These scoundrel quotes will inspire you. Scoundrel, a dishonest or unscrupulous person; a rogue.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging scoundrel quotes, scoundrel sayings, and scoundrel proverbs.
Best Scoundrel Quotes
- “No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.” ~ Barbara Ehrenreich
- “Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that
tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels.” ~ Albert Einstein - “The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” ~ H. L. Mencken
-
“No scoundrel is so stupid as to not find a reason for his vile conduct.” ~ Shakti Gawain
- “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” ~ Samuel Johnson
- “No great scoundrel is ever uninteresting.” ~ Murray Kempton
- “My old man claimed that the more complicated the law the more opportunity for scoundrels.” ~ Robert A. Heinlein
-
“If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.” ~ Jonathan Swift
- “There are many occasions when the highest praise one can receive is the attack of some given scoundrel.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt
- “Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
- “What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?” ~ W. Clement Stone
-
“Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.” ~ George Washington
- “There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.” ~ Vladimir Lenin
- “Some of the craftiest scoundrels that ever walked this earth . . . will gravely jot down in diaries the events of every day, and keep a regular debtor and creditor account with heaven, which shall always show a floating balance in their own favour.” ~ Charles Dickens
- “One of the great attractions of patriotism – it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.” ~ Aldous Huxley
-
“I’ve always thought respectable people scoundrels, and I look anxiously at my face every morning for signs of my becoming a scoundrel.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “I don’t know what a scoundrel is like, but I know what a respectable man is like, and it’s enough to make one’s flesh creep.” ~ Joseph de Maistre
- “Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels.” ~ Lillian Hellman
- “Every man over forty is a scoundrel.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
-
“In argument about moral problems, relativism is the first refuge of the scoundrel.” ~ Roger Scruton
- “He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.” ~ William Blake
- “Religion is all-too-often a refuge for scoundrels.” ~ Neal Boortz
- “I’d never painted anything before. I was quite content to take other people’s work since I didn’t care anyway about the subject matter. I approached subject matter as a scoundrel. I had nothing to say about it whatsoever. I only wanted to make these exciting paintings.” ~ Tom Wesselmann
-
“A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel’s work and is on the road to being a scoundrel.” ~ Jose Marti
- “The Fundamentalist Christians have told me that I am a slave of Satan and should have my demons expelled with an exorcism. The Fundamentalist Materialists inform me that I am a liar, charlatan, fraud and scoundrel. Aside from this minor difference, the letters are astoundingly similar. Both groups share the same crusading zeal and the same lack of humor, charity and common human decency. These intolerable cults have served to confirm me in my agnosticism by presenting further evidence to support my contention that when dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases.” ~ Robert Anton Wilson
- “Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o’clock is a scoundrel.” ~ Samuel Johnson
- “”The feeling of patriotism – It is an immoral feeling because, instead of confessing himself a son of God . . . or even a free man guided by his own reason, each man under the influence of patriotism confesses himself the son of his fatherland and the slave of his government, and commits actions contrary to his reason and conscience.” ~ Leo Tolstoy
-
“I’m an advocate of the great Dr. Johnson, the English man of letters who said that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel.” ~ George Galloway
- “In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.” ~ Mark Twain
- “I’ve looked that old scoundrel death in the eye many times but this time I think he has me on the ropes.” ~ Douglas MacArthur
- “Public office is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” ~ Boies Penrose
-
“To conquer demons, first conquer your mind. When the mind is subdued, demons withdraw obediently. To control knaves, first control your own mood. When your mood is balanced, scoundrels cannot get at you.” ~ Zicheng Hong
- “Even the best intentioned of great men need a few scoundrels around them; there are some things you cannot ask an honest ma to do.” ~ Jean de la Bruyere
