror, Public)
"I'm glad the truth is out. I'm glad everyone knows I'm innocent, not guilty."
- Puff Daddy
(Related: Truth)
"I'd get more applause than some because I was just seventeen. If they didn't clap at the end of my act I would limp off stage and boy would they feel guilty. They would all burst into tremendous applause as they saw this poor cripple kid walking off."
- Jim Dale
(Related: Act, Applause, End, Poor, Walking)
"I feel a little guilty only being an actor."
- Blythe Danner
(Related: Actor, Being)
"In this rat-race everybody's guilty till proved innocent!"
- Bette Davis
"I am frivolous. Then I feel guilty."
- Catherine Deneuve
"The defendant wants to hide the truth because he's generally guilty. The defense attorney's job is to make sure the jury does not arrive at that truth."
- Alan Dershowitz
(Related: Truth, Defense, Job, Jury)
"Guilt is a weird thing to me. I don't have a lot of it."
- Andy Dick
(Related: Guilt)
"To have guilt you've got to earn guilt, but sometimes when you earn it, you don't feel the guilt you ought to have. And that's what The Firebombing is about."
- James Dickey
(Related: Guilt)
"Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power."
- Joan Didion
(Related: Power, Americans, Possessions)
"December 25th has become guilt and obligation."
- Phil Donahue
(Related: December, Guilt, Obligation)
"I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years-or longer."
- Rita Dove
(Related: Day, Guilt, Years)
"And there isn't any way that one can get rid of the guilt of having a nice body by saying that one can serve society with it, because that would end up with oneself as what? There simply doesn't seem to be any moral place for flesh."
- Margaret Drabble
(Related: Society, Body, End, Guilt, Saying)
"We are 5 percent of the global population and consume a third of the total resources - on some level we should all feel guilty relative to the world."
- Julia Louis Dreyfus
(Related: Population, World)
"I walk around feeling a sort of existential guilt all the time; and honestly for me this house is a way of feeling less guilty about the universe."
- Julia Louis Dreyfus
(Related: Time, Feeling, Guilt, Universe)
"Guilt always hurries towards its complement, punishment; only there does its satisfaction lie."
- Lawrence Durrell
(Related: Lie, Guilt, Punishment, Satisfaction)
"It makes me feel guilty that anybody should have such a good time doing what they are supposed to do."
- Charles Eames
(Related: Time)
"Luther was guilty of two great crimes - he struck the Pope in his crown, and the monks in their belly."
- Desiderius Erasmus
"We are guilty for sending teams into foreign countries to advise them how to be like us."
- Arthur Erickson
(Related: Countries)
"The decision of such judges as Claudius and his Senate is worth very little in the question of a man's innocence or guilt; but the sentence was that Seneca should be banished to the island of Corsica."
- Frederic William Farrar
(Related: Decision, Guilt, Innocence, Judges, Man, Question, Senate, Worth)
"I gave away two dogs years ago because I felt guilty at not being able to give them the time and attention they deserved. I now regularly feed an army of squirrels and wild birds around our house."
- Mike Farrell
(Related: Time, Army, Attention, Being, Birds, Dogs, Now, Years)
"I find that people... very few people think that what they're doing is bad, and usually the people who think what they're doing is bad it has more to do with guilt."
- Jon Favreau
(Related: People, Guilt)
"If I leave my computer, I'm probably not going to get back for hours. If I take a few minutes to answer questions and go web surfing, then guilt kicks in and I get back to work."
- Raymond E. Feist
(Related: Work, Computer, Guilt, Questions)
"Guilt has very quick ears to an accusation."
- Henry Fielding
(Related: Guilt, Quick)
"And also they were absolutely brilliant in one way, you know: they knew how effective is not to punish somebody who is guilty; what Communist Party members could afford to do was mind-boggling: they could do practically anything they wanted - steal, you know, lie, whatever."
- Milos Forman
(Related: Lie, Mind, Party)
"The result has been that although few conservative Presbyterian churches actually worship in the Puritan way, the Puritan theology of worship remains the standard orthodoxy among them. This discrepancy sometimes leads to guilty consciences."
- John Frame
(Related: Churches, Conservative, Result, Theology, Worship)
"A thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will not be erased."
