50 Trigger Quotes For Transforming Tragedy Into Triumph

By Clifton Sankofa

School Leader, Language Arts Expert & Master Quote Curator

Published August 7, 2023

Explore new some new perspectives with our trigger quotes.

You have probably seen the word “trigger” come in when the topics of politics, sports, or opposite opinions arise.

Learn more about the science of trigger behavior and trigger responses with our trigger quotes.

What is a trigger?

There are all sorts of triggers out there.

Many complex machines have triggers, firearms have triggers, and people have triggers.

Triggers are used in machinery to release a spring or catch that sets off a mechanism.

In a firearm, the trigger is what is pulled to release the bullet.

To trigger something can also mean to cause an event, situation, or reaction to occur.

Check out these interesting trigger facts below:

American TV star Roy Rogers had a horse named Trigger.
Triggerfish get their name from the spiny needles on their back used for defense.
In psychology, triggers are sensory reminders that cause painful memories to resurface.

What does it mean to be triggered?

We live in a world where opinions are increasingly polarized.

Many people need help effectively communicating or disagreeing with those with different views.

It is human nature to repress painful memories.

Our minds want us to be happy, so harping on negative experiences can damage our health.

It can hurt when someone says something or does an action that reminds us of a traumatic memory.

Sometimes this results in painful memories or specific symptoms resurfacing.

Triggered by our senses

Memory is a powerful and exciting subject.

Our memories allow us to retain important information; without them, life would be a series of complex and unfamiliar situations.

When we experience trauma, we naturally hold on to the sounds, smells, or sights related to that experience.

Later on, when we encounter those stimuli, they can trigger feelings of anxiety, unease, or even panic.

Doctors find that in patients with Alzheimer, music is the last part of their memory impacted by the disease.

This is because the human brain can hold on to musical memories longer than other sensory memories.

Check out our trigger quotes below to learn more about these events and how to respond.

Short trigger quotes about painful memories

Many say pain is the cause of all trigger events.

1. “Labeling is a lifetime trigger.” ― Charmaine J Forde

2. “What triggers pain? Memories.” – Uncle Silas

3. “Whatever is triggering you, is on you.” ― Richie Norton

4. “We all have a trigger build into our head.” ― Kate O’Grady

5. “It’s time for students to learn that life is triggering.” ― Jerry A. Coyne

6. “Often suffering is the trigger, or a spiritual teaching, or both.” — Eckhart Tolle

7. “Existential calamities can be especially triggering for survivors.” ― Pete Walker

8. “I’m an actor who believes we all have triggers to any stage of emotion.” — Hugh Jackman

9. “I think that all emotions are triggers for us to grow in our level of consciousness.” — LeVar Burton

10. “We typically have so much family-of-origin calamity for them to trigger us into reliving.” ― Pete Walker

The best trigger quotes about releasing energy

Triggers can be negative or positive; we get to decide how to respond.

11. “And I was living with my hands on the trigger; I had no sense to change my ways.” — Sting

12. “After many years of training myself, strong emotions are now a trigger for me to look at something.” — LeVar Burton

13. “Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences.” — Brian Eno

14. “There’s almost always a point in a book where something happens that triggers the rest of the plot.” — Jonathan Carroll

15. “But still, stress is a choice because whatever the ‘trigger event,’ we always choose our own response.” — John G. Miller

16. “When I hold you in my arms, and I feel my finger on your trigger, I know no one can do me no harm because happiness is a warm gun.” — John Lennon

17. “When certain parts of our bodies are touched, certain enzymes and chemicals that trigger sexual desire are released into our system.” — Myles Munroe

18. “Circumstances or other people have no power to make us feel bad; the most they can do is trigger the potentials for painful feelings that already exist within our own mind.” — Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

19. “The American people likewise want to see enforcement first, no tricks, no triggers, no amnesty, enforcing existing laws and closing loopholes to reaffirm that our great Republic is, in fact, a nation of laws.” — J. D. Hayworth

20. “But to see that Africans are the hardest hit by climate change, even though they generate almost no greenhouse gas, is a glaring injustice, which also triggers anger and outrage over those who seek to ignore it.” — Sigmar Gabriel

Famous pulling-the-trigger quotes for knowing when to strike

Let’s keep the trigger theme going with these awesome pull-the-trigger quotes.

