Trigger Warning Quotes

The First Amendment protects our freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to practice religion, to peacefully assemble, and the right to petition the government. This is true tolerance as defined by our founding documents. This is the right of all American citizens. Does the right of free speech end on college campuses of higher learning? Does it end when you step into a designated "safe space" at your local university? Does it end if your choice of words is construed to be a "trigger warning" when you walk into a classroom?

The answer obviously should be no. Unfortunately, the answer today on most college campuses is yes. And take this warning seriously: it won't end there.

The commentator Andrew Sullivan has noted the student anti-free-speech movement "manifests itself . . . almost as a religion". He continues:

"It posits a classic orthodoxy through which all of human experience is explained--and through which all speech must be filtered. Its version of original sin is the power of some identity groups over others. To overcome this sin, you need first to confess, i.e., "check your privilege", and subsequently live your life and order your thoughts in a way that keeps this sin at bay. This sin goes so deep into your psyche, especially if you are white or male or straight, that a profound conversion is required.

It operates as a religion in one other critical dimension: If you happen to see the world in a different way, if ~ Everett Piper

When I felt as though I had reached land, it was like I was on a deserted sandy beach, feeling isolated and afraid to share with anyone the memories that haunted me. ~ Erin Merryn

Will "trigger warnings" simply be a way of establishing a new secular index, a cautionary list of books and other works dangerous not for religious reasons but because they may offend or upset certain groups or individuals or that contain material which can be viewed as insensitive or inappropriate? Would Grapes of Wrath be upsetting to someone with bad memories of rural poverty? Will the near future necessitate warning labels in front of all published material? Will future editions of The Best American Essays, for example, include a trigger warning in front of each selection so readers can avoid material that might upset them? And will trigger warnings in themselves eventually cause upsetting reactions, just the words and images sufficing to evoke unpleasant memories or anxious responses? ~ John Jeremiah Sullivan

I still kept so much from her at that time, but she made me feel like, someday, I wouldn't anymore - she made me feel so many somedays. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

I have lost people, though.
It's strange when it happens. I don't actually lose them. Not in the way one loses one's parents, either as a small child, when you think you are holding your mother's hand in a crowd and then you look up, and it's not your mother ... or later. When you have to find the words to describe them at a funeral service or a memorial, or when you are scattering ashes on a garden of flowers or into the sea. ~ Neil Gaiman

The lovelorn came, too. The alone. The lunatics-they were brought here, sometimes. Got their name from the moon, it was only fair the moon had a chance to fix things. ~ Neil Gaiman

Trigger warning: The phrases that follow may cause heartburn, hives, hot flashes, or fainting spells. "Man up!" "Act like a man!" Is there anything deemed more hateful on college campuses in America today than telling someone to "man up"? In the fall, University of San Diego held a seminar titled "Man Up? Masculinity and Pop Culture." It was sponsored by the campus's "Women's Center." It was described thusly: "This workshop invites men to engage in a cultural analysis of how masculinity is represented, and how that representation frequently has negative repercussions on men's lives."10 College-aged men in America were once taught how to tune up a car, skin a deer, and how to pin a flower on the strap of a date's dress without sticking her. Today, they are taught to "engage in a cultural analysis of how masculinity is represented." Good grief. ~ Eric Bolling

I am sorry.

I'm sorry that I feel as if you don't trust me enough to confide me.
This is me being selfish even though this isn't about me, it's about you.
I'm sorry that it makes me upset that in those times you thought about ending your life, I feel like I didn't cross your mind.
I hate myself for thinking you didn't care enough to talk to me about those toxic thoughts that's trying to push you to end everything, because I know myself that's it is hard to share.
I hate myself for thinking you didn't care enough to think about how horrible it is going to be for me once I learn what you've done.

I'm sorry for feeling like this, it is selfish, I am selfish.
I'm sorry for feeling like I'm not a good friend, I know that's now how you think, I'm sorry.

