“[T]he remedy of force can never supply the remedy of reason.”
Thomas Paine book Rights of Man
Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)
Speech in Birmingham (November 1880) referring to the Irish question, quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), p. 429.
1880s
“[T]he remedy of force can never supply the remedy of reason.”
Thomas Paine book Rights of Man
Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)
Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War
Letter to George Washington (November 1779)
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) British politician
Speech in the House of Commons on the Irish insurgency after the Great War, quoted in Lord Birkenhead, Halifax (Hamish Hamilton, 1965), pp. 121-122
Backbench MP
Ela Bhatt (1933) founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association of India (SEWA)
Discussion with Ela Bhatt, Founder, Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA)
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1854–1939) American journalist and anarchist
Individual Liberty (1926), Passive Resistance
Context: When a physician sees that his patient's strength is being exhausted so rapidly by the intensity of his agony that he will die of exhaustion before the medical processes inaugurated have a chance to do their curative work, he administers an opiate. But a good physician is always loath to do so, knowing that one of the influences of the opiate is to interfere with and defeat the medical processes themselves. He never does it except as a choice of evils. It is the same with the use of force, whether of the mob or of the State, upon diseased society; and not only those who prescribe its indiscriminate use as a sovereign remedy and a permanent tonic, but all who ever propose it as a cure, and even all who would lightly and unnecessarily resort to it, not as a cure, but as an expedient, are social quacks.
“Force overcome by force.”
Vi victa vis.
Marcus Tullius Cicero Pro Milone
Pro Milone, Chapter XI, section 30
Variant translation: Violence conquered by violence.
“That force is to be opposed to nothing, but to unjust and unlawful force.”
John Locke book Two Treatises of Government
Second Treatise of Government, Ch. XVIII, sec. 204
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
Context: To this I answer: That force is to be opposed to nothing, but to unjust and unlawful force. Whoever makes any opposition in any other case, draws on himself a just condemnation, both from God and man…
“Hate is not a creative force. Love is a creative force.”
Maximilian Kolbe (1894–1941) Polish Conventual Franciscan friar
Sourced Quotes
Source: Saint Maximilian Kolbe - Knight of the Immaculate, The Society of the Holy Rosary.