Quotes about violence

A collection of quotes on the topic of violence, people, use, other.

Quotes about violence

“Soon the crashes, the blackouts, the hypothermias, the demands for public lighting and a lot of misdeeds will hide the disappearances, the plots, the deaths, the domestic violence, the corruptions and a long etcetera…”

José Baroja book Sueño en Guadalajara y otros cuentos

Death, Light

“Today is filled with anger, fueled with hidden hate.
Scared of being outkast, afraid of common fate.
Today is build on tragedies which no one want's to face.
Nightmares to humanity and morally disgraced.
Tonight is filled with Rage, violence in the air.
Children bred with ruthlessness cause no one at home cares.
Tonight I lay my head down but the pressure never stops,
knowing that my sanity content when I'm droped.
But tomorrow I see change, a chance to build a new,
build on spirit intent of heart and ideas based on truth.
Tomorrow I wake with second wind and strong because of pride.
I know I fought with all my heart to keep the dream alive.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Hate, Fate, Children, Truth

“You can never take the violence back.”

Ozzy Osbourne book I Am Ozzy

Source: I Am Ozzy

“The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.”

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

Success

“We sleep peaceably in our beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

This has commonly been attributed to Orwell but has not been found in any of his writings. Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/07/rough-men/ found the earliest known appearance in a 1993 Washington Times essay by Richard Grenier: "As George Orwell pointed out, people sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." The absence of quotation marks indicates Grenier was using his own words to convey Orwell's opinion; thus it may have originated as a paraphrase of his statement in "Notes on Nationalism" https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwelnat.htm (May 1945): "Those who "abjure" violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf." There are also similar sentiments expressed in an essay which Orwell wrote on Rudyard Kipling, quoting from one of Kipling's poems: "Yes, making mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep." In the same essay Orwell also wrote of Kipling: "He sees clearly that men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them." Misattributed

Men, Sleep, Night

“Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Trotsky's Testament (1940)
Context: Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.

Life, Beauty, Evil, Future

“Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

1960s, Freedom From The Known (1969)
Context: Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.
When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.

Fear, Personality

“Please, see to it that mercy is not imposed on me. I want to show that through me, Gandhiji’s non-violence is being hanged.”

Nathuram Godse (1910–1949) Assassin of Mahatma Gandhi

Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (2018). Why I killed the Mahatma: Uncovering Godse's defence. New Delhi : Rupa, 2018.

“Libertarianism holds that the only proper role of violence is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal”

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) American economist of the Austrian School, libertarian political theorist, and historian

Personality

“If you don’t like seeing pictures of violence towards animals being posted, you need to help stop the violence, not the pictures.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Help, Animals

“Violence is a disease, a disease that corrupts all who use it regardless of the cause.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

Disease

“Afghans want to regain their right to self-determination through a democratic or traditional mechanism acceptable to our people.… We are willing to move toward this noble goal. We consider this as part of our duty to defend humanity against the scourge of intolerance, violence and fanaticism.”

Ahmad Shah Massoud (1953–2001) Afghan military leader

" Message to the people of the United States of America http://www.afghan-web.com/documents/let-masood.html" (1998).

People, Parting

“You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of government. I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence "democracy", and the other "tyranny."”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

As quoted in Freedom: A New Analysis (1954) by Maurice William Cranston, p. 112

Democracy, Personality

“Men are rewarded for learning the practice of violence in virtually any sphere of activity by money, admiration, recognition, respect, and the genuflection of others honoring their sacred and proven masculinity.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

p 53.
Pornography, Men Possessing Women (1979)

Men, Money, Learning

“….. murder is not just a crime of lust or violence. It becomes possession. They are part of you … [the victim] becomes a part of you, and you [two] are forever one … and the grounds where you kill them or leave them become sacred to you, and you will always be drawn back to them.”

