To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause: that is Hell.

Hell is the inability to love.

Hell is the incapacity to be other than the creature one finds oneself ordinarily behaving as.

Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself.

The attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell.

Hell is other people

When our thoughts — which bring actions — are filled with hate against anyone, Negro or white, we are in a living hell. That is as real as hell will ever be.

To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause? That is hell. And once in hell it is very easy to curse being itself and no wonder. But it's not justifiable and that's why the king of the damned is a poor judge of being.

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

If you look at any religious description of hell, it is the same as human society, the way we dream. Hell is a place of suffering, a place of fear, a place of war and violence, a place of judgment and no justice, a place of punishment that never ends. There are humans versus humans in a jungle of predators; humans full of judgment, full of blame, full of guilt, full of emotional poison — envy, anger, hate, sadness, suffering. We create all these little demons in our mind because we have learned to dream hell in our own life.

I think that those who would try to make you feel less than who you are, I think that's the greatest evil.

So that is what hell is. I would never have believed it. You remember: the fire and brimstone, the torture. Ah! the farce. There is no need for torture: hell is other people.

Hell exists from within.

We must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives with the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.