Quotes about force (5555 quotes, page 56)

“Nobody had a clue what had happened, so the pundits were out in force, explaining how the riot was caused by whatever sociopolitical factor their latest book was pushing. It was certainly a searing indictment of some aspect of modern society—if only we knew what.”

Ben Aaronovitch book Rivers of London

Source: Rivers of London (2011; American edition title: Midnight Riot), Chapter 12, “The Last Resort” (p. 268)

Books

“British influence... is not exercised to impose an uncongenial foreign system upon a reluctant people. It is a force making for the triumph of the simplest ideas of honesty, humanity, and justice, to the value of which Egyptians are just as much alive as anybody else.”

Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner (1854–1925) British statesman and colonial administrator

Source: England in Egypt (1894 ed.), p. 407

People , Idea , Justice , Exercises

“What are you doing? Take back the Senate!
You’ve got guns. Use them. We give you guns for a reason, use them.
Lethal force should have been used.
How come you didn’t protect us? It’s doing your job.”

Lindsey Graham (1955) United States Senator from South Carolina

Source: 6 January 2021, reported 1 November 2021 by Joseph Choi of "The Hill" here https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/579453-graham-told-officers-on-jan-6-to-use-their-guns-on-rioters-report
Context: despite what Graham said, lethal force WAS used, as Ashli Babbitt was shot to death

“An integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens, representing a dynamic force in the international arena.”

Mutale Nalumango (1955) 14th Vice-President of Zambia

Source: Mutale Nalumango (2021) cited in: " SPEECH BY HER HONOUR THE VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF ZAMBIA MRS. W. K. MUTALE NALUMANGO, MP DURING THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE 42ND COMESA COUNCIL OF MINISTERS MEETING https://www.comesa.int/speech-by-her-honour-the-vice-president-of-the-republic-of-zambia-mrs-w-k-mutale-nalumango-mp-during-the-official-opening-of-the-42nd-comesa-council-of-ministers-meeting/" in Comesa, 9 November 2021.

Peace

“The major weapon now being used by the combined Forces of Evil is chaos, disruption, lack of established security, and consequent fear... The entire rhythm of international thinking has to be altered, and that constitutes a slow and arduous task; the evil personalities which, in every country, are responsible for the chaos and uncertainty, have eventually to be replaced by those who can work in co-operation with the rhythm of the seventh Ray, and thus produce ordered beauty.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Externalization of the Hierarchy (1957) p. 668

Personality , Country , Thinking , Fear

“These heretics have been so obstonent that no policy has worked or sufficed to get them to recognise their errors… I can see that if there were a way of forcing them we could justly move against them, but that is not the case now, nor do I currently have the means, because I am tired, alone and without help and there are so many of them that great force would be needed to overcome them. The true remedy is to convene a general council.”

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1500–1558) Holy Roman Emperor

Error , Help , Way

“An enemy that engages Israeli forces along our border and learns it unhindered will eventually find a way to circumvent it. Understanding that the line of engagement will eventually be breached has taught the”

Brig. Gen. Eran Ortal (1971)

Understanding , Learning , Way

“If forcing a woman to continue a pregnancy that will almost certainly kill her is impermissible, how different... to compel... a pregnancy that will probably shorten her life? Or... that will leave her life in shambles?”

Laurence Tribe (1941) American lawyer and law school professor

Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (1990), Approaching Abortion Anew

Life

“Science simply forces us to revise what is sensible to accommodate the universe, rather than vice versa.”

Lawrence M. Krauss book A Universe from Nothing

Source: A Universe from Nothing, Simon & Schuster (2012), p. 151

Universe , Science

“Our policies in favor of young people will continue with force and vigor during the next mandate.”

Denis Sassou Nguesso (1943) President of the Republic of the Congo

Source: Denis Sassou Nguesso (2021) cited in " Congo's Sassou Nguesso tipped to win fourth term in presidential elections https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20210319-congo-s-nguesso-tipped-to-win-fourth-term-in-presidential-elections" on France 24, 19 March 2021.

People

“The idea of schooling free men in anything would have revolted Athenians. Forced training was for slaves. Among free men, learning was self-discipline, not the gift of experts.”

John Taylor Gatto book The Underground History of American Education

Source: The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling (2001), p. 62

School , Learning , Men , Training

“This was once a land where every sane person knew how to build a shelter, grow food, and entertain one another. Now we have been rendered permanent children. It’s the architects of forced schooling who are responsible for that.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 100

School , Food , Personality , Children

“Freedom of expression is one of the foundations of our society. Everyone is free to express their opinion. But our society will never accept indiscriminate violence, and even less towards our police forces.”