Ted Bundy book The Stranger Beside Me

Quoted by Bill Hagmaier. Rule, Ann (2009). The Stranger Beside Me (Paperback; updated 2009 ed.). New York: Pocket Books pages 380–96.

Parting

“But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? … By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, that father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. The father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

National Prayer Breakfast speech, Washington, D.C. (3 February 1994) http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/abortion/ab0039.html. 1990s

Love, Women, War, People

“Suicide is a sudden accomplishment, a lightning-like deliverance: it is nirvana by violence.”

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

The New Gods (1969)

Suicide

“A rationalist, as I use the word, is a man who attempts to reach decisions by argument and perhaps, in certain cases, by compromise, rather than by violence. He is a man who would rather be unsuccessful in convincing another man by argument than successful in crushing him by force, by intimidation and threats, or even by persuasive propaganda.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

Utopia and Violence (1947)

Decision, Success

“When you curse another, you curse yourselves, and the curse returns to you. When you are violent, the violence returns . . . I speak to you because yours is the opportunity [to better world conditions] and yours is the time. Do not fall into the old ways that will lead you precisely into the world that you fear.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Seth Material (1970), p. 274
Context: It is wrong to curse a flower and wrong to curse a man. It is wrong not to hold any man in honor, and it is wrong to ridicule any man. You must honor yourselves and see within yourselves the spirit of eternal vitality. If you do not do this, then you destroy what you touch. And you must honor each other individual also, because in him is the spark of eternal vitality. When you curse another, you curse yourselves, and the curse returns to you. When you are violent, the violence returns... I speak to you because yours is the opportunity [to better world conditions] and yours is the time. Do not fall into the old ways that will lead you precisely into the world that you fear.

World, Fear, Way, Time

“Violence is sometimes a very practical solution but I don’t think it is the ultimate solution. Owning a gun is not OK for me. But I could argue both sides. Why shouldn’t people own them? I’m not fundamentally against citizens having access to a weapon but I think it has complications. It’s probably not the wisest idea. Obviously, it has consequences. Personally, I do not own a weapon.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

People, Idea, Thinking, Personality

“Please, don't talk to me about 'Pure Awareness' or 'Dwelling in the Absolute'.
I want to see how you treat your partner,
your kids, your parents, your precious body.
Please, don't lecture me about 'the illusion of the separate self' or how you achieved permanent bliss in just 7 days.
I want to feel a genuine warmth radiating from your heart.
I want to hear how well you listen,
take in information that doesn't fit your personal philosophy.
I want to see how you deal with people who disagree with you.
Don't tell me how awakened you are, how free you are from ego.
I want to know you beneath the words.
I want to know what you're like when troubles befall you.
If you can fully allow your pain and not pretend to be invulnerable.
If you can feel your anger yet not step into violence.
If you can grant safe passage to your sorrow yet not be its slave.
If you can feel your shame and not shame others:
If you can fuck up, and admit it.
If you can say 'sorry', and really mean it.
If you can be fully human in your glorious divinity.
Don't talk to me about your spirituality, friend.
I'm really not that interested.
I only want to meet YOU.
Know your precious heart.
Know the beautiful human struggling for the light.
Before 'the spiritual one'.
Before all the clever words.”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

Source: https://www.facebook.com/LifeWithoutACentre/posts/1523252961105640

“I have a violence in me that is hot as death-blood.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Death

“Law And Freedom without Violence (Anarchy)
Law And Violence without Freedom (Despotism)
Violence without Freedom And Law (Barbarism)
Violence with Freedom And Law (Republic)”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Law, Freedom

“To escape responsibility for violence we imagine it is enough to pledge never to be the first to do violence. But no one ever sees himself as casting the first stone. Even the most violent persons believe that they are always reacting to a violence committed in the first instance by someone else.”

