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Rogues Quotes

Rogues Quotes by Jonathan Swift, H. L. Mencken, Homer, William Shakespeare, Tom Peters, Ralph Waldo Emerson and many others.

He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
Jonathan Swift
When a private citizen is robbed, a worthy man is deprived of the fruits of his industry and thrift; when the government is robbed, the worst that happens is that certain rogues and loafers have less money to play with than they had before.
H. L. Mencken
One rogue leads another.
Homer
Slanders, sir, for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging think amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams.
William Shakespeare
Progress is mostly the product of rogues.
Tom Peters
Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Who calls a lawyer rogue, may find, too lateUpon one of these depends his whole estate.
George Crabbe
I have been called a Rogue Elephant, a Cannibal Shark, and a crocodile. I am none the worse. I remain a caged, and rather sardonic, lion, in a particularly contemptible and ill-run zoo.
Wyndham Lewis
Put a rogue in the limelight and he will act like an honest man.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Honesty was a cheat invented first To bind the hands of bold deserving rogues, That fools and cowards might sit safe in power, And lord it uncontroll’d above their betters.
Thomas Otway
Though I’m a rogue in talking upon Painting & Love I can be serious and honest upon any subject thoroughly pleasing to me.
Thomas Gainsborough
Like all animals, human beings have always taken what they want from nature. But we are the rogue species. We are unique in our ability to use resources on a scale and at a speed that our fellow species can’t.
Edward Burtynsky
There are two modes of establishing our reputation; to be praised by honest men, and to be abused by rogues.
Charles Caleb Colton
A process which makes one rogue cleverer than another.
Oscar Wilde
Torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit.
George W. Bush
Onscreen, Foaly rubbed his eyelids with his index fingers. “Yeah, yeah. Here we go. Captain Short goes rogue once more. Hands up who’s surprised. Anyone?
Eoin Colfer
Israel is the number one rogue state threat to Middle Eastern peace with its nuclear arms and acts of outright aggression towards its peaceful neighbours Syria and Lebanon – and genocidal actions against the marginalised Palestinians of the West Bank – and Gaza in particular.
Mohamed ElBaradei
As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We believe, as the President has indicated, that this combination of a rogue state that possesses weapons of mass destruction and has known ties to terrorist organizations, is a grave threat to the people of the United States and to other countries around the world.
Paul Cellucci
What is the world coming to, when you can’t even trust a rogue vicar and her demon lover?
Simon R. Green
I think the greatest rogues are they who talk most of their honesty.
Anthony Trollope
How can rogue terrorists in Iraq detonate bombs? They’re all too busy flying kites with their children! Hasn’t [Katrina vanden Heuvel (Queen of the May at the fun-loving Nation magazine)] seen Fahrenheit 9/11?
Ann Coulter
I never thought I’d say I’m so very glad you’re a rogue instead of an angel. But I suppose it’s all right as long as you’re my rogue – Rebecca –
Johanna Lindsey
A rogue does not laugh in the same way that an honest man does; a hypocrite does not shed the tears of a man of good faith. All falsehood is a mask; and however well made the mask may be, with a little attention we may always succeed in distinguishing it from the true face.
Alexandre Dumas
Since we have literally targeted our enemies, the Pentagon assumes that, sooner or later, rogues will take out our cities, presumably from spaceships.
Gore Vidal
SkyClan’s destiny is that we will never live in isolation from other cats. We’re not like forest Clans, we can’t shut ourselves off entirely from kittypets or rogues. And visitors will be welcome.
Erin Hunter
A rogue is a roundabout fool.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Rogues in rags are kept in countenance by rogues in ruffles.
Alexander Pope
The CIA is absolutely out of control. The CIA has been on a killing spree… The CIA has become a death squad and to see these films [ like Zero Dark Thirty] get so much acclaim at the time when the CIA is in its rogue killing phase is very disturbing.
