Cormac McCarthy Quotes

In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was. It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don't believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God--who knows all that can be known--seems powerless to change.

If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another.

Even if we remember the past, odds are good we'll still repeat it.

I believe the future is only the past again, entered through another gate.

Unfortunately, we don't seem to learn from history, do we? And you'd think we would.

I name the Assassins, who are to be cursed and fled. They sell themselves, are thirsty for blood, kill the innocent for a price and care nothing for either life or salvation.

We're such a funky species. We're so violent, so greedy - this is how we roll. But what are we going to do about it? How do we move forward given who we are? Because situations don't come out of nothing. They come out of certain conditions.

I think history is just so cyclical.

The ability to forget the past enables people to free themselves gradually from the pain they once suffered; but it also often makes them repeat the mistakes of their predecessors.

You want Paradise, you gotta build it on war, on blood, on envy and naked greed.

Blood will have blood.

And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand.

Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.

I stood looking down out of the window. The street seemed miles down. Suddenly I felt as if I'd flung myself out of the window. I could see myself lying on the pavement. Then I seemed to be standing by the body on the pavement. I was two people. Blood and brains were scattered everywhere. I knelt down and began licking up the blood and brains

He's just, your cousin, ay, abhorrently, He'd wash his hands in blood, to keep them clean.

All wars are civil ones; for it is still man spilling his own blood, tearing out his own bowels.

There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise.

Either you will be under the blood or you will place the blood under you.

Nothing [the demon] could think up was half as bad as the stuff [people] thought up themselves. They seemed to have a talent for it. It was built into their design somehow. They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and then devoted most of their energies to making it worse.

Those who don't remember the past are doomed to repeat it.

Keep your vampire mitts off me. I'm not your friggin' blood toy.

Evil conquered?' said Gwydion. 'You have learned much, but learn this last and hardest of lessons. You have conquered only the enchantments of evil. That was the easiest of your tasks, only a beginning, not an ending. Do you believe evil itself to be so quickly overcome? Not so long as men still hate and slay each other, when greed and anger goad them. Against these even a flaming sword cannot prevail, but only that portion of good in all men's hearts whose flame can never be quenched.

If you don't believe in the innate unreasonableness of human beings, just try raising children.

She believed, and was entitled to believe, I must say, that all human beings were evil by nature, whether tormentors or victims, or idle standers-by. They could only create meaningless tragedies, she said, since they weren't nearly intelligent enough to accomplish all the good they were meant to do.

One of mankind's problems is we keep committing the same errors.