René Girard (1923–2015) French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science

Source: The One by Whom Scandal Comes

Imagination, Personality

“Everybody against me. Why? Why me? I have not brought violence to you. I have not brought Thug Life to America. I didn't create Thug Life. I diagnosed it.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Source: Resurrection, 1971-1996

Life

“Those who abjure violence can only do so by others committing violence on their behalf.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

“If you are not vegan, please consider going vegan. It’s a matter of nonviolence. Being vegan is your statement that you reject violence to other sentient beings, to yourself, and to the environment, on which all sentient beings depend.”

Gary L. Francione (1954) American legal scholar

Dependency

“Only thought which does violence to itself is hard enough to shatter myth.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

“Violence can only be concealed by a Lie, & the Lie can only be maintained by Violence…. Any man, who has once proclaimed Violence as his Method, is inevitably forced to take the Lie as his Principle”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Lie

“The State’s behavior is violence, and it calls its violence “law”; that of the individual, “crime.””

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.
As quoted in The Great Quotations (1960) by George Seldes, p. 664
The Ego and Its Own (1845)

Law, Behavior

“I don't advocate violence; but if a man steps on my toes, I'll step on his…”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

“Evolving our consciousness is not something we do only for ourselves — it is something we do also for others… for all others, and for the Earth. Because when we open up and let our body and mind feel our ties with others and with nature, we change ourselves, and change others around us. When a sufficient number of people pray or meditate together, or find another path to evolve their consciousness, other people are affected as well. More sick people heal, divorce and suicide rates drop, crime and violence diminish. When many people open up, a powerful force develops — a leap of consciousness takes place. All the great prophets and sages of history knew this, Jesus as well as the Buddha, Mohammed as well as Zoroaster — and more recently Bahá'u'lláh the same as Sri Aurobindo, Teilhard de Chardin and the Dalai Lama.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: You Can Change the World (2003), p. 86.

People, Feeling, History, Nature

“No social co-operation under the division of labour is possible when some people or unions of people are granted the right to prevent by violence and the threat of violence other people from working. When enforced by violence, a strike in vital branches of production or a general strike are tantamount to a revolutionary destruction of society.”

Ludwig von Mises book Socialism

Socialism (1922), Epilogue (1947)

People

“The Zulu king [Zwelithini] must stop these threats of violence. We are not scared. I am scared of no one. No amount of violence can scare me because some of us are surprised that we are still alive today. … We want every Zulu-speaking person to get a piece of land. If the king wants to give land through the Ingonyama Trust, he must convince the EFF and the government.”

Julius Malema (1981) South African political activist

On 8 March 2018, concerning the Ingonyama Trust which administers 2.8-million hectares of land on behalf of the king, who is its sole trustee, https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-03-01-kzn-premier-backs-zulu-king-on-land-debate/ as quoted by Eric Naki in Juju lays into Zulu King Zwelithini https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/1850043/juju-lays-into-zulu-king-zwelithini/, The Citizen (8 March 2018). See also: Malema takes aim at Zulu king over land: 'There are no holy cows' https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2018-03-09-malema-takes-aim-at-zulu-king/, TimesLive (9 March 2018)

Personality

“[In the world below…] those who appear to have lived neither well not ill, go to the river Acheron, and mount such conveyances as they can get, and are carried in them to the lake, and there they dwell and are purified of their evil deeds, and suffer the penalty of the wrongs which they have done to others, and are absolved, and receive the rewards of their good deeds according to their deserts. But those who appear to be incurable by reason of the greatness of their crimes—who have committed many and terrible deeds of sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the like—such are hurled into Tartarus, which is their suitable destiny, and they never come out. Those again who have committed crimes, which, although great, are not unpardonable—who in moment of anger, for example, have done violence to a father or a mother, and have repented for the remainder of their lives, or who have taken the life of another under like extenuating circumstances—these are plunged into Tartarus, the pains of which they are compelled to undergo for a year, but at the end of the year the wave casts them forth—mere homicides by way of Cocytus, patricides and matricides by Pyriphlegethon—and they are borne to the Acherusian Lake, and here they lift up their voices and call upon the victims whom they have slain or wronged, to have pity on them, and to receive them, and to let them come out of the river into the lake. And if they prevail, then they come forth and cease from their troubles; but if not, they are carried back again into Tartarus and from thence into the rivers unceasingly, until they obtain mercy from those whom they have wronged: for this is the sentence inflicted upon them by their judges.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Life, Pain, World, Penalty