I just love you and I'm hurt. ~ Mari

It's time for students to learn that Life is Triggering. Once they leave college, they'll be constantly exposed to views that challenge or offend them. There are a lot of jerks out there, and no matter what your politics are, a lot of people will have the opposite view. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me. ~ William Shakespeare

The thing that has always interested me in the kinds of shows that I do have more to do with the consequences of behavior than the behavior itself. Pulling a trigger and shooting somebody, or dismembering somebody. ~ Steven Bochco

Truth, whose mother is history, who is the rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, example and lesson to the present, and warning to the future. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Musical myths speak with authority about our society, its fragility, its strengths, its desires, and its limits. Music becomes a wise version of the utopian messenger, pleasing us with his account of an ideal land but also warning us, in his tones, of all the dangers. ~ Edward Rothstein

I'm getting a little fed up with hearing about, oh, civilian casualties. I think we ought to nuke North Korea right now just to give the rest of the world a warning. ~ Ann Coulter

Hitler delivered petulant speeches that fall warning the outside world and particularly the British to mind their own business and to quit concerning themselves "with the fate of Germans within the frontiers of the Reich. ~ William L. Shirer

Be watchful - the grace of God appears suddenly. It comes without warning to an open heart. ~ Rumi

There are survivors of disasters whose accounts never begin with the tornado warning or the captain announcing engine failure, but always much earlier in the timeline: an insistence that they noticed a strange quality to the sunlight that morning or excessive static in their sheets. A meaningless fight with a boyfriend. As if the presentiment of catastrophe wove itself into everything that came before. ~ Emma Cline

One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning. ~ James Russell Lowell

She knew my buttons and kept pressing them like an epileptic in an arcade. If it's any consolation, I gave her fair warning." "Oh, my God! ~ Tim Dorsey

Greece bankruptcy will trigger a market crash. My advice: Buy Bitcoin & Gold, Both will rise when the markets crash ~ Kim Dotcom

If we have a hair trigger on the exclusion gun, shouldn't it be aimed at those who are using their power to abuse someone who is in a weaker, more vulnerable position? ~ Ken Wilson

Like dark, soft water, sadness took over Aomame's heart, soundlessly, and with no warning. ~ Haruki Murakami

Theodore," Ben says, interrupting him. " You seem like a... nice guy."
"Thanks," Theodore says, smiling.
"Let me finish," Ben says, holding up a finder in warning. "Because you're about to hate me. I lied. I'm not writing a paper." He points at Glenn. "This guy told me earlier today where to show up tonight so that I could find the girl I'm supposed to spend the rest of my life with. And I'm sorry, but that girl just so happens to be your date. And I'm in love with her. Like, really in love with her. Crippling, debilitating, paralyzing love. So please accept my sincerest apologies, because she's coming home with me tonight. I hope. I pray." Ben shoots me an endearing look. "Please ? Otherwise this speech will make me look like a complete fool and that won't be good when we tell our grandkids about this. ~ Colleen Hoover

Killing an enemy with teeth and bare hands is emotionally far more demanding than pulling a trigger or pressing a button. In inventing tools and weapons, in contriving civilization, we have disinhibited the controls - sometimes thoughtlessly and inadvertently, but sometimes with cool premeditation. If the beasts who are our nearest relatives engaged recklessly in ... mass murder they would have rendered themselves extinct. If our non-human ancestors did it, we would not be here. ~ Carl Sagan

As I squeeze, he turns his head, and there is the tiniest, slimmest of moments when he sees me. I look into those wolf eyes, and even though they are empty, they're still alive. In that split second he is alive and looking at me. I am alive and looking at him. Then the moment is over, the trigger is pulled back, and the gun is empty. ~ Carolyn Lee Adams

The complexity of modern federal criminal law, codified in several thousand sections of the United States Code and the virtually infinite variety of factual circumstances that might trigger an investigation into a possible violation of the law, make it difficult for anyone to know, in advance, just what particular set of statements might later appear (to a prosecutor) to be relevant to some such investigation. ~ Stephen G. Breyer

Two glittering eyes peered at the three young men and the catawyld clicked the back of its tongue in warning.
"I hate these things," Bracy growled ~ Nicole Sager

Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day's shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it." Here the child's voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. "Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back some day, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing 'Bertie, why do you bound?' as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window - ~ Saki

If ever there was a prime-time trigger for PTSD you couldn't do much better than this, but lucky for Norm, the crowd, America, the forty-million-plus TV viewing audience, Bravos can deal, oh yes! Pupils dilated, pulse and blood pressure through the roof, limbs trembling with stress-reflex cortisol rush, but it's cool, it's good, their shit's down tight, no Vietnam-vet crackups for Bravo squad! You can march these boys straight into sound-and-light show hell and Bravos can deal, but damn, isn't it rude to put them through it. ~ Ben Fountain

No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. ... Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea. ~ Marcel Proust

Life is warning you to get rid of an addiction every time you are emotionally uncomfortable in any way. ~ Ken Keyes Jr.

