Nothing can describe the withering horror of this. You feel lost, sick at heart before such unmasked hatred, not so much because it threatens you as because it shows humans in such an inhuman light. You see a kind of insanity, something so obscene the very obscenity of it (rather than its threat) terrifies you. It was so new I could not take my eyes from the man's face. I felt like saying: "What in God's name are you doing to yourself? . John Howard Griffin
About This Quote

This is a quote from the movie "The Deer Hunter" about the Vietnam War. A man is unable to cope with the horrors of war and starts to go insane after seeing a horrible accident. Everyone around him tries to warn him of the horrors he is seeing and help him realize that there is no such thing as Vietnam, but he does not listen and goes on to commit suicide. This quote can be used to describe someone who cannot understand what is happening in the world today and how it affects them personally.

Source: Black Like Me

Some Similar Quotes
  1. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. - Unknown

  2. The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. - Elie Wiesel

  3. The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy that loves you. - Markus Zusak

  4. In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way... - Orson Scott Card

  5. More smiling, less worrying. More compassion, less judgment. More blessed, less stressed. More love, less hate. - Roy T. Bennett

More Quotes By John Howard Griffin
  1. He was one of those young men who possess an impressive store of facts, but no truths.

  2. The author meets an African-American who observes that his fellows who begin with aspirations to a good education, solid career, and the raising of a family slowly lose that incentive. Even those who have a college education, he observes, need to take menial jobs and...

  3. The author explains that some find recourse from injustice in literature and art but that these tend to deepen sensitivity to injustice rather than dull it.

  4. Nothing can describe the withering horror of this. You feel lost, sick at heart before such unmasked hatred, not so much because it threatens you as because it shows humans in such an inhuman light. You see a kind of insanity, something so obscene the...

  5. How can you render the duties of justice to men when you're afraid they'll be so unaware of justice they may destroy you? ...especially since their attitude toward their own race is a destructive one.

Related Topics