Medea Benjamin
North Korea has taught a great lesson to all the countries in the world, especially the rogue countries of dictatorships or whatever: if you don’t want to be invaded by America, get some nuclear weapons.
Michael Moore
Computers can bully us. A slow and unreliable system will bring even the toughest soul to their knees as they find themselves completely defenseless against the erratic whims of their rogue machine.
Lou Ferrigno
Nothing spoils lunch any quicker than a rogue meatball rampaging through your spaghetti.
Jim Davis
No machines will ever truly fully figure the brain out, because the brain’s performance is constantly altered or else constrained by this inanimate, rogue artifact you can’t control, namely, speech.
Tom Wolfe
Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk remains. ‘Tis the same with common natures:
Use ’em kindly, they rebel;
But be rough as nutmeg-graters,
And the rogues obey you well.
Aaron Hill
It is with honesty in one particular as with wealth,–those that have the thing care less about the credit of it than those who have it not. No poor man can well afford to be thought so, and the less of honesty a finished rogue possesses the less he can afford to be supposed to want it.
Charles Caleb Colton
Many a man would have turned rogue if he knew how.
William Hazlitt
A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.
Jonathan Swift
My own favorite is something called Rogue Male.
Peter O’Toole
Rogues, would you live forever?
Frederick the Great
There are two way of establishing a reputation, one to be praised by honest people and the other to be accused by rogues. It is best, however, to secure the first one, because it will always be accompanied by the latter.
Charles Caleb Colton
A rich rogue nowadays is fit company for any gentleman; and the world, my dear, hath not such a contempt for roguery as you imagine.
John Gay
For Hell and the foul fiend that rules
God’s everlasting fiery jails
(Devised by rogues, dreaded by fools),
With his grim, grisly dog that keeps the door,
Are senseless stories, idle tales,
Dreams, whimseys, and no more.
John Wilmot
Indeed it is generally the case that men are readier to call rogues clever than simpletons honest, and are ashamed of being the second as they are proud of being the first.
Thucydides
For storytellers, financiers make ideal rogues. The easiest way to make characters unappealing is to make them rich – shorthand for spoiled, picky, superior, and cold-hearted.
Lionel Shriver
Even if certain rogue countries do things we wish nobody did, it doesn’t necessarily mean that their foolishness should justify our following suit.
Leon Kass
I am a great artist and I know it. It’s because of what I am that I have endured so much suffering, so as to pursue my vocation, otherwise I would consider myself a rogue – which is what many people think I am, for that matter.
Paul Gauguin
Why does the typical adventuring group consist of a wizard, a warrior, and a rogue, anyway? It should really be a wizard, a warrior, and a rich guy. Otherwise who’s going to pay for all the swords and spells and hotel rooms?
Robin Sloan
It’s a fool’s life, a rogue’s life, and a good life if you keep laughing all the way to the grave.
Edward Abbey
Roguery is thought by some to be cunning and laughable: it is neither; it is devilish.
Thomas Carlyle
What is commonly called friendship is only a little more honor among rogues.
Henry David Thoreau
Rogue Squadron doesn’t run. Unless we really, really have to.
Aaron Allston
Nothing is more disgusting than the majority: because it consists of a few powerful predecessors, of rogues who adapt themselves, of weak who assimilate themselves, and the masses who imitate without knowing at all what they want.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A nation has honor precisely as it has fleas – on this or that body. The statesman who talks of honor – unless he means something else, quite different – is a rogue.
Storm Jameson
Men are much more unwilling to have their weaknesses and their imperfections known, than their crimes; and, if you hint to a man that you think him silly, ignorant, or even ill-bred or awkward, he will hate you more, and longer, than if you tell him plainly that you think him a rogue.
Lord Chesterfield
To be an effective criminal defense counsel, an attorney must be prepared to be demanding, outrageous, irreverent, blasphemous, a rogue, a renegade, and a hated, isolated, and lonely person – few love a spokesman for the despised and the damned.
