"I have no use for people who hunt for what they call sport"
About this Quote
A hard-edged moral line delivered with the plainspoken authority of someone who spent a lifetime watching people justify themselves. “I have no use” isn’t a mild preference; it’s social exile. McCambridge isn’t arguing policy or ecology. She’s refusing fellowship. The target isn’t hunting as subsistence, tradition, or even skill. It’s the euphemism “sport” - a word that tries to rinse blood into recreation, to turn an act with consequences into a weekend personality.
The subtext is less about animals than about character. Calling killing “sport” is, in her framing, a tell: it signals boredom with comfort, a craving for dominance, a need to make life-and-death feel like a game. McCambridge’s phrasing also anticipates the way culture laundered violence through respectable pastimes. Mid-century America often treated hunting as wholesome masculinity and civic belonging, a father-son ritual that doubled as status signaling. Her sentence punctures that with a refusal to romanticize it.
As an actress - someone whose craft depends on reading motive - McCambridge aims at the performance embedded in “sport.” The line suggests she can’t stand the self-congratulating story hunters tell about themselves: disciplined outdoorsmen, conservation-minded stewards, rugged individualists. She doesn’t take the bait. The power of the quote is its lack of ornament. No statistics, no sermon, just the social verdict: if your fun requires a corpse, don’t expect my respect.
The subtext is less about animals than about character. Calling killing “sport” is, in her framing, a tell: it signals boredom with comfort, a craving for dominance, a need to make life-and-death feel like a game. McCambridge’s phrasing also anticipates the way culture laundered violence through respectable pastimes. Mid-century America often treated hunting as wholesome masculinity and civic belonging, a father-son ritual that doubled as status signaling. Her sentence punctures that with a refusal to romanticize it.
As an actress - someone whose craft depends on reading motive - McCambridge aims at the performance embedded in “sport.” The line suggests she can’t stand the self-congratulating story hunters tell about themselves: disciplined outdoorsmen, conservation-minded stewards, rugged individualists. She doesn’t take the bait. The power of the quote is its lack of ornament. No statistics, no sermon, just the social verdict: if your fun requires a corpse, don’t expect my respect.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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