Alexander De Croo (1975) Belgian politician

Source: Alexander De Croo (2022) cited in: " Clashes as tens of thousands protest Covid rules in Belgium https://www.malaymail.com/news/world/2022/01/24/clashes-as-tens-of-thousands-protest-covid-rules-in-belgium/2037074" in Malay Mail, 24 January 2022.

Freedom

“This is called the World Breath or ‘Seven’ Breath, and was much practised by the ancient Egyptians who were adepts at physical and physiological culture. Seven, as you know, plays an important part in the plan of the Universe which affects tnis Earth, as for instance, the 7 planets, 7 colours of the spectrum, 7 notes of music, 7 days of the week, etc. If we practise the Seven Breath every morning on awakening, we will tune ourselves in to the forces of growth and progress and derive great benefit and strength from so doing, provided we neither strain nor jerk.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter XV The Essential Science of Breathing

Universe , World , Music , Jerk

“As soon as you have begun to master the diaphragm muscle, you can consider the rhythm of the breath. This must be gentle, even and deep, and have four stages; (1) pause for preparation, (counting three); (2) breathe in slowly, (counting three; (3) hold breath whilst absorbing life forces, (counting three) and (4) breathe out whilst spreading the new life all over the body (counting three). Then repeat the exercise. As soon as you feel able, increase the counts to four times four and gradually increase until you arc able to breathe to four times seven without strain.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter XV The Essential Science of Breathing, p. 104

Time , Exercises , Life , Feeling

“Correct breathing must be deep, slow, even, and controlled by the mind and will. If it is deep it allows all the necessary rays and forces of nature to be drawn in and to reach every part of the body. If it is slow, then all possible benefits can be obtained before it is expelled again. If it is even, a rhythm is established in time with the rhythm of nature; the various vibrations of the body tune in with each other, and with the cosmic life-giving rays, thus producing a complete harmonious integration. If it is controlled by the mind and will, outside influences cannot upset the personal rhythm, nor distract the individual from his goal.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter XV The Essential Science of Breathing

Personality , Nature , Life , Time

“[M]andatory public education in this country … was useful in creating not only a harmless electorate and a servile labor force but also a virtual herd of mindless consumers. In time a great number of industrial titans came to recognize the enormous profits to be had by cultivating and tending such a herd via public education.”

John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author

Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling (2008)
Source: Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling, New Society Publishers (2013) pp. xix-xx

Education , Time , Country

“Beware you are not a fiery, persecuting enthusiast. Do not imagine that God has called you (just contrary to the spirit of Him you style your Master) to destroy men’s lives, and not to save them. Never dream of forcing men into the ways of God. Think yourself, and let think. Use no constraint in matters of religion. Even those who are farthest out of the way never compel to come in by any other means than reason, truth, and love.”

John Wesley book Sermons on Several Occasions

1770s, Sermons on Several Occasions (1771)
Source: Sermon 37 "The Nature of Enthusiasm"

Imagination , Thinking , Love , Men

“Nature shouldn’t be able to do this, Sunday thought. It shouldn’t be able to produce something that resembled the work of directed intelligence, something artful, when the only factors involved were unthinking physics and obscene, spendthrift quantities of time. Time to lay down the sediments, in deluge after deluge, entire epochs in the impossibly distant past when Mars had been both warm and wet, a world deluded into thinking it had a future. Time for cosmic happenstance to hurl a fist from the sky, punching down through these carefully superimposed layers, drilling through these carefully superimposed layers, drilling the geological chapters like a bullet through a book. And then yesterday more time—countless millions of years—for wind and dust to work their callous handiwork, scouring and abrading, wearing the exposed layers back at subtly different rates depending on hardness and chemistry, util these deliberate-looking right-angled steps and contours began to assume grand and imperial solidity, rising from the depths like the stairways of the gods.
Awe-inspiring, yesterday. Sometimes it was entirely right and proper to be awed. And recognising the physics in these formations, the hand of time and matter and the nuclear forces underpinning all things, did not lessen that feeling. What was she, ultimately, but the end product of physics and matter? And what was her art but the product of physics and matter working on itself?”