- Hans Frank
(Related: Germany, Guilt, Will, Years)
"Turn up your radio. Watch lots of telly and eat loads of choc. Feel guilty. Stay up all night. Learn everything in six hours that has taken you two years to compile. That's how I did it."
- Dawn French
(Related: Night, Years)
"Strictly speaking, every citizen above a certain level of income is guilty of some offense."
- Max Frisch
(Related: Income)
"If anyone has a conscience it's generally a guilty one."
- Max Frisch
(Related: Conscience)
"Total physical and mental inertia are highly agreeable, much more so than we allow ourselves to imagine. A beach not only permits such inertia but enforces it, thus neatly eliminating all problems of guilt. It is now the only place in our overly active world that does."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
(Related: Beach, Guilt, Now, Problems, World)
"I derive no pleasure from prosecuting a man, even though I know he's guilty; do you think I could sleep at night or look at myself in the mirror in the morning if I hounded an innocent man?"
- Jim Garrison
(Related: Man, Night, Pleasure, Sleep)
"When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray, what charm can soothe her melancholy, what art can wash her guilt away?"
- Oliver Goldsmith
(Related: Art, Men, Charm, Folly, Guilt, Melancholy, Woman)
"The most beautiful words in the English language are 'not guilty'."
- Maxim Gorky
(Related: English, Language, Words)
"I suppose all of us - we have the old Protestant work ethic of feeling guilty when you're not working, and getting a buzz from feeling like you're really busy. That's the reason to sort of carry on."
- Jonny Greenwood
(Related: Work, Feeling, Old, Reason, Work ethic)
"Food, love, career, and mothers, the four major guilt groups."
- Cathy Guisewite
(Related: Food, Love, Career, Guilt, Mothers)
"Wouldn't it be better to have a watertight law designed to catch the guilty, rather than a press release law designed to catch the headlines?"
- William Hague
(Related: Law, Press)
"My parents are really well intended, and I think their way of dealing with things is denial and guilt. Nobody wanted to talk about it. But all I did was blame myself."
- Teri Hatcher
(Related: Blame, Denial, Guilt, Parents, Talk)
"What we call real estate - the solid ground to build a house on - is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests."
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
(Related: Guilt, World)
"And here in Los Angeles, once again, I'm going to go down and be a witness. There's a guilty plea. I don't mind being on the witness stand, but I think they mind it a lot."
- Patty Hearst
(Related: Being, Mind)
"I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt."
- Ben Hecht
(Related: Wealth, Envy, Guilt, Man, Poor, Poverty)
"Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty."
- Lillian Hellman
(Related: Failure, Theater, Writing)
"Those who have experienced the most, have suffered so much that they have ceased to hate. Hate is more for those with a slightly guilty conscience, and who by chewing on old hate in times of peace wish to demonstrate how great they were during the war."
- Thor Heyerdahl
(Related: Peace, War, Conscience, Hate, Old)
"You can try to take sorrow and make it into something enduring, meaningful and beautiful. I always feel guilty that this is my job, that I get to do this."
- Alice Hoffman
(Related: Job, Sorrow)
"Guilt is the price we pay willingly for doing what we are going to do anyway."
- Isabelle Holland
(Related: Guilt)
"I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature."
- Sidney Hook
(Related: Aspirations, Capitalism, Literature, Socialism)
"I think while all mothers deal with feelings of guilt, working mothers are plagued by guilt on steroids!"
- Arianna Huffington
(Related: Feelings, Guilt, Mothers)
"I am not going to answer to this so-called court, out of respect for the truth and the will of the Iraqi people. I've said what I've said, and I'm not guilty."
- Saddam Hussein
(Related: Truth, People, Court, Respect, Will)
"I am not guilty, I am innocent."
- Saddam Hussein
"I have been guilty of wrong thinking."
- Anne Hutchinson
(Related: Thinking, Wrong)
"It is better to kill one hundred innocents than to let one guilty person go."
- Dolores Ibarruri
"Very few men imprisoned for economic crimes or even crimes of passion against the oppressor feel that they are really guilty."
- George Jackson
(Related: Men, Passion)
"The end of the trial and the 'not guilty' verdicts on all counts, clearing Michael of all charges, mean that he can now concentrate on the future and his art."
