“In violence, we forget who we are.”
"Characters in Fiction", p. 276. First published in Partisan Review (March 1961)
On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)
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Mary McCarthy 79
American writer 1912–1989Related quotes
“It is sometimes expedient to forget who we are.”
Maxim 233
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave


"We are Power" speech (1980)

Variant translation: Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
As quoted in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1974) edited by Leopold Labedz
Nobel lecture (1970)
Context: We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE. At its birth violence acts openly and even with pride. But no sooner does it become strong, firmly established, than it senses the rarefaction of the air around it and it cannot continue to exist without descending into a fog of lies, clothing them in sweet talk. It does not always, not necessarily, openly throttle the throat, more often it demands from its subjects only an oath of allegiance to falsehood, only complicity in falsehood.

Oscar A. Romero, The Violence of Love http://data.plough.com/ebooks/ViolenceOfLove.pdf (1977).

“We don't forget, and won't forget.”
Remarks by el-Sisi on Sinai liberation celebrations day (28 April 2013) regarding the Egyptian soldiers killed before http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x1xN8LUYG4.
2013