Hostages Quotes

Marriage is for committed lovers, not hostages. Marriage is a sacred relationship created for two people who complete each other spiritually. While it requires sacrificial service, it is not a call to martyrdom. In many cases of domestic violence, a therapeutic separation is necessary to gain safety and direct attention to the gravity of the need for change. ~ Rob Jackson

In that way Vinteuil's phrase, like some theme, say, in Tristan, which represents to us also a certain acquisition of sentiment, has espoused our mortal state, had endued a vesture of humanity that was affecting enough. Its destiny was linked, for the future, with that of the human soul, of which it was one of the special, the most distinctive ornaments. Perhaps it is not-being that is the true state, and all our dream of life is without existence; but, if so, we feel that it must be that these phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to our dream, are nothing either. We shall perish, but we have for our hostages these divine captives who shall follow and share our fate. And death in their company is something less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less certain. ~ Marcel Proust

[January 1944] As to this country, I have been lecturing now for three years to the troops and their attitude is the same. They don't believe in concentration camps, they don't believe in the starved children of Greece, in the shot hostages of France, in the mass-graves of Poland; they have never heard of Lidice, Treblinka or Belzec; you can convince them for an hour, then they shake themselves, their mental self-defence begins to work and in a week the shrug of incredulity has returned like a reflex temporarily weakened by a shock.
Clearly all this is becoming a mania with me and my like. Clearly we must suffer from some morbid obsession, whereas the others are healthy and normal. But the characteristic symptom of maniacs is that they lose contact with reality and live in a phantasy world. So perhaps it is the other way around: perhaps it is we, the screamers, who react in a sound and healthy way to the reality which surrounds us, whereas you are the neurotic, who totter about in a screamed phantasy world because you lack the faculty to face the facts! Were it not so, this war would have been avoided, and those murdered within sight of your daydreaming eyes would still be alive! ~ Arthur Koestler

As long as we're tied to Middle Eastern oil we're tied to Middle Eastern politics. We're hostages to the terrorists and nutcases who want to wipe out Israel and the United States because we support Israel. ~ Ben Bova

Happy Families. What's that all about, eh? A bloody busted flush is what it is. You surround yourself with other people so the night doesn't seem quite so dark. Shout down the sound of the wind with arguments about whose turn it is to wash the dishes. Best not to kid yourself. Best not to give any hostages to fortune. You're on your own in the end. Always. Where else would you want to be? ~ Mike Carey

My past takes no hostages, no prisoners. I've let go of yesterday and am free to receive the beautiful gift of the present. ~ Jaeda DeWalt

Despite fear narrowing hostages' perceptions of options available to them, their perceptions are probably more accurate than outsiders'. Being there, hostages both have more information than do outsiders and are forced to live with terrifying contingencies that outsiders probably cannot even imagine. Outsiders' perceptions are often distorted by a need to believe that, if they were taken hostage, they would be able to escape. ~ Dee L.R. Graham

Love takes hostages. ~ Neil Gaiman

Be careful, he says, the official US position will be that they refuse to negotiate for hostages, but they may try to enlist the U.N. to do it. ~ Kenneth Cain

I have a wife, I have sons: all of them hostages given to fate. ~ Lucan

Here in Israel, we want the boys back home, we demand it from our government, who often pay a steep price to get hostages back. But we need a happy ending. We don't want to deal with those days after release, their post-trauma or reintroduction to society. Yet coming home is only the start of their journey. ~ Gideon Raff

Change is the sum of the universe, and what is of nature ought not to be feared. But one gives it hostages, and lays one's grief upon the gods. Sokrates is free, and would have taught me freedom. But I have yoked the immortal horse that draws the chariot with a horse of earth; and when the one falls, both are entangled in the traces. ~ Mary Renault

If people are informed they will do the right thing. It's when they are not informed that they become hostages to prejudice. ~ Charlayne Hunter-Gault

Oddly enough, I find the best hostages are the live ones. - Karl ~ Kelley Armstrong

