“Violence breeds violence. Acts of violence committed in “justice” or in affirmation of “rights” or in defense of “peace” do not end violence. They prepare and justify its continuation.”
Citizenship Papers (2003), The Failure of War
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Wendell Berry189
author 1934Related quotes
“Perhaps justified violence is better than peace at any price.”
Edmund Cooper (1926–1982) British writer
The Uncertain Midnight (1958)
“Those who abjure violence can only do so by others committing violence on their behalf.”
George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist
Andy Ngo (1986) American conservative journalist and social‐media personality
Source: Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy (2021), p. 17
“The state, conceived in violence, and backed by violence, will never achieve true peace.”
Philip Berrigan (1923–2002) Priest and anti-war activist
Fighting the Lamb's War: Skirmishes with the American Empire (1996), p. 202
Context: The Biblical view of the law, the courts, and the state is profoundly radical. The Bible looks upon the state as a kind of rebellious artifice; it is spurious, a human creation in rebellion against God.
In the Old Testament, when the first state is proposed in the person of Saul, the first King of Israel, God tells the prophet Samuel that this project spells rejection of God. The state and its legislature are in rebellion against, or rejection of, God. Its courts are a human fabrication, cannot promote justice and peace; they are founded in violence, and legalize violence.
The state holds together through police power, against the citizenry.
The state, conceived in violence, and backed by violence, will never achieve true peace.
Henry Giroux (1943) American academic
Interview with Media For Us, 2019
Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) American economist of the Austrian School, libertarian political theorist, and historian
“War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds.”
Carl von Clausewitz book On War
Variant translation: War is an act of violence which in its application knows no bonds.
As quoted in The Campaign of 1914 in France and Belgium (1915) by George Herbert Perris, p. 56.
Source: On War (1832), Book 1, Chapter 1, Section 3, Paragraph 8
Óscar Romero (1917–1980) Fourth Archbishop of San Salvador
Oscar A. Romero, The Violence of Love http://data.plough.com/ebooks/ViolenceOfLove.pdf (1977).