- LaToya Jackson
(Related: Art, End, Future, Now)
"In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren't credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out. Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets."
- P. D. James
(Related: People, Motives, Secrets, Today)
"It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape."
- Thomas Jefferson
(Related: Law)
"I don't feel guilty about expressing myself in French; nor do I feel that I am continuing the work of the colonizers."
- Tahar Ben Jelloun
(Related: Work)
"Besides that, I felt guilty. I thought for some reason... I was alive, and Buddy and those boys were dead, and I didn't know how, but somehow I'd caused it."
- Waylon Jennings
(Related: Thought, Boys, Reason)
"It's sad that the most glorious of sexual experiences can make us feel guilty, ashamed, embarrassed, and abnormal."
- Sue Johanson
"I don't believe in guilt, I believe in living on impulse as long as you never intentionally hurt another person, and don't judge people in your life. I think you should live completely free."
- Angelina Jolie
(Related: Life, People, Guilt, Hurt, Living)
"The action carries a sense of incompleteness and frustration, but not of guilt. Victorious living does not mean perfect living in the sense of living without flaw, but it does mean adequate living, and that can be consistent with many mistakes."
- E. Stanley Jones
(Related: Action, Frustration, Guilt, Living, Mistakes, Sense)
"But I don't believe in guilt by association."
- Marion Jones
(Related: Guilt)
"Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man."
- Erica Jong
(Related: Man, Woman)
"Rather let the crime of the guilty go unpunished than condemn the innocent."
- Justinian I
(Related: Crime)
"This is his first punishment, that by the verdict of his own heart no guilty man is acquitted."
- Juvenal
(Related: Heart, First, Man, Punishment)
"It's incredible when I'm out in these towns. I have people telling me they were waiting for hours just to meet me and get my autograph. I feel so guilty. I always feel like I have to give them more than just Kato Kaelin."
- Kato Kaelin
(Related: People, Waiting)
"I believe in my heart Simpson is guilty."
- Kato Kaelin
(Related: Heart)
"My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted."
- Franz Kafka
(Related: Guilt)
"We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt."
- Franz Kafka
(Related: Life, Knowledge, Guilt, State)
"In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so."
- Immanuel Kant
(Related: Ethics, Rights, Law, Man)
"The extent of one man's guilt may be defined by how much of it is experienced by the party he injured."
- Ryszard Kapuscinski
(Related: Guilt, Man, May, Party)
"The capture of Saddam Hussein has proven to the bad ones, to the guilty ones, to the sinful ones that they cannot run forever. Sooner or later, the other criminals will also be found from their hideouts."
- Hamid Karzai
(Related: Will)
"Hard though it may be to accept, remember that guilt is sometimes a friendly internal voice reminding you that you're messing up."
- Marge Kennedy
(Related: Guilt, May, Voice)
"Hang me if I'm guilty."
- Salman Khan
"Americans worship creativity the way they worship physical beauty - as a way of enjoying elitism without guilt: God did it."
- Florence King
(Related: Beauty, God, Creativity, Americans, Worship)
"The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Related: Guilt, Man, Needs)
"If I had undertaken the practical direction of military operations, and anything went amiss, I feared that my conscience would torture me, as guilty of the fall of my country, as I had not been familiar with military tactics."
- Lajos Kossuth
(Related: Conscience, Country, Direction, Military)
"Skating takes up 70 percent of my time, school about 25 percent. Having fun and talking to my friends, 5 percent. It's hard. I envy other kids a lot of things, but I get a guilt trip when I'm not training."
- Michelle Kwan
(Related: Time, Envy, Friends, Fun, Guilt, Kids, School, Talking, Training)
"Mars, when guilty of homicide, and set free from the charge of murder by the Athenians through favour, lest he should appear to be too fierce and savage, committed adultery with Venus."
- Lactantius
(Related: Adultery, Murder)
"True guilt is guilt at the obligation one owes to oneself to be oneself. False guilt is guilt felt at not being what other people feel one ought to be or assume that one is."
- R. D. Laing
(Related: People, Being, Guilt, Obligation)
"I don't have any gnawing guilt over contributing to any unhappiness suffered by my husbands. They were as much to blame as I was."