We are all hostages of time. We each have the same number of minutes and hours to live within a day, yet to me it didn't feel equally doled out. My illness brought me such an abundance of time that time was nearly all I had. My friends had so little time that I often wished I could give them what time I could not use. It was perplexing how in losing health I had gained something so coveted but to so little purpose. ~ Elisabeth Tova Bailey

Perhaps it is not-being that is the true state, and all our dream of life is inexistent; but, if so, we feel that these phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to our dream, must be nothing either. We shall perish, but we have as hostages these divine captives who will follow and share our fate. And death in their company is somehow less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less probable. ~ Marcel Proust

As Wilson mourned his wife, German forces in Belgium entered quiet towns and villages, took civilian hostages, and executed them to discourage resistances. In the town of Dinant, German soldiers shot 612 men, women, and children. The American press called such atrocities acts of "frightfulness," the word then used to describe what later generations would call terrorism. On August 25, German forces bean an assault on the Belgian city of Louvain, the "Oxford of Belgium," a university town that was home to an important library. Three days of shelling and murder left 209 civilians dead, 1,100 buildings incinerated, and the library destroyed, along with its 230,000 books, priceless manuscripts, and artifacts. The assault was deemed an affront to just to Belgium but to the world. Wilson, a past president of Princeton University, "felt deeply the destruction of Louvain," according to his friend, Colonel House; the president feared "the war would throw the world back three or four centuries. ~ Erik Larson

A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions tell me that's true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not. ~ Ronald Reagan

At the time we're stuck in it, like hostages locked in a Turkish bath, high school seems the most serious business in the world to just about all of us. It's not until the second or third class reunion that we start realizing how absurd the whole thing was. ~ Stephen King

I have a wife, I have sons; all these hostages have I given to fortune. ~ F.L. Lucas

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune. ~ Sorcha MacMurrough

There'll never be a perfect breakfast eaten until some man grows arms long enough to stretch down to New Orleans for his coffee & over to Norfolk for his rolls, & reaches up to Vermont & digs a slice of butter out of a spring-house, & then turns over a beehive close to a white clover patch out in Indiana for the rest. Then he'd come pretty close to making a meal on the amber that the gods eat on Mount Olympia. ~ O. Henry

To successfully gain a hostage's safe release, a negotiator had to penetrate the hostage-taker's motives, state of mind, intelligence, and emotional strengths and weaknesses. The negotiator played the role of bully, conciliator, enforcer, savior, confessor, instigator, and ~ Chris Voss

'Betrayed' starts off with Shane Gallagher rescuing Elena Reyes and a group of hostages from a madman with a gun. And as the story progresses and Shane's feelings for Elena blossom, his urge to protect her grows. ~ Ruth Glick

The point being made here is that hostages and outsiders view the hostages' ability to escape differently. What looks to outsiders as an opportunity for escape may look like a test (a trick) or a death trap to hostages. It is hostages', not outsiders', perceptions of hostages' ability to escape that determines whether or not hostages develop Stockholm Syndrome. ~ Dee L.R. Graham

The students often like to talk about movies that they feel are Orientalist like 300 or Babel. They talk a lot about the possibility of U.S. aggression against Iran and the Iranian hostages being held by the U.S. in Iraq. ~ Mohammad Marandi

I'm 100% Celt. In fact, I'm directly related to the progenitor of the high kings of Ireland, Niall of the Nine Hostages. ~ Brian Cox

You can quit a job. I can't quit being a mother. I'm a mother forever. Mothers are never off the clock, mothers are never on vacation. Being a mother redefines us, reinvents us, destroys and rebuilds us. Being a mother brings us face-to-face with ourselves as children, with our mothers as human beings, with our darkest fears of who we really are. Being a mother requires us to get it together or risk messing up another person forever. Being a mother yanks our hearts out of our bodies and attaches them to our tiny humans and sends them out into the world, forever hostages. ~ Shonda Rhimes

What you forget when you're planning a hijack by yourself is somewhere along the line, you might need to neglect your hostages just long enough so you can use the bathroom. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