“Teachings that pointed the way beyond the dysfunction of the human mind, the way out of the collective insanity, were distorted and became themselves part of the insanity.
And so religions, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an ending of violence and hatred through a realization of the fundamental oneness of all life, they brought more violence and hatred, more divisions between people as well as between different religions and even within the same religion.”

Eckhart Tolle book A New Earth

A New Earth (2005)

Life, People, Religion, Way

“In our darkest hour, in my deepest despair,
Will you still care? Will you be there?
In my trials and my tribulations,
Through our doubts and frustrations,
In my violence and my turbulence,
Through my fear and my confessions,
And my anguish and my pain,
Through my joy and my sorrow,
In the promise of another tomorrow,
I'll never let you part,
For you're always in my heart.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Will You Be There
Dangerous (1991)

Pain, Fear, Heart, Joy

“We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Variant translation: Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
As quoted in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1974) edited by Leopold Labedz
Nobel lecture (1970)
Context: We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE. At its birth violence acts openly and even with pride. But no sooner does it become strong, firmly established, than it senses the rarefaction of the air around it and it cannot continue to exist without descending into a fog of lies, clothing them in sweet talk. It does not always, not necessarily, openly throttle the throat, more often it demands from its subjects only an oath of allegiance to falsehood, only complicity in falsehood.

Literature, Support, Nature, Forgetting

“David Eddings:‏ I'm afraid that ignorance, hate, racism, and violence will be exacerbated by silence. If speaking out is not an answer then what is?
Markus Persson:‏ Reading up on history, thinking for yourself, and not being an idiot.”

Markus Persson (1979) Swedish video game programmer

In Twitter (14 August 2017) https://twitter.com/notch/status/897158641962319878

Hate, History, Thinking, Silence

“In the name of Indian national life, in the name of religion, I appeal to all in each of the two countries who hold position…let them begin each in their own community to work untiringly towards this end: boldly to repudiate feelings of hatred and intolerance, actively to condemn and suppress acts of violence and aggression, earnestly to strive to exorcise suspicions…I appeal in the name of national life because communal tension is eating into it as a canker…I appeal in the name of religion because I can appeal to nothing nobler, and because religion is the language of the soul, and it is a change of soul that India needs today.”

Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) British politician

Speech as Viceroy of India (1926), quoted in Birkenhead, Halifax (Hamish Hamilton, 1965), pp. 223-234
Viceroy of India

Life, Religion, Feeling, Soul

“One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fiber of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a penknife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket!”

Edgar Allan Poe book The Black Cat

The Black Cat (1843)

Home, Soul, Cats, Night

“Actual history occurs, so the speak, on credit; only subsequent development will decide retroactively if the current revolutionary violence will be forgiven, legitimated, or if it will continue to exert a pressure on the shoulders of the present generation as its guilt, as its unsettled debt.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

159
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

History

“And now in America itself after 30 years of experimenting with the Great Society programmes, there is widespread crime and violence, children kill each other with guns, neigbourhoods are insecure, old people feel forgotten, families are falling apart. And the media attacks the integrity and character of your leaders with impunity, drags down all those in authority and blames everyone but itself.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Lee Kuan Yew, Interview with Nathan Gardels of Global Viewpoint, Sept 26 1995 http://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/017-1995-09-26.pdf 1990s

Children, People, Family, Feeling

“Berlin says: "… You cannot combine full liberty with full equality—full liberty for the wolves cannot be combined with full liberty for the sheep…." …. Are women sheep ("led like sheep to the slaughter")? Must women become wolves? Is violence against women a direct result of the fact that there is no inevitable, painful, retaliatory consequence for hurting women?”

