We're all killers at heart . . . . I have never taken anybody's life, but I have often read obituary notices with considerable satisfaction.
Interpretation
This quote suggests an underlying darkness in human nature, highlighting our morbid curiosity about death.
Clarence Darrow's quote reflects on the inherent tendencies within humans to be fascinated by death and destruction. Though he denies taking a life, he admits to experiencing satisfaction when reading about others' deaths, which points to a paradox in human morality, where empathy and curiosity can coexist with darker impulses.
In practice
In a philosophical debate about the morality of human nature.
With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in men, than any other association of men.
Do I need to argue to Your Honor that cruelty only breeds cruelty? That hatred only causes hatred; that if there is any way to soften this human heart which is hard enough at its best, if there is any way to kill evil and hatred and all that goes with it, it is not through evil and hatred and cruelty; it is through charity, and love, and understanding?
Chase after the truth like all hell.
No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.
Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the brain and soul of man. She will have nothing from him who will not give her all. She knows that his pretended love serves but to betray. But when once the fierce heat of her quenchless, lustrous eyes have burned into the victim's heart, he will know no other smile but hers.
The trouble with law is lawyers.
And over your unconsecrated head you'll hear the howling wolves lament their fate and yours the livelong year.
You have to address anger, fear, and then to think about what the alternatives are: hope, faith, a certain kind of brotherly love. And then you have to set yourself to cultivate those.
All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance.
Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, since things come first and names afterwards.
Bolivia's majority Indian population was always excluded, politically oppressed and culturally alienated. Our national wealth, our raw materials, was plundered. Indios were once treated like animals here. In the 1930s and 40s, they were sprayed with DDT to kill the vermin on their skin and in their hair whenever they came into the city.
Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane... There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions.
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