At the age of eight, John Quincy Adams was made the man of his house while his father, John Adams, was off doing important John Adams things for America. This would be a lot of terrifying responsibility at any time in American history, but it just so happens that, when Adams was eight years old, the *Revolutionary freaking War* was happening right outside his house. He watched the Battle of Bunker Hill from his front porch, according to his diary, worried that he might be 'butchered in cold blood, or taken and carried ... as hostages by any foraging or marauding detachment of British soldiers.' I don't have the diary I kept at age eight, but I think the only things I worried about was whether or not they'd have for dogs in the school the next day and if I had the wherewithal and clarity of purpose to collect all of the Pokemon. John Q, on the other hand, guarded his house, mother, and siblings during wartime.

This isn't to imply that eight-year-old John Quincy Adams could have beaten eight-year-old you in a fight, but to imply that eight-year-old John Quincy Adams could beat you *as an adult*. ~ Daniel O'Brien

Children are often like hostages under the care of authority, with spankings and groundings nudging them like guns pointed at their skulls, threatening to shoot if the wrong words are uttered. ~ Maggie Young

..."Were hostages ever killed?"She shook her head. "Not until the end. When everything...fell apart. "All it needs,",she said, memories clouding her mind, "is the breaking of one rule, one law. A breaking that then no one calls to account. Once that happens, once the shock passes, every law shatters. Every rule of conduct, of proper behaviour, it all vanishes. Then the hounds inside each and everyone of us is unleashed. At that moment Withal" - she met his eyes, defiant against the grief she saw in them - "we show our true selves. We are not beasts- we are something far worse. There deep inside us. You see it - the emptiness in the eyes, as horror upon horror is committed, and no one feels. No one feels a thing." --Steven Erikson... Dust of Dreams ~ Steven Erikson

Freeing hostages is like putting up a stage set, which you do with the captors, agreeing on each piece as you slowly put it together; then you leave an exit through which both the captor and the captive can walk with sincerity and dignity. ~ Terry Waite

Ten years ago I saw a documentary on the siege of that Moscow theater. After just forty-eight hours of the terrorists confining the hostages to their seats with no sleep, the lights blazing and being forced to pee their pants-although if the had to shit, they could do so in the orchestra pit-well,more than a few hostages just stood up and walked to the exit knowing they'd get shot in the back. Because the were DONE. ~ Maria Semple

these merchants of men handle a new variety of human cargo: not hostages but rather migrants. A surreal interdependency, therefore, links the kidnapping of Westerners and the trafficking of migrants. ~ Loretta Napoleoni

The person unaware of history is like a rudderless boat just floating out in the middle of the ocean, hostages to the waves and currents. ~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

The atmosphere in Washington was different. President Reagan remained popular, despite having committed crimes far worse than those that had brought Nixon down: financing terrorism in Nicaragua, trading weapons for hostages with Iran, and turning women and girls into mangled corpses on the streets of Beirut. Reagan's collaborator Vice President George H. W. Bush looked likely to become the next president. Somehow - and Jasper could not figure out how this trick had been worked - people who challenged the president and caught him out cheating and lying were no longer heroes, as they had been in the seventies, but instead were considered disloyal and even anti-American. ~ Ken Follett

Parents with dependents are somehow thought to count for more. If, for example, there is some scarce resource - a donor kidney perhaps - and of the two potential recipients one is a parent of young children and one is not, the parent, all things being equal, will likely be favoured. To let a parent die is not only to thwart that person's preference to be saved, but also the preferences of his or her children that their parent be saved. It is quite true, of course, that the death of the parent will harm more people, but there is nonetheless something to be said against favouring parents. Increasing one's value by having children might be like increasing one's value by taking hostages. ~ David Benatar

I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have gotten the hostages released. I thank God they were satisfied with the missiles and we didn't have to go to that extreme. ~ Oliver North

Maybe it is nothingness that is real and our entire dream is nonexistent, but in that case we feel that these phrases of music, and these notions that exist in relation to our dream, must also be nothing. We will perish, but we have for hostages these divine captives who will follow us and share our fate. And death in their company is less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps less probable. ~ Marcel Proust

