Leadership is among other things the ability to inflict pain and get away with it - short-term pain for long-term gain.

Wit is a weapon. Jokes are a masculine way of inflicting superiority. But humor is the pursuit of a gentle grin usually in solitude.

For at the same time many people seem eager to extend the circle of our moral consideration to animals in our factory farms and laboratories we are inflicting more suffering on more animals than at any time in history.

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

Forgiveness is not always easy. At times it feels more painful than the wound we suffered to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet there is no peace without forgiveness.

I've always hoped 'Chopped' would telegraph our enormous affection and love and admiration for chefs and food but at the same time we are inflicting extraordinary cruelty on them.

I always say three things make a writer: inspiration obviously perspiration doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.

We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal private solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict.

When we're dealing with the people in our family - no matter how annoying or gross they may be no matter how self-inflicted their suffering may appear no matter how afflicted they are with ignorance prejudice or nose hairs - we give from the deepest parts of ourselves.

Only a humanity to whom death has become as indifferent as its members that has itself died can inflict it administratively on innumerable people.

Washington's answer to a self-inflicted financial crisis reminded Americans why they so deeply distrust the political class. The 'fiscal cliff' process was secretive and sloppy and the nation's so-called leadership lacked the political courage to address our root problems: joblessness and debt.

Violence is a very ugly thing. Violence is often so casual on film and made to look so cool and so sexy but violence is a repulsive repugnant act that human beings inflict on each other. It shouldn't seem to be cool and sexy ever really.

To injure an opponent is to injure yourself. To control aggression without inflicting injury is the Art of Peace.