Quotes about force
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“Don’t leave your relationships to chance. Pray for godly people to come into your life with whom you can connect. Don’t force relationships to happen. Pray for them to happen. Then when they do, nurture them with prayer.”

Stormie Omartian (1942) American writer

Source: The Power of a Praying® Woman

Life, People, Chance

“What really holds their marriage together are mutual respect of an awesome depth, a shared sense of humor, faith that they were brought together by a force greater than themselves, and a love so unwavering and pure that it is sacred.”

Dean Koontz book Forever Odd

Source: Forever Odd

Love, Marriage, Faith, Sense

“Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.”

Ayn Rand book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)

Men

“As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Way, Suffering

“Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever newborn; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

Source: Hymn of the Universe

Truth, Reality

“Jem put the full force of himself into each smile, so that he seemed to be smiling with his eyes, his heart, his whole being.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Smile, Heart

“The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

“But there are forces that don't let you turn back and undo things, because to do so would be to deny what is already in motion, to unwrite and erase passages, to shorten the arc of a story you don't own.”

Salvador Plascencia The People of Paper

Source: The People of Paper

“She forces me to endure this ridiculous therapy, when the so-called counselors are little better than misguided do-gooders with degrees.

-Artemis Fowl”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

“How did you get me here? (Tory)
I have my evil Jedi ways. The Force is strong with this one. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

Way, Strong, Evil

“Youthfulness is not determined by age. It is determined by one's life force. One who possesses hope is forever young. One who continually advances is forever beautiful.”

Daisaku Ikeda (1928) Japanese writer

Life, Youth, Age, Beauty

“Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know more.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

“Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Misattributed
Source: Quote allegedly from The Prince, but not found there textually.

“People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Source: Jude the Obscure

Life, People, Pleasure, Nature

“But love is much like a dam; if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Context: Love is much like a dam: if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure, and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current. For when those walls come down, then love takes over, and it no longer matters what is possible or impossible; it doesn't even matter whether we can keep the loved one at our side. To love is to lose control.

Love, Water

“Social responsibility above the level of family, or at most of tribe, requires imagination-- devotion, loyalty, all the higher virtues -- which a man must develop himself; if he has them forced down him, he will vomit them out.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Starship Troopers

Source: Starship Troopers

Family, Imagination, Loyalty

“And mostly all I have to say about these songs is that I love them, and want to sing along to them, and force other people to listen to them, and get cross when these other people don't like them as much as I do.”

Nick Hornby (1957) English novelist

Love, People, Singing

“Let come the forces of night! We will stand!"
"We will get the hell out of here is what we will do," I muttered.”

Jim Butcher book Grave Peril

Source: Grave Peril

Hell, Night

“People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within.”

Banana Yoshimoto book Kitchen

Source: Kitchen (1988)

People

“As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane-as a means of inciting evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devout-there may be no more potent force than religion.”

Jon Krakauer (1954) American outdoors writer and journalist

Source: Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

People, Religion, Motivation, Evil

“All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

"The Precarious Vogue of Ingmar Bergman" in Esquire (April 1960); republished as "The Northern Protestant" in Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961) and in The Price of the Ticket (1985)

Art

“Time and tragedy have forced her to grow too quickly, at least for my taste, into a young woman who stitches bleeding wounds and knows our mother can hear only so much.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Time

“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms”

Robert A. Heinlein book Starship Troopers

Source: Starship Troopers

Truth, History, Thinking, Freedom

“Storiesto be read, David's mother would whisper. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life.”

John Connolly The Book of Lost Things

Source: The Book of Lost Things

Life, World, Reading

“Strange, what being forced to slow down could do to a person.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

Personality

“The question of the stranger in a society which estranges everybody from it--while forcing everybody to assimilate their own alienation--takes cover under dubious and sinister masks.”

Norman Manea (1936) Romanian writer

Question

“You had to live in your own bubble. You couldn't force your way into someone else's, because then it wouldn't be a bubble any more.”

Nick Hornby About a Boy

Source: About a Boy

Way

“I don't think you understand," he said. "I'm going to have you, at any cost. Any cost, Jenny, even if you have to suffer on the way. If I can't force you, I'll persuade you— and I can be very persuasive.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: The Hunter

Way, Understanding, Thinking, Suffering

“I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Soul, Intelligence, Thinking

“There are only two forces at work in this world- black and white. Only people are grey.”

Chris Heimerdinger (1963) American writer

Source: Gadiantons and the Silver Sword

People, World

“An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Fools, Intelligence, Time

“Intelligence won wars, not brute force.”

