Quotes About Abuse

To mis-quote is the very foundation of original style. The success of most writers is almost entirely due to continuous and courageous abuse of familiar misquotation.

The will of the nation is one of those expressions which have been most profusely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age.

The abuse of symbolism is like the abuse of food or drink: it makes people ill, and so their reactions become deranged.

He knew exactly how to hit a woman, so that the marks hardly showed. He knew how to kiss her, too, so that her heart began to race and she'd start to think forgiveness with every breath. It's amazing the places that love will carry you. It's astounding to discover just how far you're willing to go.

She never told anyone what he did to her on a nightly basis because she was afraid of him, but also because she was worth nothing to herself.

To forget and to repress would be a good solution if there were no more to it than that. But repressed pain blocks emotional life and leads to physical symptoms. And the worst thing is that although the feelings of the abused child have been silenced at the point of origin, that is, in the presence of those who caused the pain, they find their voice when the battered child has children of his own.

In every adult who has suffered abuse as a child lies dormant that small child's fear of punishment at the hands of the parents if he or she should dare to rebel against their behavior. But it will lie dormant only as long as that fear remains unconscious. Once consciously experienced, it will dissolve in the course of time.

Child abuse in all its forms has always been with us and it is still widespread today. But only recently have the victims started realizing what has been done to them and talking to other people about it. Subjects rarely touched on before are moving into the foreground of discussion, a discussion which opens up new perspectives of greater fulfillment in life for very many people.

It is very difficult for people to believe the simple fact that every persecutor was once a victim. Yet it should be very obvious that someone who was allowed to feel free and strong from childhood does not have the need to humiliate another person.

The reason why parents mistreat their children has less to do with character and temperament than with the fact that they too were mistreated and were not permitted to defend themselves.

Love and cruelty are mutually exclusive. No one ever slaps a child out of love but rather because in similar situations, when one was defenseless, one was slapped and then compelled to interpret it as a sign of love.

The cruelty of individuals is not something imposed on them by some mysterious agency but by their parents and other people involved in their upbringing. It takes shape in the brain of a child exposed to cruelty.

And this succeeded so completely because children want to love their parents and prefer not to look the truth in the face. The truth is too awful for these children to bear, so they avert their eyes. But the body remembers everything, and as adults those children unconsciously and automatically rehearse their parents' sadism on their own children, on their subjects or employees, on everyone dependent on them.

If I as a helpless child was abused and am not allowed to see this, I will abuse other helpless creatures without realizing what I am doing. I will also refuse to read books on abuse, or I won't want to understand them because, if I did, I would have to feel the tragedy of my childhood and the pain of having been misled at such an early age.

This is an astounding statement, because I know of literally no one who suffers from psychic symptoms and seeks treatment for them without having at least been beaten and humiliated in childhood.

The feminist movement will forfeit none of its strength if it finally admits that mothers also abuse their children. Only the truth, even the most uncomfortable, endows a movement with the strength to change society, not the denial of the truth.

Today, I believe that to mistreat children as I was mistreated—to punish them, to forbid them to weep, to speak, to defend themselves, to revolt against brutal treatment—is the greatest crime that there is. It is a crime to discipline children so much that they become blind, dumb, lifeless and then, later, to deny the whole thing. No wonder such children would later as doctors rather subject others to electroshock treatment than confront the repressed misery of their past.

Empathizing with a child's unhappy beginnings does not imply exoneration of the cruel acts he later commits. (This is as true for Alois Hitler as it is for Adolf.)

Those who persecute others are warding of knowledge of their own fate as victims.

Every criminal was humiliated, neglected, or abused in childhood, but few of them can admit to it. Many genuinely do not know that they were. Thus denial gets in the way of statistical surveys based on the question-and-answer method, none of which will have any practical prophylactic effect as long as our eyes and ears remain closed to the issues posed by childhood.

An adult can be fully aware of his feelings only if he had caring parents or caregivers. People who were abused and neglected in childhood are missing this capacity and are therefore never overtaken by unexpected emotions. They will admit only those feelings that are accepted and approved by their inner censor, who is their parents' heir. Depression and a sense of inner emptiness are the price they must pay for this control.

If you lie to yourself about your own pain, you will be killed by those who will claim you enjoyed it.

He beat me like he beat the children. Cept he don't never hardly beat them. He say, Celie, git the belt. The children be outside the room peeking through the cracks. It all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood. I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That's how come I know trees fear man.

He beat me when you not here, I say. Who do, she say, Albert? Mr ____, I say. I can't believe it, she say. She sit down on the bench next to me real hard, like she drop. What he beat you for? she ast. For being me and not you.