Andrea Dworkin book Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation

Source: Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation (2000), pp. 245–246.

Women, Pain, Hurt

“There are people who are convinced of the wickedness both of armies and of police forces, but who are nevertheless much more intolerant and inquisitorial in outlook than the normal person who believes that it is necessary to use violence in certain circumstances. They will not say to somebody else, ‘Do this, that and the other or you will go to prison’, but they will, if they can, get inside his brain and dictate his thoughts for him in the minutest particulars. Creeds like pacifism and anarchism, which seem on the surface to imply a complete renunciation of power, rather encourage this habit of mind. For if you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics — a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage — surely that proves that you are in the right? And the more you are in the right, the more natural that everyone else should be bullied into thinking likewise.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool," Polemic (March 1947)

People, Nature, Thinking, Appearance

“We all remember how many religious wars were fought for a religion of love and gentleness; how many bodies were burned alive with the genuinely kind intention of saving souls from the eternal fire of hell. Only if we give up our authoritarian attitude in the realm of opinion, only if we establish the attitude of give and take, of readiness to learn from other people, can we hope to control acts of violence inspired by piety and duty.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

Utopia and Violence (1947)

Love, War, People, Religion

“Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Harvard University address (1978)

Life, People, Books, Way

“The cycle of violence will continue far into the new millennium. Hopes for peace will probably not be realized, because the great that shape the international system fear each other and compete for power as a result. Indeed, their ultimate aim is to gain a position of dominant power over others, because having dominant power is the best means to ensure one's own survival.”

John Mearsheimer book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Preface, p. xi
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001)

Fear, Peace, Hope

“Of late years it has been the fashion to talk about Gandhi as though he were not only sympathetic to the Western Left-wing movement, but were integrally part of it. Anarchists and pacifists, in particular, have claimed him for their own, noticing only that he was opposed to centralism and State violence and ignoring the other-worldly, anti-humanist tendency of his doctrines.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Reflections on Gandhi (1949)

Fashion, Parting

“Some years ago Professor Bixler reminded us of the danger of overstressing the well-adjusted life. Everybody passionately seeks to be well-adjusted. We must, of course, be well-adjusted to avoid neurotic schizophrenic personalities, but there are some things in our world to which men of goodwill must be maladjusted. I confess that I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive men of work and food, and the to the insanities of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.”

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

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 2 : Transformed nonconformist

Life, Men, World, Food

“Strictly speaking, as a Nationalist, he was an enemy, but since in every crisis he would exert himself to prevent violence — which, from the British point of view, meant preventing any effective action whatever — he could be regarded as "our man."”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

In private this was sometimes cynically admitted. The attitude of the Indian millionaires was similar. Gandhi called upon them to repent, and naturally they preferred him to the Socialists and Communists who, given the chance, would actually have taken their money away. How reliable such calculations are in the long run is doubtful; as Gandhi himself says, "in the end deceivers deceive only themselves"; but at any rate the gentleness with which he was nearly always handled was due partly to the feeling that he was useful.
Reflections on Gandhi (1949)

“We're trying to sell peace, like a product, you know, and sell it like people sell soap or soft drinks. And it's the only way to get people aware that peace is possible, and it isn't just inevitable to have violence. Not just war — all forms of violence.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Interview on The David Frost Show (14 June 1969)
Context: We're trying to sell peace, like a product, you know, and sell it like people sell soap or soft drinks. And it's the only way to get people aware that peace is possible, and it isn't just inevitable to have violence. Not just war — all forms of violence. People just accept it and think 'Oh, they did it, or Harold Wilson did it, or Nixon did it,' they're always scapegoating people. And it isn't Nixon's fault. We're all responsible for everything that goes on, you know, we're all responsible for Biafra and Hitler and everything. So we're just saying "SELL PEACE" — anybody interested in peace just stick it in the window. It's simple but it lets somebody else know that you want peace too, because you feel alone if you're the only one thinking 'wouldn't it be nice if there was peace and nobody was getting killed.' So advertise yourself that you're for peace if you believe in it.