- Hedy Lamarr
(Related: Blame, Guilt, Husbands, Unhappiness)
"I am tortured when I am away from my family, from my children. I am horribly guilt-ridden."
- Jessica Lange
(Related: Family, Children, Guilt)
"There's no regret. You can't regret. I mean, I've felt regret but I've also refused to allow regret to sow a seed and live in me because I don't believe it. You feel it, it's like guilt, it's like jealousy, it's like all those horrible things. You've just got to snip them and get them out, because they're no good."
- Jude Law
(Related: Guilt, Jealousy, Regret)
"I'm happiest at home hanging out with the kids... Having a family has been my saving grace because I don't work back to back on anything or I'd drive myself to an early grave with guilt and worry for my family, whom I'd never see."
- Jude Law
(Related: Family, Home, Work, Grace, Grave, Guilt, Kids, Worry)
"I shall support the law, for the law gentlemen, is the firm and solid basis of civil society, the guardian of liberty, the protection of the innocent, the terror of the guilty, and the scourge of the wicked."
- Charles Lawrence
(Related: Society, Gentlemen, Law, Liberty, Protection, Support, Terror)
"Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn't enough and you have to go and get shot or something."
- John Lennon
(Related: Love, Peace, Being, Guilt, Thinking)
"When a person is found less guilty than he is suspected, he is concluded more innocent than he really is."
- Charlotte Lennox
"I mean, I felt terrible. And in the beginning, I mean, I was completely devastated. I mean, can you imagine the kind of guilt that you would feel, and the responsibility?"
- Monica Lewinsky
(Related: Beginning, Guilt, Responsibility)
"Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ."
- C. S. Lewis
(Related: Faith, People, Christ, Passion)
"If you commit a crime, you're guilty."
- Rush Limbaugh
(Related: Crime)
"It is better that a guilty man should not be brought to trial than that he should be acquitted."
- Titus Livius
(Related: Man)
"With a parent, it's always guilt. You want to be there, but you kind of also want to be here."
- Heather Locklear
(Related: Guilt, Want)
"Though the dungeon, the scourge, and the executioner be absent, the guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows."
- Lucretius
(Related: Mind)
"My mother should have been Jewish. She could have taught a class on how to induce guilt."
- Lorna Luft
(Related: Mother, Class, Guilt)
"There's a lot of money with a lot of big law firms that have a tremendous amount at stake by getting the right language to convince the right jury that my client is either innocent or that the opposition is guilty."
- Frank Luntz
(Related: Money, Jury, Language, Law, Opposition, Right)
"Darwin himself, in his day, was unable to fight free of the theoretical errors of which he was guilty. It was the classics of Marxism that revealed those errors and pointed them out."
- Trofim Lysenko
(Related: Day, Errors, Fight, Marxism)
"The classics of Marxism, while fully appreciating the significance of the Darwinian theory, pointed out the errors of which Darwin was guilty. Darwin's theory, though unquestionably materialist in its main features, is not free from some serious errors."
- Trofim Lysenko
(Related: Errors, Marxism, Theory)
"We have no choice but to be guilty. God is unthinkable if we are innocent."
- Archibald MacLeish
(Related: God, Choice)
"Canon law itself says for one case of guilt, a priest can be dismissed from the clerical state. One."
- Roger Mahony
(Related: Guilt, Law, State)
"False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing."
- Joseph De Maistre
(Related: Men, Money, People, Crime, First, Opinions)
"The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses."
- Malcom X
(Related: Power, Control, Earth, Media)
"Just because you're convicted in a court room doesn't mean you're guilty of something."
- Charles Manson
(Related: Court)
"One is guilty of all abjection that one does not help to relieve."
- Jose Marti
(Related: Help)
"For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society?"
- Tim Matheson
(Related: Society, American, Blame)
"You will put on a dress of guilt and shoes with broken high ideals."
- Roger McGough
(Related: Dress, Guilt, Ideals, Will)
"I think every parent, every generation has wanted their children to do better and have a higher standard of living. But I think there's too much guilt."
- Phil McGraw
(Related: Children, Guilt, Living)
"Guilt is anger directed at ourselves - at what we did or did not do. Resentment is anger directed at others - at what they did or did not do."
