Quotes about force
page 56

Ben Aaronovitch photo
Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner photo
Lindsey Graham photo

“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

Mutale Nalumango photo

“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.

Alice A. Bailey photo
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor photo
Brig. Gen. Eran Ortal photo
Laurence Tribe photo
Lawrence M. Krauss photo
Denis Sassou Nguesso photo

“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.

Alexander De Croo photo

“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.

Vera Stanley Alder photo
Vera Stanley Alder photo
Vera Stanley Alder photo

“[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

John Wesley photo
Alastair Reynolds photo

“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?”

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

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo

“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)

Winston S. Churchill photo
Laurence Tribe photo
Michel Henry photo
Paul Nitze photo
Larry Niven photo
Antonius Subianto Bunjamin photo

“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)

Jack London photo

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

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

A. J. Muste photo
Bashar al-Assad photo

“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

Emil M. Cioran photo
Anna Politkovskaya photo

“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.

David Lynch photo

“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)

Maximilien Robespierre photo

“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

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo
Joe Biden photo

“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

John Lee Ka-chiu photo

“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)

Maximilien Robespierre photo
Trường Chinh photo
Dmitry Peskov photo

“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

Archilochus photo
Kim Stanley Robinson photo
Leonid Kuchma photo

“Mobilizing the efforts of the various strata and sectors of our societies could become a powerful driving force for progress in the fight against the AIDS pandemic.”

Leonid Kuchma (1938) Second president of Ukraine

Speech at the 58th session of the United Nations General Assembly (excerpts) (2003)

Frank Lloyd Wright photo
Prevale photo

“Life, through experiences, difficulties and disappointments forces to grow, overcome obstacles and become stronger.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: La vita, attraverso esperienze, difficoltà e delusioni costringe a crescere, superare ostacoli e diventare più forti.
Source: prevale.net

Prevale photo

“Music is a vital force that feeds the emotion of existence.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: La musica è una forza vitale che alimenta l'emozione dell'esistenza.
Source: prevale.net