21. “Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.” — Don Marquis

22. “You never pull the trigger until you know you can win.” — Roger Ailes

23. “Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.” — Mario Puzo

24. “Next in importance to having a good aim is to recognize when to pull the trigger.” — Elmer G. Letterman

25. “How many times have people used a pen or paintbrush because they couldn’t pull the trigger?” — Virginia Woolf

26. “I learned a long time ago that there is something worse than missing the goal, and that’s not pulling the trigger.” — Mia Hamm

27. “People can put a gun in their mouth and pull the trigger and live, and someone else can slip on the curb and die.” — Sonny Barger

28. “Those that expose themselves as knowing the truth, lose the battle of innocence and humility and eventually pull a trigger at the universe.” — Akiane Kramarik

29. “The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd.” — Andre Breton

30. “I want you to have nothing. I’m a bad guy; I’m always gonna have a gun. Safety locks? You will pull the trigger with a lock on, and I’ll pull the trigger. We’ll see who wins.” — Sammy Gravano

The top trigger quotes about expressing yourself fully

Triggers can cause reactions, which are different from responses.

31. “When my time comes, just skin me and put me up there on trigger, just as though nothing had ever changed.” — Roy Rogers

32. “All pain triggers a reminder, deeper than thought, buzzing through blood and bone, that we are fragile and finite.” ― K.J. Ramsey

33. “Daddy had failed to mention anything about the hair-trigger temper. I guess he assumed the red hair would clue me in.” — Karen Chance

34. “I’m more interested in a photography that is ‘unfinished,’ a photography that is suggestive and can trigger a conversation or dialogue.” — Paolo Pellegrin

35. “Take charge of hidden, sneaky sources of chronic inflammation that can trigger illness and disease by wearing comfortable shoes daily.” — David Agus

36. “The best ideas will eat at you for days, maybe even weeks, until something, some incident, some impulse, triggers you to finally express them.” ― Criss Jami, Killosophy

37. “Germany by threatening to abandon the euro, or Greece or Spain by actually doing so would trigger economic chaos and incur its neighbors’ wrath.” — Barry Eichengreen

38. “A dream is like a loaded pistol with a hair trigger: if it stays alive long enough, somebody is going to be hurt. But if it’s a good dream, it’s worth it.” — William Faulkner

39. “Everything that seemingly happens externally is occurring in order to trigger something within us, to expand us and take us back to who we truly are.” – Anita Moorjani

40. “Triggers are like little psychic explosions that crash through avoidance and bring the dissociated, avoided trauma suddenly, unexpectedly, back into consciousness.” ― Carolyn Spring

Trigger quotes and sayings about forgiveness and revolution

Let’s close our list with these interesting trigger quotes.

41. “Anything that triggers good memories can’t be all bad.” — Adam West

42. “And Kingsley being Kingsley, he smiled as he pretended to pull the trigger.” — Melissa de la Cruz

43. “Photographs are not only points of reference. They’re often triggers of ideas.” — Francis Bacon

44. “God actually could trigger a revolutionary turn-around in such a depraved and degenerate life.” — Lee Strobel

45. “We are not trying to compete with the original at all, and that’s what allowed me to pull the trigger without any hesitancy.” — Colin Farrell

46. “Guys can smell desperation. It triggers an instinct in them to run far and fast so they aren’t around when a woman starts peeling apart her heart.” — Janette Rallison

47. “The horror [of Gandhi’s murder] lies simply in the fact that any man could look into the face of this extraordinary person and deliberately pull a trigger.” — Mary McCarthy

48. “Marital partners often trigger in each other resourceless states negative trance-like experiences in which partners feel devoid of satisfactory solutions.” — Jeffrey K. Zeig

49. “When our individual life force enters our fetal body, the moment in which we become truly human, it passes through the pineal and triggers the first primordial flood of DMT.” — Rick Strassman

50. “My interest is that there is a disconnect between the science and the size of the threat that people mention about nature, the planet and the climate, and the emotion that this triggers.” — Bruno Latour