It is a commonplace that every age, or almost every age, thinks that its own time is one of special difficulty. The barbarians seem always to be at the gate. Alas, in our present day this is rather too literally so. But what many fail to realise is that the barbarians are a more various and numerous group than just those unspeakable villains who behead hostages in the desert. Barbarians might also wear ties and travel business class, they might occupy seats of power in government. They might be us, ourselves, when we give up certain civil liberties and betray our own values in the spurious belief that this will protect us from terrorism, organised crime, unwelcome immigration. Forms of dismantling civilisation might differ, but the result is the same. ~ A.C. Grayling

"Bolshoi Babylon" is the work of filmmakers Mark Franchetti and Nicholas Read. Franchetti has been a Moscow-based journalist for 18 years. He won a British Press Award for his coverage of the 2002 Moscow theater siege in which 130 hostages were killed. He's covered Russian politics and the war in Ukraine. ~ Elizabeth Blair Lee

Did you ever notice they never take any fat hostages? You never see a guy coming out of Lebanon going: I was held hostage for seven months and I lost 175 pounds, I feel good and I look good and I learned self-discipline. That's the important thing. ~ Denis Leary

Comrades! The kulak uprising in your five districts must be crushed without pity. You must make example of these people. (1) Hang (I mean hang publicly, so that people see it) at least 100 kulaks, rich bastards, and known bloodsuckers. (2) Publish their names. (3) Seize all their grain. (4) Single out the hostages per my instructions in yesterday's telegram. Do all this so that for miles around people see it all, understand it, tremble, and tell themselves that we are killing the bloodthirsty kulaks and that we will continue to do so ... Find tougher people. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Starbuck especially elucidates this peculiar division between physical and moral courage. The first mate, "while generally abiding firm in the conflict with seas, or winds, or whales, or any of the ordinary irrational horrors of the world, yet cannot withstand those more terrific, because spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man."52 Starbuck is tormented by his complicity in what he foresees as Ahab's "impious end, but feel that I must help him to it." "But he drilled deep down," Starbuck exclaims, "and blasted all my reason out of me!"53 Moral cowardice like Starbuck's turns us into hostages. Mutiny is the only salvation for the Pequod's crew. And mutiny is our only salvation. ~ Chris Hedges

President Carter famously said the hostages were the first thing he thought about in the morning and the last thing he thought about at night. It was a downright foolish thing to say, because it made the people holding the hostages realize that they had an awful lot of influence over the United States. ~ Ted Koppel

We are all hostages, and we are all terrorists. This circuit has replaced that other one of masters and slaves, the dominating and the dominated, the exploiters and the exploited. It is worse than the one it replaces, but at least it liberates us from liberal nostalgia and the ruses of history. ~ Jean Baudrillard

My last point about getting started as a writer: do something first, good or bad, successful or not, and write it up before approaching an editor. The best introduction to an editor is your own written work, published or not. I traveled across Siberia on my own money before ever approaching an editor; I wrote my first book, Siberian Dawn, without knowing a single editor, with no idea of how to get it published. I had to risk my life on the Congo before selling my first magazine story. If the rebel spirit dwells within you, you won't wait for an invitation, you'll invade and take no hostages. ~ Jeffery Taylor

Everybody is vulnerable through love of their children. Hostages to fortune. ~ Claire Tomalin

This is where the whole thing entered into a vicious cycle, for her proximity always inebriated the hearts, thus only deepening their desire to remain hostages in the cage so that they could booze even more on that beauty. ~ Pawan Mishra

When nine-and-ninety hostages had shuffled by them to pass beneath the Wall, Tormund Giantsbane produced the last one. My son Dryn. You'll see he's well taken care of, crow, or I'll cook your black liver up and eat it. ~ George R R Martin

Criminals kill journalists/hostages in France, devout Muslims pay the bill all over Europe. ~ Paulo Coelho

At the beginning, because the lives of the hostages were at stake, then during this silent period we have taken several measures like not accepting the ultimatum of the terrorists threatening to kill our foreign affairs minister. ~ Alberto Fujimori