- Peter McWilliams
(Related: Anger, Guilt, Resentment)
"The treason of which I stand convicted loses all its guilt, has been sanctified as a duty, and will be ennobled as a sacrifice."
- Thomas Francis Meagher
(Related: Sacrifice, Duty, Guilt, Treason, Will)
"A jury of my countrymen, it is true, have found me guilty of the crime of which I stood indicted. For this I entertain not the slightest feeling of resentment towards them."
- Thomas Francis Meagher
(Related: Crime, Feeling, Jury, Resentment)
"It's great to be recognized when I'm looking for a table at a crowded restaurant, but I still don't put it to best use. I'm such a lump. I won't cut the line. It's my Catholic guilt. I gotta get used to it."
- Christopher Meloni
(Related: Guilt)
"'Project Runway' was my guilty pleasure while my son was napping or nursing."
- Debra Messing
(Related: Son, Pleasure)
"What is guilt? Guilt is the pledge drive constantly hammering in our heads that keeps us from fully enjoying the show. Guilt is the reason they put the articles in Playboy."
- Dennis Miller
(Related: Guilt, Reason)
"Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but guilt is simply God's way of letting you know that you're having too good a time."
- Dennis Miller
(Related: Time, God, Guilt, Now, Want)
"Sin, guilt, neurosis; they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge."
- Henry Miller
(Related: Knowledge, Guilt, Neurosis, Sin)
"You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty."
- Jessica Mitford
(Related: Change, May, World)
"I don't feel guilt. Whatever I wish to do, I do."
- Jeanne Moreau
(Related: Guilt)
"With representation there to do the speaking, the guilty are suddenly given the freedom that comes with hiding behind the fact that they never said that - in fact, they never said anything!"
- Michael Musto
(Related: Fact, Freedom)
"My creativity and my political work are linked. I don't do this work out of guilt or out of responsibility."
- Holly Near
(Related: Work, Creativity, Guilt, Responsibility)
"So I went in front of the judge, and I had my St. Jude prayer book in my pocket and my St. Jude medal. And I'm standing there and that judge said I was found guilty, so he sentenced me to what the law prescribed: one to 14 years."
- Aaron Neville
(Related: Law, Prayer, Years)
"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."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
(Related: Guilt, Judges, Witches)
"I cannot show remorse because I do not believe I am guilty."
- Lyn Nofziger
(Related: Remorse)
"The Supreme Court of the United States is hereby commanded to try Andrew Johnson for usurpation of our Imperial authority and prerogatives, and if found guilty, behead him or send him here to black the Emperor's boots."
- Joshua A. Norton
(Related: Authority, Court, states, United)
"Examples one finds in the philosophical literature are somebody who's seen the trial of a child of theirs, where they're being proved guilty of some crime that would drive the parent into a depression, maybe a suicidal depression."
- Robert Nozick
(Related: Being, Crime, Depression, Literature)
"I'm an Irish Catholic and I have a long iceberg of guilt."
- Edna O'Brien
(Related: Guilt, Irish)
"Dan Rather is guilty of not being skeptical enough about a story that was politically loaded."
- Bill O'Reilly
(Related: Being)
"Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent."
- George Orwell
(Related: Saints)
"But I think I can sincerely declare that I cheerfully submit myself to every odious name for conscience' sake; and from my soul I despise all those whose guilt, malice, or folly has made them my foes."
- James Otis
(Related: Soul, Conscience, Folly, Guilt, Malice, Name)
"Alas! how difficult it is not to betray one's guilt by one's looks."
- Ovid
(Related: Guilt)
"That's what noir feels like to me. It feels like some kind of recurring dream, with very strong archetypes operating. You know, the guilty girl being pursued, falling, all kinds of stuff that we see in our dreams all the time."
- Brian De Palma
(Related: Dreams, Time, Being)
"In all secrets there is a kind of guilt, however beautiful or joyful they may be, or for what good end they may be set to serve. Secrecy means evasion, and evasion means a problem to the moral mind."
- Gilbert Parker
(Related: End, Guilt, May, Mind, Secrecy, Secrets)
"Any father whose son raises his hand against him is guilty of having produced a son who raised his hand against him."