War, People, Peace, Way

“If one harbours anywhere in one's mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible. Here are just a few examples. I list below five types of nationalist, and against each I append a fact which it is impossible for that type of nationalist to accept, even in his secret thoughts:
: BRITISH TORY. Britain will come out of this war with reduced power and prestige.
: COMMUNIST. If she had not been aided by Britain and America, Russia would have been defeated by Germany.
: IRISH NATIONALIST. Eire can only remain independent because of British protection.
: TROTSKYIST. The Stalin regime is accepted by the Russian masses.
: PACIFIST. Those who "abjure" violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.
All of these facts are grossly obvious if one's emotions do not happen to be involved: but to the kind of person named in each case they are also intolerable, and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial. I come back to the astonishing failure of military prediction in the present war. It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Notes on Nationalism (1945)

War, People, Secret, Fools

“Violence, less and less embarrassed by the limits imposed by centuries of lawfulness, is brazenly and victoriously striding across the whole world, unconcerned that its infertility has been demonstrated and proved many times in history.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Nobel lecture (1970)
Context: Violence, less and less embarrassed by the limits imposed by centuries of lawfulness, is brazenly and victoriously striding across the whole world, unconcerned that its infertility has been demonstrated and proved many times in history. What is more, it is not simply crude power that triumphs abroad, but its exultant justification. The world is being inundated by the brazen conviction that power can do anything, justice nothing.

World, Law, History, Time

“Art is a substitute for violence.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: Power and Innocence (1972), Ch. 11 : The Humanity of the Rebel
Context: Art is a substitute for violence. The same impulses that drive persons to violence — the hunger for meaning, the need for ecstasy, the impulse to risk all — drive the artist to create. He is by nature our archrebel. … the essence of the rebellion is in the new way of seeing nature and life.

Art

“In fact, honour, duty and love of one’s own kith and kin and country might often compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force. I could never conceive that an armed resistance to an aggression is unjust. I would consider it a religious and moral duty to resist and, if possible, to overpower such an enemy by use of force. Rama killed Ravana in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita.. Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and Arjuna had to fight and slay quite a number of his friends and relations including the revered Bhishma because the latter was on the side of the aggressor. It is my firm belief that in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as guilty of violence, the Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of the springs of human action. In more recent history, it was the heroic fight put up by Chhatrapati Shivaji that first checked and eventually destroyed the Muslim tyranny in India. It was absolutely essentially for Shivaji to overpower and kill an aggressive Afzal Khan, failing which he would have lost his own life. In condemning history’s towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots, Gandhiji has merely exposed his self-conceit.”

Nathuram Godse (1910–1949) Assassin of Mahatma Gandhi

Nathuram Godse: Why I Assassinated Gandhi (1993)

Love, Life, Making love, History

“The people were divided into the persecuted and those who persecuted them. That wild beast, which lives in man and does not dare to show itself until the barriers of law and custom have been removed, was now set free. The signal was given, the barriers were down. As has so often happened in the history of man, permission was tacitly granted for acts of violence and plunder, even for murder, if they were carried out in the name of higher interests, according to established rules, and against a limited number of men of a particular type and belief. A man who saw clearly and with open eyes and was then living could see how this miracle took place and how the whole of a society could, in a single day, be transformed. In a few minutes the business quarter, based on centuries of tradition, was wiped out. It is true that there had always been concealed enmities and jealousies and religious intolerance, coarseness and cruelty, but there had also been courage and fellowship and a feeling for measure and order, which restrained all these instincts within the limits of the supportable and, in the end, calmed them down and submitted them to the general interest of life in common. Men who had been leaders in the commercial quarter for forty years vanished overnight as if they had all died suddenly, together with the habits, customs and institutions which they represented.”