Rick Riordan book The Staff of Serapis

Source: The Staff of Serapis

War, Intelligence

“You can't write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Half of a Yellow Sun

Source: Half of a Yellow Sun

“A mind at peace a mind centered and not focused on harming others is stronger than any physical force in the universe.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Peace, Universe

“Besides, I could hardly complain to the administration that I was being forced to learn magic.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Learning

“Most of Set’s forces were running towards our boat, screaming and throwing rocks (which tended to fall down and hit them, but no one says demons are bright).”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“I love everything about Tyler Durden, his courage and his smarts. His nerve. Tyler is funny and charming and forceful and independent, and men look up to him and expect him to change their world. Tyler is capable and free, and I am not.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Love, Men, World, Courage

“Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch – this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Way

“The attempt to force human beings to despise themselves… is what I call hell.”

André Malraux (1901–1976) French novelist, art theorist and politician

Section 2
La condition humaine [Man's Fate] (1933)

Hell

“If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Source: Knowledge And Decisions

“I never could stand being forced to do something I didn't want to do at a time I didn't want to do it. Whenever I was able to do something I liked to do, though, when I wanted to do it, and the way I wanted to do it, I'd give it everything I had.”

Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Way, Time

“You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.”

Philip Roth book Portnoy's Complaint

Source: Portnoy's Complaint

Love, Truth

“The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces.”

Philip G. Zimbardo (1933) American social psychologist, author of Stanford Prison Experiment

Evil

“No one knows better than I do how far heaven is, but I also know all the shortcuts. The secret is to die, when you want to, and not when He proposes. Or else to force Him to take you before your time.”

Juan Rulfo book Pedro Páramo

Source: Pedro Páramo

Secret, Time

“The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning the society’s values, can force it to change.”

Samuel R. Delany book Empire Star

Source: Empire Star (1966), p. 190

Question, Change

“Sometimes I felt like I was waiting for my life to begin and more than anything, in that moment, I wanted to force some kind of beginning. I wanted things to be different than usual. I wanted to bend reality.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories

Life, Reality, Waiting

“Force always attracts men of low morality.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

The World As I See It, Einstein, Citadel Press (reprint 2006; originally published in 1934), p. 5
1930s

Men

“Two forces rule the universe: light and gravity.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Light, Universe

“The sun rises every day. What is to love? Lock the sun in a box. Force the sun to overcome adversity in order to rise. Then we will cheer! I will often admire beautiful sunrise, but I will never consider the sun a champion for having risen.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Love, Beauty, Sun, Box

“I shall charm him with such force that when I am done, he will be left lying limply on the ground, trying to remember his own name.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Lying

“… a box where she was expected to be sweet and sensitive (but not oversensitive); a box for young and pretty girls who were not as bright or powerful as their boyfriends. A box for people who were not forces to be reckoned with.”

E. Lockhart book The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

Source: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

People, Girl, Box

“We are entering a new world in which we can choose to follow our own steps, not those that society forces us to take.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

World

“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy to a friend.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)
Context: A third reason why we should love our enemies is that love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. By its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.

Love, Friendship, For Him, For Friend

“Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there's no forcing it.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Love

“Our patience will achieve more than our force.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Patience

“It's no wonder we're all such a mess, is it? We're like Tom Hanks in Big. Little boys and girls trapped in adult bodies and forced to get on with it.”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

Girl, Boy

“I remind myself that not everything is a sign, that some things simply are what they appear to be and should not be analyzed, deconstructed, or forced to bear the burden of metaphor, symbol, omen, or portent.”

Diane Schoemperlen (1954) Canadian writer

Source: Our Lady of the Lost and Found: A Novel of Mary, Faith, and Friendship

Appearance

“It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

People, Coffee, Waiting

“Since desire always goes towards that which is our direct opposite, it forces us to love that which will make us suffer.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Love, Suffering

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes indeed.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Variant: Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.
Source: A Poetry Handbook

Life

“Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

People, Music

“War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

The judge
Blood Meridian (1985)
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

God, War, Game

“I hate people forcing me to talk about my feelings,” said Alec.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Born to Endless Night

Hate, People, Feeling

“all the time something within her was crying for a decision.
She wanted her life shaped now, immediately — and the decision must be made by some force — of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality — that was close at hand”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Love, Life, Money, Decision

“It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Music

“The difficulty of living alone is that any mess he makes he is forced to clean up himself.

No, the real difficulty of living alone is that no one cares if you are upset.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“Do not mistake the rule of force
for true power. Men are not shaped by force.”

Euripidés The Bacchae

Source: The Bacchae

Men

“The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

Love, Pain, Loss, Hurt

“There was a silence. Hannah's own heart was twisted with the force of her love for him. Her eyes were full.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 2

Love, Silence, Heart

“We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

As quoted in Michel Foucault (1991) by Didier Eribon, as translated by Betsy Wind, Harvard University Press, p. 282
Context: There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas (and because it constantly produces them) that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.

Books, Idea, Birth

“Don’t.” She looks directly into my eyes. After a month of being forced to avoid her, I feel stripped bare by her gaze. “You can be as much of a charming bastard as you want, but you’re never going to bullshit your way into my heart again.”

Holly Black book Black Heart

Source: Black Heart

Way, Feeling, Heart

“[Nonviolence] is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story

Evil, Personality

“I am unable to believe in a God susceptible to prayer. I simply haven't the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits, and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds.”

Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) writer, Actor

God, Imagination, Speed

“Sleep with Seth Mortensen? Good grief. It was the most preposterous thing I'd ever heard. It was appalling. If I absorbed his life force, there was no telling how long it'd be until his next book came out.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Blues

Life, Books, Sleep

“Love cannot be forced, love cannot be coaxed and teased. It comes out of heaven, unasked and unsought.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Love, Heart Touching

“Whenever he saw the sea, or a fire, he fell silent, impressed by their elemental force.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Sea

“If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you.”

Frank Herbert book Children of Dune

Source: Children of Dune

“I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar, I withdrew from them, and never thought about them until I was forced to.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

People

“Secrets of the heart. We swallow hard against them every day, forcing them deep inside us. There they sit, growing heavier, festering. Given enough time, they cannot help but crush the heart that holds them.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Secret, Time, Help, Heart

“The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Source: The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985

Way, History

“It seemed as if some subtle current of recognition had passed between them… not as if they had met before… but as if they had come close several times until finally an impatient Fate had forced their paths to intersect.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Secrets of a Summer Night

Fate, Time

“The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Fear

“We must meet hate with love. We must meet physical force with soul force.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Give Us the Ballot (1957)
Context: We must meet hate with love. We must meet physical force with soul force. There is still a voice crying out through the vista of time, saying: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you." Then, and only then, can you matriculate into the university of eternal life. That same voice cries out in terms lifted to cosmic proportions: "He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword." And history is replete with the bleached bones of nations that failed to follow this command. We must follow nonviolence and love.

Love, Hate, Soul

“The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.”

James Baldwin book Nobody Knows My Name

Source: Nobody Knows My Name

Reality

“Nothing is really lost or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form--no object of the world,
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing…
The body, sluggish, aged, cold--the embers
left from early fires,
… shall duly flame again”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Life, Age, World, Birth

“At first I was glad for the help. My freshmen English class, "Mythology and Archetypal Experience," confounded me.

I didn't understand why we couldn't just read books without forcing contorted interpretations on then”

Alison Bechdel (1960) American cartoonist, author

Source: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Books, Understanding, Reading, Help

“You know children, always playing with the forces of darkness.”

Kelley Armstrong The Reckoning

Source: The Reckoning

Children

“An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes.”

Ayn Rand book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)

“We've been rehearsing a classic from antiquity,, the story of a young prince of Denmark who goes mad, drowns his girlfriend, and in his remorse, forces spoiled breakfast on all whom he meets.”

Christopher Moore book Fool

Source: Fool

Madness

“Heartache forces us to embrace God out of desparate, urgent need. God is never closer than when your heart is aching.”

Joni Eareckson Tada (1949) American artist

God, Heart

“Even from far away, I could see people being chased by hellhounds, burned at the stake, forced to run naked through cactus patches or listen to opera music.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

People, Music

“Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

“You don't feel like smiling? Then what? Force yourself to smile. Act as if you were already happy, and that will tend to make you happy.”

Celeste Ng book Everything I Never Told You: A Novel

Source: Everything I Never Told You

Happiness, Smile, Feeling

“Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live.”

Laura Hillenbrand book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Source: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Men

“Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

Books, Parting

“I am just two and two. I am hot. I am cold. I'm the parent of numbers that cannot be told. I'm a gift beyond measure, a matter of course, and I'm yielded with pleasure- when taken by force.”

L.J. Smith The Forbidden Game

Source: The Forbidden Game

Pleasure, Parent

“The stony-minded orthodox were right in fearing the first movement of new knowledge and free thought. It has gone on, and will go on, irresistibly, until some day we shall have no respect for an alleged "truth" which cannot stand the full blaze of knowledge, the full force of active thought.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, (1935).

Truth, Fear, Knowledge

“The voluntary free market is a sacred extension of life itself. The free market—it has not been unfettered for a very long time—is really a spontaneously synchronized order comprising trillions upon trillions of voluntary acts that individuals perform in order to make a living. Introduce government force and coercion into this rhythm and you get life-threatening arrhythmia. Under increasing state control, this marketplace - this magic, organic agora - starts to splutter, and people suffer.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Beck Breaks from the Pack,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=546 WorldNetDaily.com, April 23, 2010. <br class="br">2010s, 2010

Life, People, Suffering, Time

“When some were saying that if Cæsar should march against the city they could not see what forces there were to resist him, Pompey replied with a smile, bidding them be in no concern, "for whenever I stamp my foot in any part of Italy there will rise up forces enough in an instant, both horse and foot."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Life of Pompey
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Smile, Horse, Parting

“Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure — but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and the invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of those, who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community, and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen, but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion, and demands no evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no exception to the rule; because this necessity itself is a part too of that moral and physical disposition of things, to which man must be obedient by consent or force: but if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Pleasure, World, Peace, Law

Quotes about force page 10

Quotes about force
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