Aaron Hotchner quotes from Criminal Minds

Aaron Hotchner

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." Friedrich Nietzsche

Aaron Hotchner

Poet Haniel Long said, "So much of what is best in us is bound up in our love of family that it remains the measure of our stability because it measures our sense of loyalty."

Aaron Hotchner

W. S. Gilbert wrote, "It's love that makes the world go round." And if that's true, then the world spun a little faster with Haley in it. Haley was my best friend since we were in high school. We certainly had our struggles, but if there's one thing we agreed on unconditionally, it was our love and commitment to our son Jack. Haley's love for Jack was joyous and fierce. That fierceness is why she isn't here today. A mother's love is an unrivaled force of nature. And we can all learn much from the way Haley lived her life. Haley's death causes each of us to stop and take stock of our lives; to measure who we are and what we've become. I don't have all those answers for myself, but I know who Haley was. She was the woman who died protecting the child we brought into this world together. And I will make sure that Jack grows up knowing who his mother was and how she loved and protected him and how much I loved her. If Haley were with us today, she would ask us not to mourn her death but to celebrate her life. She would tell us... She would tell us to love our families unconditionally and to hold them close, because in the end, they are all that matter. I met Haley at the tryouts of our high school's production of The Pirates of Penzance. I found our copy of the play and I was looking through it the other night, and I came upon a passage that seemed appropriate for this moment: "Oh, dry the glistening tear that dews that martial cheek. Thy loving children hear, in them thy comfort seek. With sympathetic care their arms around thee creep, for, oh, they cannot bear to see their father weep."

Aaron Hotchner

"Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts." Oliver Wendell Holmes

Aaron Hotchner

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson [NOTE: This quote is falsely attributed to Emerson and was first published in a 1940 book by William Morrow and Company titled Meditations in Wall Street. At the time the book was published, the author of the quote was unknown, but in 1947, The New York Times identified the author as Henry Stanley Haskins, a Wall Street trader with a checkered background.]

Aaron Hotchner

Mother Teresa said, "I have found the paradox that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love."

Aaron Hotchner

"Many persons have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose." Helen Keller

Aaron Hotchner

Gandhi said, "I have seen children successfully surmount the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul."

Aaron Hotchner

"The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it's taken place." George Bernard Shaw [NOTE: This quote is falsely attributed to Shaw and was actually first published in a Fortune Magazine article by William H. Whyte in September 1950, approximately two months before Shaw died.]

Aaron Hotchner

Niccolò Machiavelli said, "If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared."

Aaron Hotchner

Thomas Kempis wrote, "Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of its trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse for impossibility, for it thinks all things are lawful for itself and all things are possible."

Aaron Hotchner

"The herd seek out the great, not for their sake but for their influence; and the great welcome them out of vanity or need." Napoleon Bonaparte

Aaron Hotchner

"Without heroes, we are all plain people and don't know how far we can go." Bernard Malamud

Aaron Hotchner

Elise Cabot said, "Evil endures a moment's flush, and then leaves but a burnt out shell."

Aaron Hotchner

"When we were children, we used to think that when we grew up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability. To be alive is to be vulnerable." Writer Madeleine L'Engle