“Force overcome by force.”
Vi victa vis.
Marcus Tullius Cicero Pro Milone
Pro Milone, Chapter XI, section 30
Variant translation: Violence conquered by violence.
“Force can overcome force, but a free society cannot long steel itself to dominate another people by sheer force.”
Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), Principles
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Dean Acheson49
Statesman and lawyer 1893–1971Related quotes
Salvador Allende (1908–1973) Chilean physician and politician
Final address (1973)
Context: Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seeds which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever. They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1854–1939) American journalist and anarchist
Individual Liberty (1926), Passive Resistance
Context: The idea that Anarchy can be inaugurated by force is as fallacious as the idea that it can be sustained by force. Force cannot preserve Anarchy; neither can it bring it. In fact, one of the inevitable influences of the use of force is to postpone Anarchy. The only thing that force can ever do for us is to save us from extinction, to give us a longer lease of life in which to try to secure Anarchy by the only methods that can ever bring it. But this advantage is always purchased at immense cost, and its attainment is always attended by frightful risk. The attempt should be made only when the risk of any other course is greater.
Mir-Hossein Mousavi (1941) Iranian politician and architect
As quoted in "The Political Evolution of Mousavi" by Muhammad Sahimi, PBS Frontline : Tehran Bureau (16 February 2010)
Ayn Rand book The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
Source: The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971), p. 99
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice
Gitlow v. People of New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925) (dissenting).
1920s
“People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within.”
Banana Yoshimoto book Kitchen
Source: Kitchen (1988)
“Who overcomes
By force, hath overcome but half his foe.”
John Milton book Paradise Lost
Source: Paradise Lost
Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist
Source: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), p. 124
Context: After his victory at the Milvian Bridge, faithful to his promise, Constantine favors the church from which he has received support. Catholic Christianity becomes the state religion and an exchange takes place: the church is invested with political power, and it invests the emperor with religious power. We have here the same perversion, for how can Jesus manifest himself in the power of domination and constraint? We have to say here very forcefully that we see here the perversion of revelation by participation in politics, by the seeking of power. The church lets itself be seduced, invaded, dominated by the ease with which it can now spread the gospel by force (another force than that of God) and use its influence to make the state, too, Christian. It is great acquiescence to the temptation Jesus himself resisted, for when Satan offers to give him all the kingdoms of the earth, Jesus refuses, but the church accepts.