The big-time journalists generally had kidnapping insurance through their news organizations. Usually, it would pay for a crisis response company to help negotiate for a hostage's release. Freelancers most often had none. ~ Amanda Lindhout

When death gives us a long lease of life, it takes as hostages all those whom we have loved. ~ Suzanne Curchod

The goal with hostages is to gradually lower expectations; in nonhostage crises, it's to lower emotions. ~ Dave Cullen

There's no Saints; everyone lies. Everybody betrays everybody sooner or later too. The quicker you get that through your head, the better."
From "Hostages ~ Erik Hansen

German forces in Belgium entered quiet towns and villages, took civilian hostages, and executed them to discourage resistance. In the town of Dinant, German soldiers shot 612 men, women, and children. The American press called such atrocities acts of "frightfulness," the word then used to describe what later generations would call terrorism. On ~ Erik Larson

Earlier that day, a typewriter bomb had exploded at a black market skin house over on Eel Street, sending words raining through the cardboard walls of the boudoirs and tattooing copies of the Machinist's 'Twelve Terms' on the bodies of whores and patrons alike. Forty pieces of merch ruined. Their bodies had been obliterated by language, all traces of their sexuality buried beneath a storm of words. There was something horrific about the sight of those who had survived a typewriter attack. Their faces scarred with text, as if they had become hostages to some awful advertisement. A few of the victims took to working the streets around the library where bibliophiles sometimes paid them to satisfy their fantasies amid the desolate hush of the reading rooms and the deserted stacks where the only witnesses to this erotic pantomime of the blank body and its printed partner were other words. ~ Craig Padawer

Unprovoked attacks on Israel's borders, murdering Israeli soldiers, taking Israeli hostages and showering rockets targeting and killing Israeli civilians are not furthering any legitimate goal. ~ Alcee Hastings

But no soldier above the rank of sergeant ever served jail time. No civilian interrogators ever faced legal proceedings. Nobody was ever charged with torture, or war crimes, or any violation of the Geneva Conventions. Nobody ever faced charges for keeping prisoners naked,or shackled. Nobody ever faced charges for holding prisoners as hostages. Nobody ever faced charges for incarcerating children who were accused of no crime and posed no known security threat. Nobody ever faced charges for holding thousands of prisoners in a combat zone in constant danger of their lives. Nobody ever faced charges for arresting thousands of civilians without direct cause and holding them indefinitely, incommunicado, in concentration camp conditions. Nobody ever faced charges for shooting and killing prisoners who were confined behind concertina wire. And nobody has ever been held to account for murdering al-Jamadi in the Tier 1B shower, although Sabrina Harman initially faced several charges for having photographed him there. ~ Philip Gourevitch

practices which had been long abandoned, in some cases for hundreds of years - imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages and the deportation of whole populations - not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive. It ~ George Orwell

Do whatever you want, as long as you say you want to be a part of Europe. And then you'll get away with anything. Look, the Albanians do God knows what. They sell weapons and women, they take hostages. And the world forgives then, as long as they're pro-Europe and pro-NATO. They'll forgive us, too. That's the trend in today's world. ~ Vladimir Lorchenkov

Because when you kill 300 people, 400 people, who have nothing to do with the provocations Hezbollah staged, but you do it in effect deliberately by being indifferent to the scale of collateral damage, you're killing hostages in the hope of intimidating those that you want to intimidate. And more likely than not you will not intimidate them. You'll simply outrage them and make them into permanent enemies with the number of such enemies increasing. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

Hostages want to survive - they are very focused on their own little view of things. ~ Ingrid Betancourt

In fact, this is a blackmail of the terrorists at the expense of the suffering of the hostages. ~ Alberto Fujimori

Death is a scandal. The machine is functioning, we are all hostages ~ Elias Canetti

President Ford was taken for a ride by his predecessor, whom he unpardonably pardoned; Jimmy Carter was also taken for a ride, but by his successor, Ronald Reagan, over the return of the Iran hostages. ~ Nigel Hamilton

Thoughts arise in the hostage's tormented brain. In the hospital, patients feel they are returning to childhood; in prison, they age. The gods blind themselves. ~ Elie Wiesel

I don't encourage any act of murder nor do I glorify in anyone's death, but I do think that when the white public uses it's press to magnify the fact that there are lives of white hostages at stake, they don't say "hostages," every paper says "white hostages." They give me the impression that they attach more importance to a white hostage and a white death, than they do the death of a human being, despite the color of his skin. ~ Malcolm X

The issue of terrorism must be dealt with firmly. We must work very hard to avoid loss of life. We must work very hard to avoid civilian casualties. And those terrorists and Baathists are holding the people of Fallujah hostage. We must release the hostages. ~ Ahmed Chalabi

Being a husband is scary ... We have everything to lose. We have made promises. We have given hostages to fortune and challenged fate to a dance-off. We have chosen a future full of loss ... when you marry somebody, you are guaranteeing that you will have real problems, a future full of them, the kind that involve death and disease and grief. As husbands, we have *planned* on major anguish. We can't afford to use up all our patience at once, or over things that aren't all that important. ~ Rob Sheffield

If your happiness depends on your children being happy, that makes them your hostages. So stay out of their business, stop using them for your happiness, and be your own happiness. And that way you are the teacher for your children: someone who knows how to live a happy life. ~ Byron Katie

I used to take hostages in my relationships and not let people be independent. It always ended in disaster, because you take away people's identity and they end up full of resentment. ~ Elton John

May Christ the Savior give peace to Nigeria, where more blood is being shed and too many people are unjustly deprived of their possessions, held as hostages or killed. ~ Pope Francis

I had a great dislike to the annoyances entailed by baggage; and it was always with some feeling of elation that I cut myself free from everything but what I could carry about me. Like children, portmanteaus and trunks are hostages to fortune. ~ Herbert Spencer

I want to express our grieve and condolences to the families of two hostages: one American, Dr. Warren Weinstein and an Italian Giovanni LaPorto who were tragically killed in a U.S. counterterrorism operation. ~ Barack Obama

2014 Raid in Northern Syria In an attempt to find kidnapped journalist James Foiley as well as other American hostages, Delta Forces operators were inserted into northern Syria on 04 July 2014. Per information from witnesses, after tearing down anti-aircraft weapons, the Delta Forces operators attacked an ISIS base. The ISIS base was torn down and all ISIS soldiers were killed at the cost of an American who sustained wounds during the operations. The operation was a failure since no hostages were found. ~ John Winters

If I were to be taken hostage, I would not plead for release nor would I want my government to be blackmailed. I think certain government officials, industrialists and celebrated persons should make it clear they are prepared to be sacrificed if taken hostage. If that were done, what gain would there be for terrorists in taking hostages? ~ Margaret Mead

Love wants the best for others. Attachment takes hostages. ~ Louise Penny

The reason why no one had spoken to [Iranians] for the last years is because they sponsored Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinians, Al Qaeda, 9/11. The last time anyone spoke to the Iranians was when Ronald Reagan said, 'I've just been elected and you better let our hostages go or you guys are absolutely screwed'. ~ Eric Bolling

As (the Soviet newspaper) Pravda said in 1951,"If ever the spy Allen Dulles should arrive in Heaven through somebody's absent-mindedness, he would begin to blow up the clouds, mine the stars, and slaughter the angels." Allen Dulles cared little for the methods that were used to accomplish the secret projects he funded. Proof of this is clear when you look at his attempts in 1950 to convince John McCloy to intervene in General Alexander von Falkenhausen's trial. Von Falkenhausen had executed hostages in Belgium throughout the war and ordered the deportation of 25,000 Jews to death camps. Von Falkenhausen drew a twelve-year sentence but was freed after three weeks. ~ Carol Rutz

In my family, misery didn't just love company, it wanted hostages. ~ Jerry Stahl

Recently , crowds of thousands gathered throughout the Muslim world - burning European embassies, issuing threats, taking hostages, even killing people - in protest over twelve cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that were first published in a Danish newspaper. When was the last atheist riot? ~ Sam Harris