- Charles Peguy
(Related: Father, Son)
"They still don't want to admit to the world that this isn't the best and the fairest and most equal justice system. And that they are guilty of railroading people into jail. They don't want to, or never will, admit these things."
- Leonard Peltier
(Related: People, Justice, Want, Will, World)
"Foreman told Ray to plead guilty and he'd then give his brother $500, if Ray didn't cause any problems at the guilty plea hearing, and he could take that $500 and hire a lawyer to set aside the plea. Foreman actually put that in writing."
- William Pepper
(Related: Brother, Cause, Hearing, Problems, Writing)
"I felt guilty throughout the whole time, but I was seduced. The power of these drugs, sex, power, and money, was extremely strong for me."
- John Perkins
(Related: Power, Money, Time, Sex, Drugs)
"The price that one pays for refusing to act on the truth as one sees it, is to be led to believe untruth to avoid guilt."
- Kenneth L. Pike
(Related: Truth, Act, Guilt)
"Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt."
- Titus Maccius Plautus
(Related: Guilt, Man, Mind, Nothing)
"Loomis has always felt himself responsible for the fact that he did not stop Michael when he first murdered his sister, and so he's got that guilt to live with."
- Donald Pleasence
(Related: Sister, Fact, First, Guilt)
"A sane mind should not be guilty of a logical fallacy, yet there are very fine minds incapable of following mathematical demonstrations."
- Henri Poincare
(Related: Mind)
"There is no point trying to figure out who is guilty or not at un-balancing the planet. I think we need to figure out and solve the problems together and not isolate from each other."
- Sarah Polley
(Related: Problems, Trying)
"Journalists belong in the gutter because that is where the ruling classes throw their guilty secrets."
- Gerald Priestland
(Related: Secrets)
"How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit."
- V. S. Pritchett
(Related: Guilt)
"We all wish we could be in more than one place at the same time. People with families feel guilty all the time-if we spend too much time with our family, we feel we're not working hard enough."
- Harold Ramis
(Related: Time, Family, People)
"The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt."
- Ayn Rand
(Related: Guilt)
"We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions."
- Ronald Reagan
(Related: Society, Time, Idea, Actions, American, Law)
"I had concluded when I was the prosecutor that I would vote against the death penalty if I were in the legislature but that I could ask for it when I was satisfied as to guilt."
- Janet Reno
(Related: Death, Guilt, Vote)
"I think your program has to reflect what your basic feelings are. I'll plead guilty to that."
- Frank Reynolds
(Related: Feelings)
"It was the king's army, the king's people, the king's taxes; and he who questioned the propriety of the royal prerogative of taking from his people without return or accounting, was reckoned, and felt himself to be, a criminal, guilty of the highest crime of disloyalty."
- John Buchanan Robinson
(Related: People, Army, Crime, Taxes)
"Innocence does not find near so much protection as guilt."
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
(Related: Guilt, Innocence, Protection)
"When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer "Present" or "Not guilty.""
- Theodore Roosevelt
(Related: Senate, Senators)
"Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?"
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(Related: Life, Fire, Man, Order, Right, Risk, Suicide)
"Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing."
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(Related: Blushes, Innocence, Nothing)
"Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young."
- J. K. Rowling
(Related: Age, Men, Forget, Old, Youth)
"Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error: error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die. What effect was race having? What effect was poverty having?"
- George Ryan
(Related: Effect, Error, Guilt, Poverty, Race)
"I have come to the conclusion that none of us in our generation feels as guilty about sin as we should or as our forefathers did."
- Francis Schaeffer
(Related: Sin)
"It is criminal to steal a purse, daring to steal a fortune, a mark of greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt increases."
- Friedrich Schiller
(Related: Greatness, Blame, Fortune, Guilt)
"When you don't have kids and you're in a Catholic family - one of my sisters had 10 children in 11 years - she's part rabbit - you feel kind of guilty about that. So, I want to do things for other people's children."
- Marge Schott
(Related: Family, People, Children, Kids, Sisters, Want, Years)
"Why should the composer be more guilty than the poet who warms to fantasy by a strange flame, making an idea that inspires him the subject of his own very different treatment?"
