Character Assassination Quotes

Character assassination. What a wonderful idea. Ordinary assassination only works once, but this one works every day. ~ Terry Pratchett

Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country - and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians. ~ Charles Krauthammer

While making racism bad seems like a positive change, we have to look at how this functions in practice. Within this paradigm, to suggest that I am racist is to deliver a deep moral blow - a kind of character assassination. Having received this blow, I must defend my character, and that is where all my energy will go - to deflecting the charge, rather than reflecting on my behavior. In this way, the good/bad binary makes it nearly impossible to talk to white people about racism, what it is, how it shapes all of us, and the inevitable ways that we are conditioned to participate in it. If we cannot discuss these dynamics or see ourselves within them, we cannot stop participating in racism. The good/bad binary made it effectively impossible for the average white person to understand - much less interrupt - racism. ~ Robin DiAngelo

Character assassination of a politician is a victimless crime ~ Dean Cavanagh

I've been forced to deal with my character assassination. ~ Sean Young

The left no longer makes arguments about policies' effectiveness. Their only argument is character assassination. ~ Ben Shapiro

Character assassination is at once easier and surer than physical assault; and it involves far less risk for the assassin. It leaves him free to commit the same deed over and over again, and may, indeed, win him the honors of a hero in the country of his victims. ~ Alan Barth

The campaign of character assassination waged [against President Clinton] by the right was a singular, unprecedented effort. Nothing like it exists on the left. What I object to on the right is the obsessive hatred, the bigotry, and the personal savaging of their opponents, all achieved through an echo chamber of talk radio, the Internet and Rupert Murdoch's media outlets. That kind of well-funded disinformation campaign has no analog on the left. ~ David Brock

Inside many liberals is a totalitarian screaming to get out. They don't like to have another point of view in the room that they don't squash and the way they try to squash it is by character assassination and name calling. ~ David Horowitz

This document outlines our plan to perpetrate insurance fraud, insider trading, and character assassination.
... hopefully tripling our paycheck on this job.
Okay, see? Those words I understand just fine. Use them more often.
-Lieutenant Massey Reynstein & Captain Tagon ~ Howard Tayler

I am acquainted with a wife and mother who is chained securely at the present time to a life-style of murmuring and criticism. She is the first to point out faults in her husband or to repeat neighborhood gossip. How damaging is a habit that permits fault-finding, character assassination, and the sharing of malicious rumors! Gossip and caustic comments often create chains of contention. These chains may appear to be very small, but what misery and woe they can cause! ~ Marvin J. Ashton

The formula for a public assassination is: the character assassination before the physical assassination; so one has to be made killable before the eyes of the public in order for their eventual murder to then be deemed justifiable. And when the time arrives for these hits to be carried out, you're not going to see a C.I.A. agent with a suit & tie, and a badge that says "C.I.A." walk up to someone, and pull the trigger. What they will do is out-source to local police departments in the region of their target, and to employ those that look like the target of interest to infiltrate the workings in order to set up the environment for the eventual assassination (character, physical/incarceration, exile) to take place. ~ Malcolm Shabazz

Too often character assassination has replaced debate in principle here in Washington. Destroy someone's reputation, and you don't have to talk about what he stands for. ~ Ronald Reagan

No one cared when you were doing nothing. If they now criticize, ridicule, & character assassinate you means you're doing something great... ~ Assegid Habtewold

Maybe Larry Kings cannot thrive or even survive in a world where the norms for discourse are rage, vehemence and character assassination. King wanted to be liked, not feared; admired, not loathed. ~ Tom Shales

However," Bob continued, and the word came down like a sledgehammer, "there is a line at which a likable bad boy becomes a nasty entitled bastard whom the public would rather see hung out to dry in the street than pay to watch prance about a stage in his bloomers. And when somebody starts abusing their fans, making an absolute arse of themselves in public places, and alienating the people who paid for their bloody Ferrari, they may consider that line crossed."

Lainie wondered if an actual "Hallelujah" chorus had appeared in the doorway, or if it was just the sound of her own glee.

She still had no idea why she was the privileged audience to this character assassination, but she warmly appreciated it. ~ Lucy Parker

How much do I love our family? This much. When any kind of emergency strikes, good or bad, we snap together like parts in a machine, like a submarine crew at war in the tin-can clutter of our home, none of the usual debate, character assassination, woeful monologues, and turgid hand-wringing. I've learned to love crises for this reason, how they make us pull together and forget our separateness and sadness; this was the second great gift of the moonfish. ~ Shaun Tan

Cicero was nothing if not a genius at character assassination. ~ Anthony Everitt

The unkindest thing you can do to a human is to tarnish their reputation in front of others just to make yourself look good. ~ Sijdah Hussain

Backstabbers and malicious people are not worth your attention, but you can thank them for deeming you worthy of theirs. ~ J.S. Wolfe

Character: the grandest thing in the world. ~ Orison Swett Marden

Character is better than ancestry, and personal conduct is of more importance than the highest. ~ Thomas John Barnardo

I do tend to gravitate to the more dramatic side of things. I love feeling intense emotions when I'm acting. I just love characters and stories with conflict. ~ Aaron Paul

So many people would be afraid to look in the mirror if the saw their character and not their face ... it would be like american horror story. ~ Turcois Ominek

Our actions, habits, character, and future are most definitely affected by our thoughts. ~ Elizabeth George

