Quotes about desperation

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.

— William S. Burroughs

What is most original in a man's nature is often that which is most desperate. Thus new systems are forced on the world by men who simply cannot bear the pain of living with what is. Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. If Hitler had been born in Nazi Germany he wouldn't have been content to enjoy the atmosphere.

— Leonard Cohen

Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Desperation is like stealing from the Mafia: you stand a good chance of attracting the wrong attention.

— Doug Horton

There exists, at the bottom of all abasement and misfortune, a last extreme which rebels and joins battle with the forces of law and respectability in a desperate struggle, waged partly by cunning and partly by violence, at once sick and ferocious, in which it attacks the prevailing social order with the pin-pricks of vice and the hammer-blows of crime.

— Victor Hugo

My interest in desperation lies only in that sometimes I find myself having become desperate. Very seldom do I start out that way. I can see of course that, in the abstract, thinking and all activity is rather desperate.

— Willem De Kooning

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

— Henry David Thoreau

She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.

— Oscar Wilde

There is nobody more terrible than the desperate.

— Alexander Suvorov