Ivo Andrič book The Bridge on the Drina

Source: The Bridge on the Drina (1945), Ch. 22

Life, Men, People, Jealousy

“My greatest hope is that one day our hospital will be devoted to the miracle of childbirth, rather than the tragedy of sexual violence, and that our wards devoted to victims of rape will be empty.”

Denis Mukwege (1955) Congolese gynecologist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Source: Denis Mukwege (2021) cited in " 'We Cannot Rest in Our Fight.' Angelina Jolie Talks to Dr. Denis Mukwege About Supporting Victims of Sexual Violence https://time.com/6124350/angelina-jolie-denis-mukwege/" on TIME, 1 December 2021.

Hope

“A little girl robbed you?" Tessa said.
"Actually, she wasn’t a little girl at all, as it turns out, but a midget in a dress with a penchant for violence, who goes by the name of Six-Fingered Nigel."
"Easy mistake to make," Jem said.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Girl

“Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood. This sets the stage for further repression and violence that spread all too easily to victimize the next minority group.”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Chicago Defender (1 April 1998)

People

“I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Learning

“The specific character of [women's] oppression cannot be explained away by equating different situations through superficial and childish simplifications[:]

It is true that both the woman and the male worker are condemned to silence by their exploitation. But under the current system, the worker's wife is also condemned to silence by her worker-husband. In other words, in addition to the class exploitation common to both of them, women must confront a particular set of relations that exist between them and men, relations of conflict and violence that use physical differences as their pretext.”

Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) President of Upper Volta

Source: Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

Women, Men, Silence

“Violence?"Skulduggery said. "Violence is never the answer, until it's the only answer.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: The Dying of the Light

“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

“… who shall measure the heat and violence of a poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body?”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

Heart

“Violence has never prospered, you can't remake the world in a day. Anyone who promises to change everything for you all at once is either a fool or a rogue!”

Emile Zola (1840–1902) French writer (1840-1902)

World, Fools, Change

“In violence, we forget who we are.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

"Characters in Fiction", p. 276. First published in Partisan Review (March 1961)
On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

Forgetting

“All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished.”

Marshall B. Rosenberg (1934–2015) American psychologist

Source: Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

Pain, People

“This will be our reply to violence:
to make music more intensely,
more beautifully,
more devotedly than ever before.”

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist

Music, Peaceful

“A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”

Walter Benjamin book Theses on the Philosophy of History

Source: Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), IX

Angels, History, Past, Future

“If you want peace, you won't get it with violence.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Peace

“I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Intelligence

“I don't want unnecessary violence, sergeant," said Blouse.
"Right you are, sir!" said the sergeant. "Carborundum! First man comes through that door runnin', I want him nailed to the wall!" He caught the lieutenant's eye, and added: "But not too hard!”

Terry Pratchett book Monstrous Regiment

Source: Monstrous Regiment

“The blade itself incites to deeds of violence.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

“We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Variant: We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight.

Love, World, Making love

“Concerning non-violence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Source: Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements
Source: Malcolm X Speaks (1965), p. 22

“It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“The violent subjugation of the Palestinians, Iraqis, and Afghans will only ensure that those who oppose us will increasingly speak to us in the language we speak to them—violence.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

“I realize that violence is not more prevalent today than in previous periods of human history, but there is a difference. We have seen visionary standards adopted by the global community that espouse peace and human rights, and the globalization of information ensures that the violation of these principles of nonviolence by a powerful and admired democracy tends to resonate throughout the world community. We should have advanced much further in the realization of women's rights, given these international commitments to peace and the rule of law.”