- “The first derivative is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” ~ Charles P. Kindleberger
- “Force always attracts men of low morality.” ~ Albert Einstein
-
“In revolutions authority remains with the greatest scoundrels.” ~ Georges Danton
- “General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocite, flatterer.” ~ William Blake
- “More than once I was tormented by the thought that if Providence had put me in the place of the incapable of criminal incompetents or scoundrels in our propaganda service, our battle with Destiny would have taken a different turn.” ~ Adolf Hitler
- “What are the differences between Mark Zuckerberg and me? I give private information on corporations to you for free, and I’m a villain. Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he’s Man of the Year.” ~ Julian Assange
-
“A minority group has ‘arrived’ only when it has the right to produce some fools and scoundrels without the entire group paying for it.” ~ Carl T. Rowan
- “Safety is the last refuge of the scoundrel!” ~ Michael Crichton
- “Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.” ~ Michael Crichton
- “To be with another woman, that is French. To be caught, that is American.” ~ Steve Martin
-
“Patriotism is the last refuge of the sculptor.” ~ William Plomer
- “One of the great attractions of patriotism” ~ Aldous Huxley
- “He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars.” ~ William Blake
- “Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.” ~ Ambrose Bierce
-
“When a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism – how passionately I hate them!” ~ Albert Einstein
- “Any number of scoundrels, having money enough to start with, can establish themselves as a ‘government’; because, with money, they can hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort more money; and also compel general obedience to their will.” ~ Lysander Spooner
- “The pleasure of being a scoundrel can be adequately savored in silence.” ~ Remy de Gourmont
-
“There’s no god. He who created god was a fool; he who spreads his name is a scoundrel and he who worships him is a barbarian.” ~ Periyar E. V. Ramasamy
- “No tin-hat brigade of goose-stepping vigilantes or bibble-babbling mob of blackguarding and corporation paid scoundrels will prevent the onward march of labor, or divert its purpose to play its natural and rational part in the development of the economic, political and social life of our nation.” ~ John L. Lewis , Politics scoundrel quotes
- “Angel? Angels didn’t sit on the lap of wicked scoundrels-not unless they were the fallen kind.” ~ Sabrina Jeffries
- “I’ve always believed in the old-fashioned way: When you’ve got scoundrels in office, you vote ’em out.” ~ Rush Limbaugh
-
“Pay attention to minute particulars. Take care of the little ones. Generalization and abstraction are the plea of the hypocrite, scoundrel, and knave.” ~ William Blake
- “Nothing is more odious than the majority, for it consists of a few powerful leaders, a certain number of accommodating scoundrels and submissive weaklings, and a mass of men who trot after them without thinking, or knowing their own minds.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- “He’s a scoundrel, young Brad Pitt, who led me, his elderly colleague, astray more than once.” ~ Peter O’Toole
- “Forgive me….I called you an idiot. I spoke too hastily. You are not. Had I given it more thought, I would have called you a scoundrel.” ~ Lloyd Alexander
-
“It is no tragedy to do ungrateful people favors, but it is unbearable to be indebted to a scoundrel.” ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld
- “You are a set of deceitful scoundrels! But bless you! I give in. I will take Gildor’s advice. If the danger were not so dark, I should dance for joy. Even so, I cannot help feeling happy; happier than I have felt for a long time.” ~ J. R. R. Tolkien
- “An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels. For this reason I have always been passionately opposed to systems such as we see in Italy and Russia to-day.” ~ Albert Einstein
-
“We begin as dupes and end as scoundrels.” ~ Antoinette du Ligier de la Garde Deshoulieres
- “I write, and I feel how the correct and precise use of words is sometimes like a remedy to an illness. Like a contraption for purifying the air, I breathe in and exhale the murkiness and manipulations of linguistic scoundrels and language rapists of all shades and colors. I write and I feel how the tenderness and intimacy I maintain with language, with its different layers, its eroticism and humor and soul, give me back the person I used to be, me, before my self became nationalized and confiscated by the conflict, by governments and armies, by despair and tragedy.” ~ David Grossman
- “Every man who has declared that some other man is an ass or a scoundrel, gets angry when the other man conclusively shows that the assertion was erroneous.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
