Quotes about fratricide (17 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“The legacy of modernity is a legacy of fratricidal wars, devastating "development," cruel "civilization," and previously unimagined violence. Erich Auerbach once wrote that tragedy is the only genre that can properly claim realism in Western literature, and perhaps this is true precisely because of the tragedy Western modernity has imposed on the world.”

Antonio Negri book Empire

46
Empire

War , World , Literature

“All human paternity comes internally structured by fratricide and, as paternity, is incapable of truth, because it will always be protecting itself against the 'other.”

James Alison (1959) Christian theologian, priest

Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), " Theology amidst the stones and dust http://girardianlectionary.net/res/alison_elijah.htm", p. 48.

Truth

“Think well about this, dear brothers and sisters, and you will see that we should have been in a state of terrible chaos, in a fratricidal war, in a country which would no longer be Yugoslavia, but be only a group of petty little states fighting among themselves and destroying each other. But our people do not want that to happen.”

Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman

Jasper Ridley, Tito: A Biography (Constable and Company Ltd., 1994), p. 263.
Other

War , People , Thinking , Sister

“Years rolled on. France, long tossed among the surges of civil commotion, plunged at last into a gulf of fratricidal war. Blazing hamlets, sacked cities, fields steaming with slaughter, profaned altars, and ravished maidens, marked the track of the tornado. There was little room for schemes of foreign enterprise.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. II, Ch. 2 La Roche. Champlain. De Monts.
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

War

“There is no wicked and numinous paternal 'they'. There are only brothers and sisters like ourselves: fragile receivers and mete-ers out of ambivalent and often fratricidal fraternity.”

James Alison (1959) Christian theologian, priest

Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), "Jesus' fraternal relocation of God", p. 80.

Sister

“Now, here is Jesus' point: he is not only the culmination of the project, but the project itself, God made brother, offering us to become siblings, but vulnerable to fratricide.”

James Alison (1959) Christian theologian, priest

Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), "Jesus' fraternal relocation of God", p. 73.

God , Siblings

“Harry Dresden: On the whole, we're a murderous race. According to Genesis, it took as few as four people to make the planet too crowded to stand, and the first murder was a fratricide. Genesis says that in a fit of jealous rage, the very first child born to mortal parents, Cain, snapped and popped the first metaphorical cap in another human being. The attack was a bloody, brutal, violent, reprehensible killing. Cain's brother Abel probably never saw it coming. As I opened the door to my apartment, I was filled with a sense of empathic sympathy and intuitive understanding. For freaking Cain.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Dead Beat (2005), Chapter 1, opening lines

People , Understanding , Parent , Sense

“Lincoln's appeal to "the better angels of our nature" failed to avert a fratricidal war. But the compassionate wisdom of Lincoln's first and second inaugurals bequeathed to the Union, cemented with blood, a moral heritage which, when drawn upon in times of stress and strife, is sure to find specific ways and means to surmount difficulties that may appear to be insurmountable.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Concurring, Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958).
Judicial opinions

Wisdom , War , Angels , Way

“That's why the peoples have to die -- so that the Jew can live. He drives the peoples to war to make a profit from the fratricide of the white race.
In the World War 11 million gentiles had to die. The Jew was the winner.”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Deswegen müssen die Völker sterben, damit der Jude leben kann. Er hetzt die Völker zum Krieg, um aus dem Brudermord der weißen Rasse Gewinn zu ziehen.
Im Weltkrieg mussten 11 Millionen Nichtjuden sterben. Der Jude aber war der Sieger.
05/20/1932, speech in the Hercules Hall in Nuremberg ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)

War , People , World

“The most sacred duty, the supreme and urgent work, is to deliver humanity from the malediction of Cain - fratricidal war.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 51.

War

“This province of Quebec is catholic and French and shall remain catholic and French. All the while asserting our friendship and our respect for the representatives of the other races and religions, all the while claiming our eagerness for giving them their fair share in every aspect […] we solemnly declare that we shall never renounce our rights that are garanteed by treatees, by law and by the constitution […] Let us cease our fratricidal struggles and let us unite!”

Honoré Mercier (1840–1894) Canadian politician

Cette province de Québec est catholique et française et restera catholique et française. Tout en affirmant notre amitié et notre respect pour les représentants des autres races et religions, tout en déclarant notre empressement de leur donner leur juste part en tout et partout (...) nous déclarons solennellement que nous ne renoncerons jamais aux droits qui nous sont garantis par les traités, par la loi et la constitution (...) Cessons nos luttes fratricides et unissons-nous!
Speech given of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day of 1889.

Friendship , Religion , Law

“Once more, the spectre of Cold War is everywhere. Defence budgets, a decimal part of which could free humanity from hunger, disease, illiteracy, and poverty, instead of decreasing, have grown. The gap between 'the haves' and 'the have-nots' is daily widening. Many nations seem to be politically independent but cannot use their independence to deal with their problems or to prosper because foreign influence and interference is still strong. Fratricide and similar savagery in the world sting the human conscience. Racial discrimination a mark of shame on twentieth-century man, although intolerable to most humans can still be seen in various parts of the world. And the power-seeking policies of the strong are hampering the execution of United Nations' ideals.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

The Shah's Message on the occasion of the 23rd Anniversary of the Foundation of the United Nations - October 24, 1968 http://members.cybertrails.com/~pahlavi/un-1.html
Speeches, 1968

Hunger , War , World , Disease

“In a world that has long been terrorized by fratricidal Sky-God religions, the ascendance of Buddhism would surely be a welcome development.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

2000s
Context: One could surely argue that the Buddhist tradition, taken as a whole, represents the richest source of contemplative wisdom that any civilization has produced. In a world that has long been terrorized by fratricidal Sky-God religions, the ascendance of Buddhism would surely be a welcome development.

God , World , Religion

“I would say: "England! Steady! Look where you are going! Human hands were given us to clasp, and not to be raised against one another in fratricidal strife."”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Birmingham (5 March 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp 33-34, p. 40.
1925
Context: I want a truce of God in this country, that we may compose our differences, that we may join all our strengths together to see if we cannot pull the country into a better and happier condition. It is little that a Government can do; these reforms, these revolutions must come from the people themselves. The organisations of employers and men, if they take their coats off to it, are far more able to work out the solutions of their troubles than the politicians... So let those who represent labour and capital get down to it, and seek and pursue peace through every alley and every corner of this country... And if I have a message to-night for you and the people of this country, it is just this. I would say: "England! Steady! Look where you are going! Human hands were given us to clasp, and not to be raised against one another in fratricidal strife."

“That there should be wars between nations who learned their first lessons in citizenship from the same mother seems to me fratricidal insanity.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Classical Association (8 January 1926), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 107.
1926
Context: Believing as I do that much of the civilisation and culture of the world is bound up with the life of Western Europe, it is good for us to remember that we Western Europeans have been in historical times members together of a great Empire, and that we share in common, though in differing degrees, language, law, and tradition. That there should be wars between nations who learned their first lessons in citizenship from the same mother seems to me fratricidal insanity.

War , Learning

“But for those who lived in non-Christian lands, it was decreed that the work of conversion was an imperative. It is, in a sense, a pity that this work will always be remembered for its association either with conquest, with religious fratricide or with imperialism.”

Christopher Hitchens book The Missionary Position

Source: 2010s, 2011, The Missionary Position, Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice (2012)

Sense

“The self-preservation instinct of the nation must be heard. Adventurists must have their hands tied before they push the homeland into the abyss of fratricide.”

Wojciech Jaruzelski (1923–2014) Polish military officer and politician

Source: Excerpts of Martial law speech (14 December 1981)