Alastair Reynolds book Blue Remembered Earth

Source: Blue Remembered Earth (2012), Chapter 17 (pp. 292-293)

Dependency , God , Books , World

“A time came when the Catholics, having long relied on force, were compelled to appeal to opinion. That which had been defiantly acknowledged and defended required to be ingeniously explained away. The same motive which had justified the murder now prompted the lie. Men shrank from the conviction that the rulers and restorers of their Church had been murderers and abetters of murder, and that so much infamy had been coupled with so much zeal. They feared to say that the most monstrous of crimes had been solemnly approved at Rome, lest they should devote the Papacy to the execration of mankind. A swarm of facts were invented to meet the difficulty: The victims were insignificant in number; they were slain for no reason connected with religion; the Pope believed in the existence of the plot; the plot was a reality; the medal is fictitious; the massacre was a feint concerted with the Protestants themselves; the Pope rejoiced only when he heard that it was over. These things were repeated so often that they have been sometimes believed; and men have fallen into this way of speaking whose sincerity was unimpeachable, and who were not shaken in their religion by the errors or the vices of Popes. Möhler was pre-eminently such a man. In his lectures on the history of the Church, which were published only last year, he said that the Catholics, as such, took no part in the massacre; that no cardinal, bishop, or priest shared in the councils that prepared it; that Charles informed the Pope that a conspiracy had been discovered; and that Gregory made his thanksgiving only because the King's life was saved. Such things will cease to be written when men perceive that truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Source: 1860s, The Massacre Of St. Bartholomew (1869)

Sincerity , Life , Men , Truth

“Silly people, and there are many, not only in enemy countries, might discount the force of the United States. Some said they were soft, others that they would never be united. They would fool around at a distance. They would never come to grips. They would never stand bloodletting. Their democracy and system of recurrent elections would paralyse their war horizon to friend or foe. Now we should see the weakness of this numerous but remote, wealthy, and talkative people. But I had studied the American Civil War, fought out to the last desperate inch.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

The Second World War (1948–1953)
Source: The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3, (1950) p. 540

Democracy , Country , Study , War

“Nothing is more devastating than a life without liberty. A life in which one can be forced into parenthood is just such a life. Rape is among the most profound denials of liberty, and compelling a woman to bear a rapist's child is an assault on her humanity. How different is it to force her to remain pregnant... because efforts at birth control accidentally failed?”

Laurence Tribe (1941) American lawyer and law school professor

Source: Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (1990), Approaching Abortion Anew

Birth , Life , Effort

“This is the miracle of abstract painting: it constructs the unlimited monumentality of a work that no longer has a foothold in the visible world, that ignores its rules and does not seek anything from it, neither aid nor sanction, and that emerges with the pure force and infinite certainty of life. Withdrawn from the weight of things and from the inertial systems in which things are held and have their limited possibilities circumscribed, the work of art proceeds from the imagination. To imagine is to posit something other than what is and what is there right in front of us -- something other than the world. To imagine is to posit life.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Books on Culture and Barbarism, Seeing the Invisible: On Kandinsky (1988)
Source: Michel Henry, Seeing the invisible: On Kandinsky, Continuum, 2009, p. 107

Imagination , Painting , Life , World

“People did not always love the mountains. Just a few hundred years ago the high mountains were regarded as horrible, monstrous places filling people with terror and fear. The inhabitants near them were seen as awful demons, subhumans. But this attitude got transformed into just the opposite, especially by Romantic writers and painters in the nineteenth century. Seen by the Romantics, high mountains became places of impossible beauty, where the quality of light and the expansive solitary grandeur of the high peaks opened the heart of the individual. A man climbing a mountain became the image of self-conscious intelligence pitted against the eternal indifference of the forces of nature. Compared to these forces of nature, we are nothing save for the will that moves our limbs. Only that will is truly our own.”

Heinz R. Pagels (1939–1988) American physicist

Source: The Cosmic Code (1982), p. 271-272

Mountain , Intelligence , Indifference , Nature

“Our main goal should be to establish a precedent for a new post-Cold War era, in which the community of nations, working through the United Nations and other organizations, can insure that would-be aggressors do not profit from invasion, coercion and force.”

Paul Nitze (1907–2004) American government official

Source: War Whether We Need It Or Not? (1991)

War , Communication

“Nuclear is the safest power source we’ve got—with two exceptions, neither of which is being built. If some folk are terrified of unseen death by radiation, then let ’em deal with their own neuroses, instead of forcing us to stop building the atomic plants.”

Larry Niven book N-Space

Foreword: Playgrounds for the Mind (pp. 31-32)
Short fiction, N-Space (1990)

Death

“We have to communicate: we don't want to force, even though we have a right to establish a building, because what we want is a peaceful situation.”

