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Quotes About Sadism

I'm a sadist at heart, and I have learned that one of the cruelest things you can do to someone is to teach them something, and thereby cause them to question their ignorance and long-held beliefs.
~ Peter Masters
Sadists had licence and delighted in their ability to cause suffering, especially if their victims pleaded for mercy.
~ Peter Padfield
But many human beings do take pleasure in inflicting pain on others, and those who have the least to be proud of or to be happy about are often the ones who take that pleasure most.
~ Jonathan Kozol
Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation.
~ Alice Miller
Nor do I like being told upsetting news—unless there is a good reason. I can't help but feel that there is an element of cruelty, if not sadism, in friends telling one another upsetting things for no reason except to observe their reactions.
~ Joyce Carol Oates
Intentionally rude and vulgar, he took pleasure in the discomfort of others.
~ Daniel Silva
Why do there have to be men like that, men who enjoy another man's dying?
~ Michael Shaara
I pity those born of the lighter side. They have no understanding of how seductive cruelty is. The music made out of screams and pleas for mercy. Mmmm. Nothing better. (Noir)
~ Sherrilyn Kenyon
Killing without reason or gain was a petty pleasure of sadistic fools.
~ Drew Karpyshyn
If the baron is a masochist himself, then why would he attract another masochist? I suppose he wants someone cute to attract other sadists.
~ Edmund White
Perversity, sadism, sexual aberration, etc., are parts of the nomenclature of the human spirit—just like altruism, fellowship, love, and all that. No, I'm not saying it's cool to be perverse, sadistic, and sexually aberrant, but I think it's honest to be curious about the very worst that humanity has to offer, and the very worst manner in which mankind has presented itself. Not only is it honest, I dare say it's healthy
~ Edward Lee
How shall I typify what happened? Passion play? Somewhat. Weird tale? Indubitably. Horror story? Pretty close. Grotesque melodrama? Certainly. Black comedy? Your point of view will determine that. Perhaps it was a combination of them all... So, to the story. A chronicle of greed and cruelty, horror and rapacity, sadism and murder. Love, American style.
~ Richard Matheson
Not surprisingly, his father (who was unaware of how abusive he had been), took credit for Richard's high entrance exam scores, noting how successful his educational program had been. Richard's father's poorly controlled wounded self, which acted out sadistically toward him, was never openly acknowledged and thus both father and son were prevented from seeing how badly the father had undermined his son's sense of self.
~ David P. Celani
The Thing about people who wanted to show you things was that sometimes their interest in granting you knowledge was laced with a little voyeuristic sadism. They were waiting for the Look or the Reaction, and they didn't care what it was so long as it inflicted some kind of discomfort.
~ Jeff Vandermeer
The thing about people who wanted to show you things was that sometimes their interest in granting you knowledge was laced with a little voyeuristic sadism. They were waiting for the Look or the Reaction, and they didn't care what it was so long as it inflicted some kind of discomfort.
~ Jeff Vandermeer
Bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel.
~ Renata Adler
When the Right proclaims that socialism has failed, and that capitalism is the only alternative, the cultural Left has little to say in reply. For it prefers not to talk about money. Its principal enemy is a mind-set rather than a set of economic arrangements –– a way of thinking which is, supposedly, at the root of both selfishness and sadism.
~ Richard M. Rorty
sexual sadist who "gets sexual excitement by inflicting psychological pressure on his victims.
~ Robert D. Hare
In it {a film Peter saw} a sadistic sergeant broke the spirit of soldier in a military prison by beating him up at systematically random intervals, from more than a day down to a quarter of an hour, so that the victim never knew when the next attack was coming, never felt safe. Life with Muriel, it seemed to Peter, had over the last seven or eight years turned into a decreasingly bearable version of that.
~ Kingsley Amis
The thing about people who want to show you things was that sometimes their interest in granting you knowledge was laced with a little voyeuristic sadism. They were waiting for the Look or the Reaction, and they didn't care what it was so long as it inflicted some kind of discomfort.
~ Jeff Vandermeer
The pleasure in complete domination over another person (or other animate creature) is the very essence of the sadistic drive. Another way of formulating the same thought is to say that the aim of sadism is to transform man into a thing, something animate into something inanimate, since by complete and absolute control the living loses one essential quality of life - freedom.
~ Erich Fromm
The children start school now in August. They say it has to do with air-conditioning, but I know sadism when I see it.
~ Rick Bragg
He would drill holes into the skulls of his living victims, then inject hydrochloric acid or boiling water into the frontal lobe area of their brains. When these experiments failed to achieve the desired result, Dahmer simply dispatched the unfortunate victim
~ Robert Keller
We're in the hands of infinite power and infinite sadism.
~ Larry Niven