Compelled Quotes

1. "While some misuse their freedom to perpetrate evil, millions respond by feeling compelled to use their freedom to do good."
Author: Adam Hamilton

2. "I would, but I can't. Like a cord between us, it binds me to you. where you go, i must follow. if you go to far, i am compelled to search for you until i find you. if i try to run, i would freeze in my steps and be made to turn back."
Author: Alexia Purdy

3. "There's got to be mnore to life than just living," Foyl said to the robot. "Then find it for yourself, sir. Don't ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts.""Why can't we all move forward together?""Because you're all different. You're not lemmings. Some must lead, and hope that the rest will follow.""Who leads?""The men who must... driven men, compelled men.""Freak men.""You're all freaks, sir. But you always have been freaks. Life is a freak. That's its hope and glory.""Thank you very much.""My pleasure, sir.""You've saved the day.""Always a lovely day somewhere, sir," the robot beamed. Then it fizzed, jangled, and collapsed."
Author: Alfred Bester

4. "All young people believed they were immortal, and he had personal experience of the methods they used to cull themselves - base-jumping, sky-diving, hard drugs, alcohol. Over the years he'd come to see solid sense in the ways so-called savage peoples formalised their rituals of manhood; without such regulation, young men seemed compelled to invent their own, even more lethal, rites of passage."
Author: Alison Fell

5. "Um…" Simon started slowly "at the risk of stating the obvious I feel I have to point out that Interpol has the world's best database of international criminals.""That's the idea " Gabrielle said with a nod. "And I feel compelled to remind you that we're international criminals " he finished but Kat was already smiling."Don't worry Simon. It's not like anyone in there knows it was a bunch of teenagers who robbed the Henley."
Author: Ally Carter

6. "The Drake's didn't lure drunk college students out of the bars and compel them to forget being fed on. Well, maybe Quinn used to, but I could guarantee none of those girls needed to be compelled."
Author: Alyxandra Harvey

7. "Even though I don't believe in God, I feel strangely compelled to fight the atheist label."
Author: Amber Heard

8. "All of them -- Hattie and Willie and Evelyn and even ruined, crazy Walter -- were little lights; sparks flying upward in dark places, trying to stay alight though they were compelled toward ash. They were nearly extinguished one moment, then orange and luminous the next."
Author: Ayana Mathis

9. "If everybody were compelled to have the proper kind of education, we'd have a better world. If we force people to do good, they will be free to be happy."
Author: Ayn Rand

10. "Do what you feel compelled to do and follow in the direction that your heart feels pulled.Whatever your calling is, FIND IT."
Author: Bambi Dean

11. "Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage : for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune : so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse."
Author: Baruch Spinoza

12. "Surely, I must at all times attempt to obey the law of the state. But when the will of God and the will of the state conflict, I am compelled to follow the will of God."
Author: Bayard Rustin

13. "Individuals who speak languages other than English, who speak patois as well as standard English, find it a necessary aspect of self-affirmation not to feel compelled to chose one voice over another, not to claim one as more authentic but rather to construct social realities that celebrate, acknowledge and affirm differences, variety."
Author: Bell Hooks

14. "I shan't take advantage," Lucius promised seriously. "And she can't be forced into a marriage, of course. It is a new century. Unfortunately. But I am afraid that I am compelled to pursue this courtship until Antanasia realizes her place at my side. As she will." I will not."
Author: Beth Fantaskey

15. "Desire overwhelmed me once she had gone. But it was not a desire for Homer. I had to return to the library. I could already smell the books' muskiness and in my mind turned over pages with as many differing textures as a forest; pages that were brittle and fragile which had to be coaxed to turn; pages that were soft and scented, presenting their words as if the were a gift in the palm of a hand, and pages that fell open heavily of their own accord as if weighted by the importance of their message. But more than anything else I was compelled by their mystery, by all the stories they had yet to tell me.'I have to go to the library, Homer. I have to be with the books."
Author: Christine Aziz

16. "[O]ne has to have endured a few decades before wanting, let alone needing, to embark on the project of recovering lost life. And I think it may be possible to review 'the chronicles of wasted time.' William Morris wrote in The Dream of John Ball that men fight for things and then lose the battle, only to win it again in a shape and form that they had not expected, and then be compelled again to defend it under another name. We are all of us very good at self-persuasion and I strive to be alert to its traps, but a version of what Hegel called 'the cunning of history' is a parallel commentary that I fight to keep alive in my mind."
Author: Christopher Hitchens

