1,621 Quotes About Violence

In the colonial countries, on the contrary, the policeman and the soldier, by their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action maintain contact with the native and advise him by means of rifle butts and napalm not to budge. It is obvious here that the agents of government speak the language of pure force

Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create.

پالاز، در پناه آدم كشى مثل من است كه مى تواند عليه آدم كشى سخنرانى كند، و در سايه ى خشونت من، تا به حال زنده مانده تا بتواند بر ضد خشونت، موعظه كند.

Violent revolution fails because it is not revolutionary enough. It changes the rulers but not the rules, the ends but not the means. Most of the old androcratic values and delusional assumptions remain intact.

[Merlin - on realizing the he'd killed a man with his magic.]It was easy. It shouldn't have been so easy to do something so big. ... So final...[Gaius] ...Oh Merlin! With magic or without it is always dreadfully easy to do something so big. And bigger. This is the terrible terrible lesson which we never learn from history. Hurting other people is never hard, even though it should be..

When you've committed yourself to violence it takes an almost inhuman effort to stop short. It's one of those things that once you've started need to be finished, rather like coitus, interrupting that's a sin, even the priests say so.

We have placed such idolatrous faith in our ability to protect ourselves that we call it more courageous to die killing than to die loving.

Every time our government chooses to use military force to bring about change in the world, it once again teaches our children the myth of redemptive violence, the myth that violence can be an instrument for good.

And what is it, according to Plato, that philosophy is supposed to do? Nothing less than to render violence to our sense of ourselves and our world, our sense of ourselves in the world. (p. 40)