The fifth problem
is that when a new man tells you
he likes you too much
already,
it doesn't sound like a promise.
It sounds like a smoke alarm,
warning you to get out fast -
If you hurry, you might miss the worst of it. ~ Brenna Twohy

Are you trying to tell me you were a virgin before me?" she asked teasingly...
He snorted at the question. "I just wanted to give you fair warning that I'm going to fuck up. Probably a lot."
She shrugged, seemingly unfazed. "Me too. That's what relationships are about. We'll argue, then have incredible make-up sex. And as long as you always concede that I'm right after an argument, we'll be fine. ~ Katie Reus

A rifle is elegant. It's an extension of your will. Take aim, squeeze the trigger, make things happen. In the hands of an expert with stillness inside of him, there's nothing more deadly than a good rifle. ~ Brandon Sanderson

The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes. ~ Pema Chodron

I'm constantly warning people that are involved in my life that I can go busk and make a living. I can make my rent in New York City in the subway, I promise, if I'm forced to. ~ Steve Earle

Adam saw those brown
eyes widen, the pouty lips soften, and then they were kissing. Gaston's mouth
was pliable and submissive under his. Adam was enamored by the taste of those
lips as he deepened the kiss and their tongues touched. Then without warning,
Adam was thrown back. His whole body warmed to the point of sweating, and in
his mind's eye he traveled through the dark forest, into the castle ruins and
to that magical mirror. The images swirled faster and faster until the glass
cracked. It splintered halfway through the mirror, and then the entire object
burst into a thousand glittering pieces. Adam was thrust back into his body and
stared up at Gaston's worried expression.
"What the bloody hell was that?"
"True love's kiss…" Adam whispered. Belle hadn't broken the curse on the mirror, so that's why it still worked, but Gaston had
just freed Adam. He felt the lingering anger and abilities of the beast falling
away. His fingers uncurled as if the claws had been ripped out from his
fingers. That urge to hunt and rip things apart dissolved. Adam felt … human.
The curse was truly broken. Adam could find a real happy ending in Gaston's
arms now that the beast was gone. ~ James Cox

Most people use their energy attempting to rearrange circumstances that trigger painful emotions. Changing external circumstances will not change your rigid patterns of emotional response. That requires looking at the patterns themselves. ~ Gary Zukav

I am not sure what it is that finally allows people to just turn to each other and touch. There is some hidden trigger. There is a secret language people learn, so they can signal to stop talking and just move. I don't know it. ~ M T Anderson

Back then, living hadn't had any meaning. Every so often, without any warning or any real reason, he'd even caught himself thinking, 'Maybe I'll try dying.' He'd had one foot in the world of the dead, and yet the other foot had been chained to the world of the living, and he couldn't pull it out; he'd just looed on disinterestedly, sort of like it was all happening on the other side of some window, as the dull, vague world passed him by. Never making any more to walk out into it himself. Somewhere along the way, though, he'd stopped thinking about trying to die. He wondered when that had happened. ~ Yukako Kabei

So Septimus will be the eighty-second Lord of Stormhold," said Tertius.
"There is a proverbial saying chiefly concerned with warning against too closely calculating the numerical value of unhatched chicks," pointed out Quintus. ~ Neil Gaiman

Right. Mutation is the trigger that moves evolution forward. So, how do mutations happen? ~ Koji Suzuki

Behind every trigger is a wound in our past. ~ Jessica Moore

For most surfers, I think - for me, certainly - waves have a spooky duality. When you are absorbed in surfing them, they seem alive. They each have personalities, distinct and intricate, and quickly changing moods, to which you must react in the most intuitive, almost intimate way - too many people have likened riding waves to making love. And yet waves are of course not alive, not sentient, and the lover you reach to embrace may turn murderous without warning. It's nothing personal. That self-disemboweling death wave on the inside bar is not bloody-minded. Thinking so is just reflex anthropomorphism. Wave love is a one-way street. ~ William Finnegan

I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard. ~ Rick Riordan

I was still walking behind Mrs. Haze through the dining room when, beyond it, there came a sudden burst of greenery – "the piazza," sang out my leader, and then, without the least warning, a blue sea-wave swelled under my heart and, from a mat in a pool of sun, half-naked, kneeling, turning about on her knees, there was my Riviera love peering at me over dark glasses.