17. "Her eyes were a rich dark brown that were so deep, they reminded me of my sleepless nights, awake, staring into complete darkness. I felt compelled to look deeper, searching for something inside her, but her soul was covered and her eyes would not show me."
Author: Cristina Martin

18. "And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes--a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder."
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

19. "Competition permits the capitalist to deduct from the price of labour power that which the family earns from its own little garden or field; the workers are compelled to accept any piece wages offered to them, because otherwise they would get nothing at all, and they could not live from the products of their small-scale agriculture alone, and because, on the other hand, it is just this agriculture and landownership which chains them to the spot and prevents them from looking around for other employment."
Author: Friedrich Engels

20. "You must be compelled by an inner force to read books, listen to music, and view films which serve only to send you spiraling deeper into the bottomless pit of frustration."
Author: Gary Reilly

21. "We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what."
Author: George Santayana

22. "I guess each of us, at some time, finds one person with whom we are compelled towards absolute honesty, one person whose good opinion of us becomes a substitute for the broader opinion of the world. And that opinion becomes more important than all our sneaky, sleazy schemes of greed, lust, self-aggrandizement, whatever we are up to while lying the world into believing we are just plain nice folks."
Author: Glen Cook

23. "Now that I was compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of shoelaces."
Author: Harper Lee

24. "So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre."
Author: Henry David Thoreau

25. "As far as it's ideal that you get helped by people, it doesn't mean they are compelled to make your dreams come true without your own efforts."
Author: Israelmore Ayivor

26. "Ever he would wander, selfcompelled, to the extreme limit of his cometary orbit, beyond the fixed stars and variable suns and telescopic planets, astronomical waifs and strays, to the extreme boundary of space, passing from land to land, among peoples, amid events."
Author: James Joyce

27. "I can only tell you that I've done this thing, and was compelled, somehow, to do so."
Author: Jasper Siegel Seneschal

28. "We don't have sources who are dissidents on other sources. Should they come forward, that would be a tricky situation for us. But we're presumably acting in such a way that people feel morally compelled to continue our mission, not to screw it up."
Author: Julian Assange

29. "He wasn't sure why he felt so compelled to follow the singing, or why he needed to bring the foot with him, but he knew the two phenomena were connected. And in the midst of the mystery lay his father. His father's sanity. Nicholas was sure of this."
Author: Kevin Wallis

30. "As a journalist, I am compelled to know the answers.""As a girl, I am compelled to protect what's left of my manicure," Petra said."
Author: Libba Bray

31. "Although no one ever seemed to look long enough at Evie to really notice her, she was actually quite beautiful—perhaps even more so than Annabelle—but in a completely unconventional way. She was freckled and red-haired, with large, round blue eyes and a mobile, full-lipped mouth that was utterly out of fashion. Her well-endowed figure was breathtaking, though the excessively modest gowns she was compelled to wear were distinctly unflattering. Moreover, her slump-shouldered posture did little to advertise her attractions."
Author: Lisa Kleypas

32. "We must be so heavenly minded that we are compelled to be of earthly good!"
Author: Marilynn Dawson

33. "But birth control can also be compelled by sinful motivations. These can include putting lesser priorities like career above higher priorities like family or greedily wanting to make as much income as possible to the exclusion of everything else, and not incur the costs of child raising; being selfish and not wanting to have to care for a child; or immaturely not wanting to take on the responsibility that good parenting requires."
Author: Mark Driscoll

34. "I am a libertine, but I am not a criminal nor a murderer, and since I am compelled to set my apology alongside my vindication, I shall therefore say that it might well be possible that those who condemn me as unjustly as I have been might themselves be unable to offset the infamies by good works as clearly established as those I can contrast to my errors. And yet you who today tyrannize me so cruelly, you do not believe it either: your vengeance has beguiled your mind, you have proceeded blindly to tyrannize, but your heart knows mine, it judges it more fairly, and it knows full well it is innocent."
Author: Marquis De Sade

35. "Basically, I have been compelled by curiosity."
Author: Mary Leakey

36. "The force of Dante's poetry resonated most in those who did not confess the Catholic faith, for believers would inevitably have quibbles with Dante's theology. But for those most distant theologically, Dante's faith was so perfect, so unyielding, that a reader found himself compelled by the poetry to take it all to heart."
Author: Matthew Pearl

37. "In modern societies, some members of ethnic minority groups do not want to feel compelled to heed the voices of their communities when participating as citizens."
Author: Michael Kenny

38. "The strongest oak of the forest is not the one that is protected from the storm and hidden from the sun. It's the one that stands in the open where it is compelled to struggle for its existence against the winds and rains and the scorching sun."
Author: Napoleon Hill

39. "While you'll feel compelled to charge forward it's often a gentle step back that will reveal to you where you and what you truly seek."
Author: Rasheed Ogunlaru

40. "I tell aspiring writers that you have to find what you MUST write. When you find it, you will know, because the subject matter won't let you go. It's not enough to write simply because you think it would be neat to be published. You have to be compelled to write. If you're not, nothing else that you do matters."
Author: Rick Riordan

41. "When talented people write badly, it's generally for one of two reasons: Either they're blinded by an idea they feel compelled to prove of they're driven by an emotion they must express. When talented people write well, it is generally for this reason: They're moved by a desire to touch the audience."
Author: Robert McKee

42. "Woman is shut up in a kitchen or in a boudoir, and astonishment is expressed that her horizon is limited. Her wings are clipped, and it is found deplorable that she cannot fly. Let but the future be opened to her, and she will no longer be compelled to linger in the present."
Author: Simone De Beauvoir

43. "Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the world? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? And If I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I want to see him."
Author: Søren Kierkegaard

44. "His argument runs like this: there is no goodness without free will. Without the ability to freely choose-or reject-the good, an individual possesses no control over his own soul, and without that control, there is not possibility of attaining grace. In the language of Christianity, a beliver cannot be saved unless the choice to follow Christ is freely made, unless the option not to follow him genuinely exists. Compelled belief is no belief at all."
Author: Thomas C. Foster

45. "A mere enumeration of government activity is evidence -- often the sole evidence offered -- of "inadequate" nongovernment institutions, whose "inability" to cope with problems "obviously" required state intervention. Government is depicted as acting not in response to its own political incentives and constraints but because it is compelled to do so by concern for the public interest: it "cannot keep its hands off" when so "much is at stake," when emergency "compels" it to supersede other decision making processes. Such a tableau simple ignores the possibility that there are political incentives for the production and distribution of "emergencies" to justify expansions of power as well as to use episodic emergencies as a reason for creating enduring government institutions."
Author: Thomas Sowell

46. "We may be indifferent to the death penalty and not declare ourselves either way so long as we have not seen a guillotine with our own eyes. But when we do, the shock is violent, and we are compelled to choose sides, for or against... Death belongs to God alone."
Author: Victor Hugo

47. "I often think of you all, one cannot do what one wants in life. The more you feel attached to a spot, the more ruthlessly you are compelled to leave it, but the memories remain, and one remembers - as in a looking glass, darkly - one's absent friends."
Author: Vincent Van Gogh

48. "So the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it -- perhaps as much more as the roots are more vital than grafts. It is good that new ideas should be heard, for the sake of the few that can be used; but it is also good that new ideas should be compelled to go through the mill of objection, opposition, and contumely; this is the trial heat which innovations must survive before being allowed to enter the human race. It is good that the old should resist the young, and that the young should prod the old; out of this tension, as out of the strife of the sexes and the classes, comes a creative tensile strength, a stimulated development, a secret and basic unity and movement of the whole."
Author: Will Durant

49. "It has an unhappy effect upon the human understanding and temper, for a man to be compelled in his gravest investigation of an argument, to consider, not what is true, but what is convenient."
Author: William Godwin

50. "Eisenhower has been much criticized for his failure publicly to endorse the Court's decision. But he felt that doing so would set an undesirable precedent. If a president endorsed decisions he agreed with, might he feel compelled to oppose decisions he did not agree with? And what would that do to the rule of law? "The Supreme Court has spoken and I am sworn to uphold ... the constitutional processes.... I will obey."3"
Author: William J. Bennett

Compelled Quotes Pictures