Clarence Darrow
The state does not demand justice of its members, but thinks that it succeeds very well with the least degree of it, hardly more than rogues practice; and so do the neighborhood and the family. What is commonly called Friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues.
Henry David Thoreau
Rogue states never turn out to be quite the pariahs they are deemed. They are only able to cause, or at least threaten to cause, mayhem because they enjoy the covert support – usually by means of technology transfers – of one or more major powers within the charmed circle of global ‘good guys’.
Margaret Thatcher
Braggarts and rogues, dogs and scoundrels, drive them out, Harry Potter, see them off!
J. K. Rowling
I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest.
Alexandre Dumas
This kind of mixing of ingredients happens all the time at fast-food places… You know when you order french fries and there’s a rogue onion ring at the bottom. You know, at first you’re alarmed but you eat it. It all comes from the same place! You just have to go for it.
Chelsea Handler
Rogue internet pharmacies continue to pose a serious threat to the health and safety of Americans. Simply put, a few unethical physicians and pharmacists have become drug suppliers to a nation.
Dianne Feinstein
Rogues are always found out in some way. Whoever is a wolf will act like a wolf, that is most certain.
Jean de La Fontaine
There is nothing but roguery to be found in villainous men.
William Shakespeare
Chicken, yeah, that’s me. I’d rather fight an old rogue-vamp in my underwear, with my bare hands, than deal with relationship problems.
Faith Hunter
China is one of the world’s greatest proliferators of weapons of mass destruction to these rogue nations
Fred Thompson
We may yet work up to some serious shooting war, or maybe some acts of urban genocide committed with rogue nuclear weapons. But if that were the case, why would we call that “9/11”? If Washington disappeared in a mushroom cloud, we’d give that huge event a different name.
Bruce Sterling
All institutions have lapses, even great ones, especially by individual rogue employees – famously in recent years at The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the three original TV networks.
Carl Bernstein
One of the strengths of the DC Universe has been the strength of the rogues’ gallery. Often times they’re as famous – if not more infamous – than our heroes.
Jim Lee
Is it not true that the clever rogue is like the runner who runs well for the first half of the course, but flags before reaching the goal: he is quick off the mark, but ends in disgrace and slinks away crestfallen and uncrowned. The crown is the prize of the really good runner who perseveres to the end.
Plato
Besides Spiderman and Batman, ‘The Flash’ has, hands down, the best villains. You could do a TV show about The Rogues, and there’s enough depth and interest and oddly honor amongst those characters that I think people will watch that show.
Andrew Kreisberg
There are benefits in the sense that there’s still a certain level of confidence. But there are liabilities because you can coordinate and manipulate better as the instruments of oversight are more under your control. You don’t have so many rogue operations.
Ted Gup
This one fact the world hates; that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The First Amendment applies to rogues and scoundrels. You don’t lose your First Amendment rights because of a sleazy personality, or even for having committed a crime. Felons in jail are protected by the First Amendment.
Naomi Wolf
Dirty Harry, for example. Clint Eastwood was not a rogue cop. He was a maverick cop, but he was a good guy.
Charlton Heston
It is only rogues who feel the restraints of law.
J. G. Holland
Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
Montesquieu
The president feels not only do we need to change these rogue regimes, but even our friendly allies, who really basically have, sort of, benign dictatorships, need to get with the program if they want to have long-term security and prosperity from terrorism.
Mitch McConnell
The danger of terrorists and rogue states is compounded by the proliferation of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons.
Joe Lieberman
Military intervention to maintain the global status quo will become a constant feature of international relations, whether this is justified in terms of fighting drugs, fighting terrorism, containing ‘rogue states’, opposing ‘Islamic fundamentalism’, or containing China.
Walden Bello
A few hours’ mountain climbing make of a rogue and a saint two fairly equal creatures. Tiredness is the shortest path to equality and fraternity – and sleep finally adds to them liberty.
Friedrich Nietzsche