“We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.”

— Winston S. Churchill

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Winston S. Churchill 601

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1874–1965

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“We sleep peaceably in our beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

This has commonly been attributed to Orwell but has not been found in any of his writings. Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/07/rough-men/ found the earliest known appearance in a 1993 Washington Times essay by Richard Grenier: "As George Orwell pointed out, people sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." The absence of quotation marks indicates Grenier was using his own words to convey Orwell's opinion; thus it may have originated as a paraphrase of his statement in "Notes on Nationalism" https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwelnat.htm (May 1945): "Those who "abjure" violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf." There are also similar sentiments expressed in an essay which Orwell wrote on Rudyard Kipling, quoting from one of Kipling's poems: "Yes, making mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep." In the same essay Orwell also wrote of Kipling: "He sees clearly that men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them."
Misattributed

“You never compromise with violence. You never compromise with intimidation. You never compromise by those who want to use those to extinguish freedom and democracy, because if you do then the very things for which you stand are extinguished.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

TV Interview for Channel 4 A Week in Politics (1 February 1985) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105955
Second term as Prime Minister

“I love sleep because it is both pleasant and safe to use. Pleasant because one is in the best possible company and safe because sleep is the consummate protection against the unseemliness that is the invariable consequence of being awake. What you don't know won't hurt you. Sleep is death without the responsibility.”

Fran Lebowitz book Metropolitan Life

"Why I Love Sleep" (p. 91).
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“Many solemn nights
Blond moon, we stand and marvel…
Sleeping our noons away”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

Source: Japanese Haiku

“For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter. This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

On the Mindless Menace of Violence (1968)

“Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.”

Primo Levi (1918–1987) Italian chemist, memoirist, short story writer, novelist, essayist

Interview with Daniel Toaff, Sorgenti di Vita (25 March 1983); translated by Mirto Stone

“…when you get a good night's sleep and wake up ready to produce throughout the day.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People (1989), p. 59

“For our country to be safe from terrorists we must stabilize Iraq and show that it can be done and take out these terrorist organizations who would harm Americans. Our freedom is at stake here.”

Kay Bailey Hutchison (1943) American politician

[August 19, 2003, http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0308/19/bn.14.html, "Interview With Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison", Transcripts, CNN, 2007-07-21]

“Imagine how we would feel if I began this section saying, Today, violence against women is rightly applauded. We would know I favored the death of women; when we applaud for violence against men, we favor the death of men. We do it because we have learned that the more effectively we prepare men to sacrifice themselves, the more we are protected.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part 1: The Myth of Male Power, p. 76.

“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

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