Elizabeth Bowen Quotes

Evil exists. Evil is real. One of the hallmarks of evil is that it seeks to convince its victims that it exists 'out there.'

The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.

In a war, as indeed at most times, we become the ready victims of phrases.

The people of the world having once been deceived, suspect deceit in truth itself.

We wouldn’t want to live in a world where we couldn’t be conned. Because, in effect, we would then be living in a world where we mistrusted or refused to trust anyone.

I would like to share with you my plan to destroy America…. I would invest in ethnic identity and victimology. I would get them to think that their lack of success was only the fault of the majority. I would start a grievance industry.

'Stop playing the victim.' - unless you've been cast in a community theater production of 'Law & Order: SVU,' I'm not sure why anyone would choose to play victim.

It's hard to trust people when your own friends seem to think poorly of you.

Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach honesty.

The most mistrustful are often the greatest dupes.

Cynicism is the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence. It is the dishonest businessman's substitute for conscience. It is the communicator's substitute, whether he is advertising man or editor or writer, for self-respect.

As long as you feel like a victim, you are one.

People can become so blinded by their own perceived victimhood that they make victims of everyone around them.

The trouble with conspiracies, even those that are to everybody's advantage in the long run, is that they are open to abuse. If manipulators really had the powers claimed, they could win the lottery every week. I prefer to point out that they could also win a Nobel Prize for discovering fundamental physical forces hitherto unknown to science.

In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims.

Lies and victimhood make evil possible

The Russian Bolsheviks have discovered that truth does not matter so long as there is reiteration. They have no difficulty whatever in countering a fact by a lie which, if repeated often enough and loudly enough, becomes accepted by the people.

Whenever you think something or some person is ruining your life, it's you. A victimization mentality is so debilitating.

Distrust that man who tells you to distrust. He takes the measure of his own small soul, and thinks the world no larger.

Be wary when a naked person offers you his shirt

A suspicious mind always looks on the black side of things.

I'm a survivor. But I'm also victim, too. Surviving has the connotation that you've been through it, you lived through it and that's wonderful - but a victim is what I was. "Survivor" is the more healing way to look at it.

Seeing ourselves as others see us would probably confirm our worst suspicions about them.

Don't trust women, my mother said to me. Even the ugly ones will take what you thought was yours.

You just let people do what they do and look at them and give them enough rope until they do what you thought they were going to do... which is screw you over.