- Franz Schubert
(Related: Idea, Fantasy, Treatment)
"The race of mankind would perish did they cease to aid each other. We cannot exist without mutual help. All therefore that need aid have a right to ask it from their fellow-men; and no one who has the power of granting can refuse it without guilt."
- Walter Scott
(Related: Power, Guilt, Help, Mankind, Race, Right)
"Which to this day is a source of enormous guilt, because I left with three classes to go in the business school to sign a contract with 20th Century Fox."
- Tom Selleck
(Related: Business, Day, Guilt, School)
"Every guilty person is his own hangman."
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt."
- Anna Sewell
(Related: Power, Cruelty, Doctrine, Guilt, Nothing, Wrong)
"Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt."
- George Sewell
(Related: Fear, Conscience, Tax, Guilt)
"Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind."
- William Shakespeare
(Related: Mind, Suspicion)
"The Peace Corps is guilty of enthusiasm and a crusading spirit. But we're not apologetic about it."
- Sargent Shriver
(Related: Peace, Enthusiasm, Spirit)
"I'm absolutely, l00 percent, not guilty."
- O. J. Simpson
"But quite honestly I can't help being a passionate football supporter. If that's my sin, I'm guilty."
- Delia Smith
(Related: Being, Football, Help, Sin)
"God cannot approve of a system of servitude, in which the master is guilty of assuming absolute power - of assuming God's place and relation towards his fellow-men."
- Gerrit Smith
(Related: Power, God)
"You have to be reasonable with yourself and not feel guilty when things aren't perfect."
- Jaclyn Smith
"Victims suggest innocence. And innocence, by the inexorable logic that governs all relational terms, suggests guilt."
- Susan Sontag
(Related: Guilt, Innocence, Logic, Victims)
"I'm not doing my philanthropic work, out of any kind of guilt, or any need to create good public relations. I'm doing it because I can afford to do it, and I believe in it."
- George Soros
(Related: Work, Guilt, Public)
"I had a Christian upbringing - it was all about sin and guilt. I was very happy just kissing people. I was like the make-out queen - not even second base."
- Mira Sorvino
(Related: People, Christian, Guilt, Kissing, Queen)
"Guilt upon the conscience, like rust upon iron, both defiles and consumes it, gnawing and creeping into it, as that does which at last eats out the very heart and substance of the metal."
- Bishop Robert South
(Related: Heart, Conscience, Guilt)
"I really feel kind of guilty spending 80 million dollars. People are starving in the world."
- Penelope Spheeris
(Related: People, World)
"I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?"
- John Steinbeck
(Related: Life, Guilt, Sense)
"During that first year, I felt guilty that my wife was out working bringing in all our income, while I was at home playing on the computer, so I made myself treat writing like a job."
- George Stephen
(Related: Home, Wife, Computer, First, Income, Job, Writing)
"I am guilty of asking the Senate for pork and proud of the Senate for giving it to me."
- Ted Stevens
(Related: Giving, Senate)
"I'm guilty of extraordinary naivete, I suppose. But it's a naivete that I really don't want to abandon, not even now."
- Jock Sturges
(Related: Now, Want)
"In fact, I don't believe I'm guilty of any crimes, but I've always been drawn to and fascinated by physical, sexual and psychological change, and there's an erotic aspect to that."
- Jock Sturges
(Related: Change, Fact)
"The judge is found guilty when a criminal is acquitted."
- Publilius Syrus
"Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility."
- Thomas Szasz
(Related: Men, Guilt, Mind, Now, Punishment, Responsibility)
"A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective."
- Edward Teller
(Related: Fact)
"Many working mothers feel guilty about not being at home. And when they are there, they wish it could be perfect. This pressure to make every minute happy puts working parents in a bind when it comes to setting limits and modifying behavior."
- Cathy Rindner Tempelsman
(Related: Home, Behavior, Being, Limits, Mothers, Parents, Pressure)
"In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity."
- Hunter S. Thompson
(Related: Society, Crime, Sin, Stupidity, World)
"Zac Efron would make us feel guilty for eating big dinners. He'd say, "Do you really want to eat those carbs?" It was like, "Thanks a lot!""
- Ashley Tisdale
(Related: Eating, Want)
"We have made drugs an Olympic event. It receives most of the coverage at the Games and even the suspicion of guilt can ruin a reputation for life."
- Bill Toomey
(Related: Life, Drugs, Games, Guilt, Reputation, Ruin, Suspicion)
"The fame and reputation part came later, and never was much of a motivator, although it did enable me to work without feeling guilty about neglecting my studies."
- Linus Torvalds
(Related: Work, Fame, Feeling, Reputation)
"To have the truth in your possession you can be found guilty, sentenced to death."
- Peter Tosh
(Related: Death, Truth, Possession)
"The guilt of newborns is immense."
- Georg Trakl
(Related: Guilt)
"I wanted to show a normal young girl whose only difference was that she behaved in the way a boy might, without any sense of guilt on a moral or sexual level."
- Roger Vadim
(Related: Difference, Guilt, Sense)
"I shall strive not to be guilty of adding any fuel to the flames of hatred and passion which, if continued to be fed, promise to burn up whatever is left by the war of decent human feeling in Europe."
- Eamon de Valera
(Related: War, Europe, Feeling, Hatred, Passion, Promise)
"Here, I am looking for a document issued by a public attorney. I don't find. He is accused by the political leaders of the coalition, by his enemies, who said that he is guilty. That he deserves to be killed."
- Jacques Verges
(Related: Enemies, Leaders, Political leaders, Public)
"What upset me the most was not that I would die, but that I was letting down my parents. I felt very guilty for chasing this dream career of mine, at the expense of my parents."
- Linda Vester
(Related: Dream, Career, Parents)
"Most of modern rock and roll is a product of guilt."
- Don Van Vliet
(Related: Guilt)
"Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do."
- Voltaire
(Related: Man)
"It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one."
- Voltaire
(Related: Man, Risk)
"There is no such thing as collective guilt."
- Kurt Waldheim
(Related: Guilt)
"One of the advantages of appearing in such a play is that you begin to understand it properly, I feel Ophelia's tragedy was that she had been so used by everybody and felt that she bore a great burden of guilt."
- Lalla Ward
(Related: Burden, Guilt, Play, Tragedy)
"Public emergencies may require the hand of severity to fall heavily on those who are not personally guilty, but compassion prompts, and ever urges to milder methods."
- Mercy Otis Warren
(Related: Compassion, May, Public)
"No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now."
- Alan Watts
(Related: Love, Work, Heart, Fear, Future, Guilt, Living, Now, Will)
"My government will be open. Anyone found guilty of corruption will be dealt with in accordance with the law. If you are corrupt you will have to hang your boots."
- George Weah
(Related: Government, Corruption, Law, Open, Will)
"All of us, whether guilty or not, whether old or young, must accept the past. It is not a case of coming to terms with the past. That is not possible. It cannot be subsequently modified or undone."
- Richard von Weizsaecker
(Related: Old, Past)
"A guilty conscience is the mother of invention."
- Carolyn Wells
(Related: Mother, Conscience, Invention)
"We know that we are not collectively guilty, so how can we accuse any other nation, no matter what some of its people have done, of being collectively guilty?"
- Simon Wiesenthal
(Related: People, Being, Nation)
"I watched the entire O.J. Simpson trial, and he was guilty."
- Connie Willis
"The innocence that feels no risk and is taught no caution, is more vulnerable than guilt, and oftener assailed."
- Nathaniel Parker Willis
(Related: Caution, Guilt, Innocence, Risk)
"I saw my parents as gods whose every wish must be obeyed or I would suffer the penalty of anguish and guilt."
- Natalie Wood
(Related: Gods, Guilt, Parents)
"'m really proud of it. To me, it's a movie about character behavior and the pecking order of the pack, as well as the central character's massive survival guilt."
- Dwight Yoakam
(Related: Character, Survival, Behavior, Guilt, Order)
"No one who's white thinks he's innocent. No one who's black thinks he's guilty."
- Andrew Young
"I don't like war. I particularly don't like the celebration of war, which I think the administration is a little bit guilty of."
- Neil Young
(Related: War)
"Now, of course, the great thing about the solar system as a frontier is that there are no Indians, so you can have all the glory of the myth of the American westward expansion without any of the guilt."
- Sarah Zettel
(Related: American, Glory, Guilt, Myth, Now)