Antonius Subianto Bunjamin (1968) Indonesian catholic priest

Source: Indonesia Church leaders focus on dialogue, communication http://www.archivioradiovaticana.va/storico/2016/06/09/indonesia_church_leaders_focus_on_dialogue,_communication/en-1235906 (2016)

Peace , Communication

“The great driving force of the oligarchs is the belief that they are doing right.”

Jack London book The Iron Heel

Source: The Iron Heel (1907), Ch. XXI

“There is a certain indolence in us, a wish not to be disturbed, which tempts us to think that when things are quiet, all is well. Subconsciously, we tend to give the preference to 'social peace,' though it be only apparent, because our lives and possessions seem then secure. Actually, human beings acquiesce too easily in evil conditions; they rebel far too little and too seldom. There is nothing noble about acquiescence in a cramped life or mere submission to superior force.”

A. J. Muste (1885–1967) Christian pacifist and civil rights activist

"Pacifism and Class War" in The Essays of A. J. Muste (1967) edited by Nat Hentoff p. 179-85; also quoted in American Power and the New Mandarins (2002) by Noam Chomsky, p. 160.

Evil , Peace , Thinking , Life

“They are not my forces. They are military forces that belong to the government.… I don't own them. I am [the] president. I don't own the country so they are not my forces.”

Bashar al-Assad (1965) President of Syria

Interview with Barbara Walters (7 Dec. 2011) on the military escalation of the Syrian conflict

Country

“At the edge of life you feel that you are no longer master of the life within you, that subjectivity is an illusion, and that uncontrollable forces are seething inside you, evolving with no relation to a personal center or a definite, individual rhythm.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934), essay 2 - On not wanting to live

Personality , Life , Feeling

“My heroes are those people who want to be individuals but are being forced to be cogs again. In an Empire there are only cogs.”

Anna Politkovskaya (1958–2006) Russian journalist

As quoted in Anna Politkovskaya: Putin, poison and my struggle for freedom https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/anna-politkovskaya-putin-poison-and-my-struggle-for-freedom-535250.html (15 October 2004), The Independent.

People

“Language is an evil thing, a very evil thing. And a force to be reckoned with.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

As quoted in The Guardian (19 March 2005)

Evil

“Freedom can never be found by the use of a foreign force.”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

Opposing the annexation of Belgium, 5th February 1793. Robespierre, Oeuvres, v. 270
Misc Quotes

Freedom

“One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), On Stupidity

Stupidity , Sense , Evil

“In established interests are the most powerful force of resistance to good.”

Daniel Salamanca (1863–1935) President of Bolivia (1863-1935)

“We shouldn't take information tranquilizers. Because sometimes information is spread about some moral and psychological breakdown in the Ukrainian armed forces, which are allegedly on the verge of some kind of crisis in moral and so on. All of that, to put it mildly, is false.”

Mikhail Khodaryonok (1954) Colonel of the Russian Armed Forces

Falseness

“So often, our Armed Forces and the Department of Defense staff are how the rest of the world encounters America. And you all know as well as anyone that our country is safer and stronger when we lead not just with the example of our power, but with the power of our example.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, February 2021, Remarks by President Biden to Department of Defense Personnel, February 10, 2021

Country , World

“No country will allow its legislative structure, parliament or congress to be filled up by treasonists, foreign agents or proxies of foreign forces. The Hong Kong electoral system must therefore be protected from exploitation and from foreign interference.”

John Lee Ka-chiu (1957) Chief Executive-elect of Hong Kong

"Speech by CS at online side event on Hong Kong-related issues during 49th session of United Nations Human Rights Council" https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202203/16/P2022031600619.htm (16 March 2022)

Country

“It is by the progress of philosophy and by the spectacle of the happiness of France, that you will extend the empire of our revolution, and not by the force of arms and by the calamities of war.”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

Speech to the National Convention, 10th April 1793
Misc Quotes

War , Happiness

“The effect of the land reform bringing land to the peasant masses is to enhance their enthusiasm and their zeal in increasing production and taking part in the war of resistance, and consequently the resistance forces will grow in strength.”

Trường Chinh (1907–1988) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (1907-1988)

Implementing the Land Reform (1958) (excerpts)

War , Parting

“Russian forces do not fire on civilian targets.”

Dmitry Peskov (1967) Russian politician

"Russia shifts stance on hospital bombing that sparked world outrage (Update)" https://cyprus-mail.com/2022/03/10/ukraine-accuses-russia-of-genocide-after-bombing-of-childrens-hospital/, Cyprus Mail, 10 March 2022