At what point does character-playing become habit, something for which we are grateful because it allows us to go through the world with the ease that comes from being predictable to ourselves, even if that predictability takes the form of neurosis, hysteria, depression? And at what point does that habit turn darkly into addiction? I wiped my hands clean. We are so desperate to be explicable to ourselves, to rely on ourselves, that we need to believe a certain version of who we are even when evidence starts to mount that the version is a lie, even when the part of us which is not tamed by habit strains to break free and overwhelm the tired, repetitive creature that our character has become, mouldering at the edges. ~ Kamila Shamsie

The poetics of the oppressed is essentially the poetics of liberation: the spectator no longer delegates power to the characters either to think or to act in his place. The spectator frees himself; he thinks and acts for himself! Theatre is action! ~ Augusto Boal

Magic came from life itself, from the interaction of nature and the elements, from the energy of all living beings, and especially of people. A man's magic demonstrates what sort of person he is, what is held most deeply inside of him. There is no truer gauge of a man's character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power. ~ Jim Butcher

It's important for me to see as many colors in the character as possible. ~ Kelly Lynch

It's masturbation for writers to be able to write this absolutely outrageous personality, in a character that you somehow agree with, part of the time, at least. ~ Rie Rasmussen

After 'The Wonder Years,' I ended up having a voiceover career, which was something I never even knew was possible. But after the character I was playing on 'The Wonder Years,' people said, 'Oh, would you like to do a Burger King thing? And there's a 7 Up thing ... ' And then I got to do 'Dilbert.' I think my voice kind of fit for that. ~ Daniel Stern

I'm always perversely attracted to characters that seem one thing, but are ultimately revealed as another. ~ Tony Goldwyn

She lays the book face down on her chest. Already her bedroom (no, their bedroom) feels more densely inhabited, more actual, because a character named Mrs. Dalloway is on her way to buy flowers. ~ Michael Cunningham

One of my favourite kinds of movie is the American picaresque, in which the characters make their way across the country, learning about life against the gorgeous backdrops of that vast land. ~ Steven Pinker

Your character is your fate. ~ Maya Plisetskaya

'Dexter,' while the pilot shares moments with the novel that created the character of Dexter, they completely abandoned the book from that moment on. ~ Jim Rash

You know it's gonna take more than some grave robbing charge to hold or stop the man. Besides, you didn't let me finish. The bodies were rising out of the ground. ~ Justin Bienvenue

Anything done without character can only end in catastrophe. ~ Bidemi Mark-Mordi

Can it be that the ultimate chapter of this new era of democratic freedom is going to be deformed by this growing drift toward conformity encouraged by politics and sentimental education? If so then by what name shall our national American character be justly called? Doomed to beget only curiosities or monstrosities in art, architecture and religion by artists predominant chiefly by compliance with commercial expediency?
Machine standardization is apparently growing to mean little that is inspiring to the human spirit. We see the American workman himself becoming the prey of gangsterism made official. Everything as now professionalized, in time dies spiritually. Must the innate beauty of American life succumb or be destroyed? Can we save truth as beauty and beauty as truth in our country only if truth becomes the chief concern of our serious citizens and their artists, architects and men of religion, independent of established authority? ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Good-humor only teaches charms to last,
Still makes new conquests and maintains the past. ~ Alexander Pope

It is, of course, much easier for a literary character to take a risk for love. The realities of social strata and responsibility mean nothing but a plot point in today's modern literature, but outside of these stories we are not pushing for change. The ideals we embody in our art rarely play themselves out in our lives. What would happen if we took the example of our fictional heroes; what if each of us was a Don Juan? ~ Evelyn Pryce

I like to be able to play a character and act out a lot of things which I can't or don't do in my normal everyday life. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio

One person of integrity can make a difference. ~ Elie Wiesel

If I had a clone, I could list myself as a character reference. ~ Jarod Kintz

Who are we without our addictions; without our media-induced hungers? So often the voices we hear echoing in our mind are not our own but that of our influencers. Isolation, while arguably going against human nature, is essential for mental and emotional health. Solitude is a detoxification of all that distorts our personality and misguides our path in life. It allows us to filter out the foreign opinions and hear our own voice - reach our authentic character - and practice fidelity to self. ~ L.M. Browning

I love inventing names, but I also collect unusual names, so that I can look through my notebook and choose one that suits a new character. ~ J.K. Rowling

Men's prejudices rest upon their character for the time being and cannot be overcome, as being part and parcel of themselves. Neither evidence nor common sense nor reason has the slightest influence upon them. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The days when it was possible to win a serious game only by merit of sporting character or depth of chess understanding have vanished forever. Chess knowledge has become dominant, bypassing all the other factors that contribute to success. ~ Anatoly Karpov

The citizen ... preserved the resolute bearing of one who was not to be frowned down or daunted, and who cared very little for any nobility but that of worth and manhood. ~ Charles Dickens

Comics have a problem, and that is continuity - the obsession with placing the characters in an existing world, where every event is marked in canon. You're supposed to believe that these weepy star boys of now are the same gung-ho super teens fighting space monsters in the '60s, and they've only aged perhaps five years. ~ John Hodgman

Character is the very life of fiction. Setting exists only so that the character has someplace to stand. Plot exists so the character can discover what he is really like, forcing the character to choice and action. And theme exists only to make the character stand up and be somebody. ~ John Gardner

Socialist writers are made of sterner stuff than those who only let their characters steeplechase through trouble in order to comeout first in the happy ending of moral uplift. ~ Christina Stead