It was the same child-the same frail, honey-hued shoulders, the same silky supple bare back, the same chestnut head of hair. A polka-dotted black kerchief tied around her chest hid from my aging ape eyes, but not from the gaze of young memory, the juvenile breasts I had fondled one immortal day. And, as if I were the fairy-tale nurse of some little princess (lost, kidnapped, discovered in gypsy rags through which her nakedness smiled at the king and his hounds), I recognized the tiny dark-brown mole on her side. With awe and delight (the king crying for joy, the trumpets blaring, the nurse drunk) I saw again her lovely indrawn abdomen where my southbound mouth had briefly paused; and those puerile hips on which I had kissed the crenulated imprint left by the band of her shorts – that last mad immortal day behind the "Roches Roses." The twenty-five years I had lived since then, tapered to a palpitating point, and vanished. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I know you've always tried to do your best by me, in your own insufferable, arrogant way. You've been a decent brother, Gray. And a damn good friend."
Gray swore. He looked to the side, then back at his brother. "Fair warning, Joss. If you don't take your hand off me ... I will have to hug you."
Joss laughed. "After that speech, I'd be damn disappointed if you didn't. ~ Tessa Dare

Why did John Wilkes Booth do it? In My Thoughts Be Bloody young historian Nora Titone is one of the few to have genuinely explored this question. In doing so, she has crafted a fascinating psychological drama about one of the central events of the Civil War: the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. This book promises to stimulate lively historical debate, and will be a treat for every Civil War buff who always pondered that haunting question, "what made him pull that trigger?" Bravo on a marvelous achievement. ~ Jay Winik

To show the Holocaust in all its dimensions is to give a warning. ~ Zdzislaw Mach

He [Louis Brandeis] would have not had any patience with that great debate which you're right to kind of signal between Justice Scalia and Justice Alito about do you need a physical trespass into the home or onto the carriage in order to trigger the values of the Fourth Amendment. ~ Jeffrey Rosen

A PRESCRIPTION TO SHUT THE FUCK UP Max Booth III A Prescription for Shut the Fuck Up Refills Left: Unlimited For: Your Stupid Face TAKE THREE TABLETS DAILY OR, REALLY, ANY TIME YOU THINK ABOUT OPENING THAT GODDAMN MOUTH OF YOURS CHILLPILL 50 MG. 50MG Dr. Sick of Hearing Your Voice Discard After: You learn how to interact with actual human beings. WARNING: MAY CAUSE EMPATHY ~ Meghan Arcuri

Pain is nothing, just a warning signal from the body to the brain. Pain is no more the real thing than an X-ray photograph is the real thing. Biut of course he is wrong. ~ J.M. Coetzee

The Plowshares activists easily cut through Kitsap's perimeter fence, hiked around the huge base for four hours, ignored all the warning signs, cut through two more fences, and got to within about forty feet of the bunkers where the nuclear warheads are stored. Father Bix was eighty-one at the time. Sister Anne was eighty-three. Having survived two open-heart surgeries, Father Bix brought along his nitroglycerine tablets and paused to take some during the long hike. ~ Anonymous

It's the squares who know how to fly the fighter planes and operate the missiles and the bombs and work the M-16s. Liberals would still be fumbling with the federally mandated trigger locks. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

My point is that first loves always make sense because you don't know any better. Everything is a first and any warning bells are drowned out by the sheer novelty of it all. ~ Nicholas Sparks

The major characteristics discoverable by the stranger in Mr F.'s Aunt, were extreme severity and grim taciturnity; sometimes interrupted by a propensity to offer remarks in a deep warning voice, which, being totally uncalled for by anything said by anybody, and traceable to no association of ideas, confounded and terrified the Mind. ~ Charles Dickens

The Wall is nothing more than a talking point Trump uses to trigger his racist and xenophobic base. MAGA minions have been brainwashed by Nazi propaganda techniques to see foreigners as evil monsters who want to exterminate white America, and Trump as their protector who was sent by God. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy