Institutional Abuse Quotes

Rather, I plead with you to see a mode of life in our midst, a mode of life stunted and distorted, but possessing its own laws and claims, an existence of men growing out of the soil prepared by the collective but blind will of a hundred million people. I beg you to recognize human life draped in a form and guise alien to ours, but springing from a soil plowed and sown by our own hands. I ask you to recognize laws and processes flowing from such a condition, understand them, seek to change them. If we do none of these, then we should not pretend horror or surprise when thwarted life expresses itself in fear and hate and crime. ~ Richard Wright

Institutional nepotism might be tolerated in prosperous times. Setbacks can become crises, however, when there is incompetence in key positions at crucial moments. ~ Stewart Stafford

Even if you must have regard to wealth, in order to secure leisure, yet it is surely a bad thing that the greatest offices, such as those of kings and generals, should be bought. The law which allows this abuse makes wealth of more account than virtue, and the whole state becomes avaricious. ~ Aristotle.

Incest is almost always a devastating experience for
the victim. ~ Susan Forward

I loved you head over handles
like my first bicycle accident
before the mouthful of gravel and blood,
I swore we were flying.
-Cycle of Abuse ~ Sierra DeMulder

An abuser isn't abusive 24/7. They usually demonstrate positive character traits most of the time. That's what makes the abuse so confusing when it happens, and what makes leaving so much more difficult. ~ Miya Yamanouchi

You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these last twenty years at least. ~ Jane Austen

In contrast, children with histories of abuse and neglect learn that their terror, pleading, and crying do not register with their caregiver. Nothing they can do or say stops the beating or brings attention and help. In effect they're being conditioned to give up when they face challenges later in life. BECOMING ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Words are incredibly powerful weapons. Who amongst us has not felt both their warming glow and cold icy sting… or companionship and abandonment… or how majestically they make us soar to the greatest heights of paradise or how mindlessly they fling us into the deepest, darkest, recesses of hell? Words are incredibly powerful weapons. And in the hands of the master abuser, words become the precise instruments of psychological abuse. And without so much as lifting a finger, the words you use have the power to bring about the complete destruction of another human being. Words can be weapons of mass destruction. ~ Dr. Mallika Nawal

Do you never look at yourself when you abuse another person? ~ Plautus

Informed criticism is one thing, ignorant abuse quite another. ~ Peter Bray

I've learned that verbal abuse can be just as damaging as physical abuse and take longer to heal from. ~ Jaycee Dugard

when you allow that man. to walk through your children. plant his feet. in their veins. hold their voices. necks. bodies. inside his violence. you are no longer a mother. when you give him the key to that door. because you need to be loved by someone. you have seasoned them for the wolf. burned their childhood into a fantasy. it's going to take a third of their lives. all the courage. from their cells to their hair. to learn the alchemetic formula that turns that kind of betrayal. a demothering. soft. liveable. – before you get that key made ~ Nayyirah Waheed

Adults need to teach the children they love about sexual abuse so they know what to do if they encounter it. We need to prepare them so they know who to tell, should a violation occur, so they don't have to live with a painful secret, long into adulthood. ~ Carolyn Byers Ruch

Isn't that the greatest tragedy? When someone rejects us, no matter how they abuse our love, we hope against reason that somehow they will come back to us. ~ Suzanne Elizabeth Anderson

Sometimes, some of you speak about god, and I mistake him for an abusive lover you're trying to escape. ~ Darnell Lamont Walker

Quotation, like much better things, has its abuses. One may quote till one compiles. The ancient lawyers used to quote at the bar till they had stagnated their own cause. ~ Isaac D'Israeli

Not listening is a good way to get yourself killed here, which is exactly what would have happened if I hadn't come downstairs to see what trouble out resident dipshits had dragged in. You have yet to be ripped to pieces or to be removed of your ability to speak. If you want to keep it that way, I suggest that you learn to obey simple commands. Shut up. ~ Skye Callahan

You pushed me down to the depths of my sorrow until I thought I wouldn't see the light of day again. You expected me to drown, didn't you? To be left there for an eternity, waiting for your hand to pull me out? What you didn't stop to realize is that I live in the shadows, thrive even. When I pull myself from the darkness, I'll be stronger for it and you'll regret leaving me for dead. ~ Kayla Krantz

Do not have anger control you nor consume you. Express it and take responsibility for it. ~ Patricia Dsouza

An abusive culture, to me, is any culture that needs to single out and exclude a group. It's always a less productive culture because the organization's energy is diverted from lifting people up to keeping people down. It's like an autoimmune disease where the body sees its own organs as threats and begins attacking them. One of the most common signs of an abusive culture is the false hierarchy that puts women below men. ~ Melinda Gates

While most people view physical violence as a more serious offense than psychological violence, both battered women and prisoners of war report that threat of physical violence is more psychologically debilitating than actual physical violence. Emotional abuse, such as the threat to maim or kill, is often perceived as a threat to physical survival. For these reasons, psychological violence may promote the development of the syndrome as much or more than physical violence. This makes sense. A person who threatens to shoot you may be the one knocking on your door, calling you on the phone, turning into your driveway, or waiting around the next corner. Every moment is filled with fear until you are finally shot. Once shot, you can relax because you now know where and how the shooting occurred, how seriously you were hurt, what you need to do to take care of the wound, etc. ~ Dee L.R. Graham

Renegade scientists and totalitarian loonies are not the folks most likely to abuse genetic engineering. You and I are-not because we are bad but because we want to do good. In a world dominated by competition, parents understandably want to give their kids every advantage ... The most likely way for eugenics to enter into our lives is through the front door as nervous parents ... will fall over one another to be first to give Junior a better set of genes. ~ Arthur Caplan

Nobody is fit to rule anybody else. It is not alleged that Mankind is perfect, or that merely through his/her natural goodness (or lack of same) he/she should (or should not) be permitted to rule. Rule as such causes abuse. There are no superpeople nor privileged classes who are above 'imperfect Mankind' and are capable or entitled to rule the rest of us. Submission to slavery means surrender of life. ~ Albert Meltzer

Trying to make sense of other people's responses to us is a basic human activity. Accepting a mother's [or anyone's] anger by concluding that i is justified is a way of making sense of a difficult relationship. But this acceptance comes at a great cost, for it means that we see their cruelty as our shame. ~ Terri Apter

Mentally, I am in prison. The only thing I am allowed to do is think...think...think...of the 'what if's' and the consequences I have to endure."
~Love is respect ♥~ ~ Charlena E. Jackson

I work with The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. I sit proudly as one of only two recovering addicts on their board. ~ Jamie Lee Curtis

I look around at everybody laughing and joking together and struggle to understand my life has become a living hell that nobody present could even begin to imagine ~ B.A. Paris

I wondered about her chicken-and-egg relationship with Dad. Which came first? Her helplessness or his controlling? ~ Justina Chen

Not even Carol knows firsthand how it feels to be hurt in such a way by someone who's supposed to protect you ~ Ellen Hopkins

When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotional populist appeal that wins out unless good men and women stand as a vanguard against abuse. ~ Hannah Arendt

I have found that the greatest stories of acceptance and love and the ugliest stories of hideous cruelty and abuse have equally been perpetrated in the name of Christian faith. ~ Andrew Solomon

We believe that if the argument for equality has merit, it does so because it protects difference. Equality used to allow those who differ not to subsume themselves under another's identity but to claim equity for their distinction and the State's protection in maintaining and even defending it. Now, however, equality is being used to erase difference, destroy institutional distinction and remove proper and plural provision for different groups, faiths and organisations ... What is needed here is equity that respects difference not equality that destroys it. ~ Roger Scruton

That thou hast her, it is not all my grief,
And yet it may be said I lov'd her dearly;
That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,
A loss in love that touches me more nearly.

Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye:
Thou dost love her because thou know'st I love her, And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,
Suff'ring my friend for my sake to approve her.

If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain,
And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;
Both find each other, and I lose both twain,
And both for my sake lay on me this cross.

But here's the joy, my friend and I are one;
Sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone. ~ William Shakespeare

I'm a buried kind of beautiful.
Bring a shovel
and a shooting star
I may be a night's work. ~ Casey Renee Kiser

Every good movement passes through five stages, indifference, ridicule, abuse, repression, and respect. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

She looked u at me through tear-stained cheeks and stammered, "My dad won't give me a Porsche when I come home if I don;t get all A's." I was a bit stunned. IT was my first encounter with real wealth. I remember looking at her and thinking, Holy shit. Being spoiled is worse abuse that being hit. At least I knew that being hit is wrong, But being spoiled ruins you. ~ Jewel

You are a survivor, at times you may not yet experience it, but the fact is that the worst and the cruelest part of your life is over. ~ Patricia Dsouza

That was the real reason abuse was so common, Isra thought for the first time. Not only because there was no government protection, but because women were raised to believe they were worthless, shameful creatures who deserved to get beaten, who were made to depend on the men who beat them. ~ Etaf Rum

I went to law school. And I became a prosecutor. I took on a specialty that very few choose to pursue. I prosecuted child abuse and child homicide cases. Cases that were truly gut-wrenching. But standing up for those kids, being their voice for justice was the honor of a lifetime. ~ Susana Martinez

People don't realize we have these built-in seven-league boots. The body can go anywhere. It is physically capable of sustaining almost any kind of abuse, or any dream. ~ Patti Smith

A well-off plastic surgeon can suffer just as much as an Irish lad who has been abused or whatever. ~ William Nicholson

In the wake of newly-alleged prisoner abuse this week, Senator John McCain said that continued mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is hurting the nation's image. Also hurting the nation's image: letting people drown when it rains. ~ Amy Poehler

But the possibility of abuse may be a good reason for leaving capabilities out of other computer languages, it's not a good reason for leaving capabilities out of Perl . ~ Larry Wall

Let's walk to the beach
Let's cast the net in the water
And catch freshness from water

Let's pick up a pebble from the ground
Feel the weight of existence

Let's not abuse moonshine if we suffer from fever
(Occasionally I have observed the moon descending during fever
And reaching the hand of the roof of heaven
I have noticed the goldfinch singing better
Sometimes the wound beneath my foot
Has taught the ups and downs of earth
Sometimes in my sickbed the dimension of the rose has multiplied
And the diameter of orange has increased, the radius of lantern too) ~ Sohrab Sepehri

The ecclesiastical establishments of Europe which serve to support tyrannical governments are not the Christian religion but abuses and corruptions of it. ~ Noah Webster

We saw a blatant example of this abuse in mid-2014 when a study published by researchers at Facebook and Cornell University revealed that social networks can manipulate the emotions of their users simply by algorithmically altering what they see in the news feed. In a study published by the National Academy of Sciences, Facebook changed the update feeds of 700,000 of its users to show them either more sad or more happy news. The result? Users seeing more negative news felt worse and posted more negative things, the converse being true for those seeing the more happy news. The study's conclusion: "Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. ~ Marc Goodman

If a 13 year old girl is pregnant, that is evidence of sexual abuse and that's supposed to be reported to the authorities and these people are never doing it. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the American abortion industry is running a pedophile protection racket and they've been doing it for years and they're often getting federal tax dollars to run this thing. ~ Mark Crutcher

I saw leaving any situation where I was treated with disrespect as evidence of my courage. I wanted my daughters to learn that lesson of worth from me. ~ Carine McCandless