Jimmy Carter book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Source: A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Women, World, Peace, Law

“[…] despite how hard sometimes the world seems to be, and all you see on television is war and conflict and poverty and violence, the truth is that if you had to choose when to be born, not knowing where or who you would be, in all of human history, now would be the time. Because the world is less violent, it is healthier, it is wealthier, it is more tolerant and it offers more opportunity than any time in human history for more people than any time in human history. Now, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still terrible things happening around the world or in this region. We still have things like human trafficking. And we still have terrible abuse of children. And there are conflicts. And so these are things that we’re going to have to tackle and deal with. But you should know that with each successive generation things have improved just a little bit. And over time, that little bit adds to a lot. And it’s now up to you, the next generation, to make sure that 20 years from now, or 30 years from now, people look back and say, wow, things are a lot better now than they were back then. And there will still be problems 20 or 30 years from now also. But they will be different problems, because you will have solved many of the problems that exist today.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall (April 2014)

War, Children, People, Truth

“Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote that you cannot commit an act of violence against a non-sentient object. Back in 1986, the Green Party of Canada tried to toss me out of the Party for sinking whaling ships on the ground that it was a violent act. I pointed out that the Green Party of Canada supported violence when it was convenient politically — for example they supported and continue to support abortion which is, like it or not, a violent act, certainly more violent than sinking some metal into the sea. Violence is not violent when we justify it, be it abortion, or war, or eating meat for example. I support abortion but I'm not a hypocrite about it — it's violent, I accept that. Every American taxpayer accepts the violence that their tax-dollars fund.”

Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist

When asked how he addressed accusations of property destruction as being a violent act. Taken from an interview given to the environmentalist magazine, Resistance: Journal of the Earth Liberation Movement http://www.resistancemagazine.org/

War, Support, Sea

“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

“It was a marvelous engine for doing violence to the spirit of thousands of laws without actually running afoul of so much as a city ordinance.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 3 “United Hotcake Preferred” (p. 78)

Law

“An additional reason for caution in dealing with corporations is to be found in the international commercial conditions of to-day. The same business conditions which have produced the great aggregations of corporate and individual wealth have made them very potent factors in international Commercial competition. Business concerns which have the largest means at their disposal and are managed by the ablest men are naturally those which take the lead in the strife for commercial supremacy among the nations of the world. America has only just begun to assume that commanding position in the international business world which we believe will more and more be hers. It is of the utmost importance that this position be not jeoparded, especially at a time when the overflowing abundance of our own natural resources and the skill, business energy, and mechanical aptitude of our people make foreign markets essential. Under such conditions it would be most unwise to cramp or to fetter the youthful strength of our Nation. Moreover, it cannot too often be pointed out that to strike with ignorant violence at the interests of one set of men almost inevitably endangers the interests of all. The fundamental rule in our national life —the rule which underlies all others—is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, First Annual Message to Congress (1901)

Life, Men, People, Youth

“In the face of violence that seems intractable and suffering that is so senseless, it is easy to grow cynical, and I think tempting to give in to the notion that peace and security may be beyond our grasp. But I say to all of you here today, especially the young people, do not give into that cynicism. Do not lose the idealism and optimism that is the root of all great change. Don’t ever lose the faith that says, if we want it, if we are willing to work for it, if we stand together, the future can be different; tomorrow can be better.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Remarks to the People of Estonia (September 2014)

People, Peace, Faith, Optimism

“Treating women as second-class citizens is a bad tradition. It holds you back. There’s no excuse for sexual assault or domestic violence. There’s no reason that young girls should suffer genital mutilation. There’s no place in civilized society for the early or forced marriage of children. These traditions may date back centuries; they have no place in the 21st century. These are issues of right and wrong -- in any culture. But they’re also issues of success and failure. Any nation that fails to educate its girls or employ its women and allowing them to maximize their potential is doomed to fall behind in a global economy.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks to the Kenyan People (July 2015)

Women, Marriage, Children, Education

“If philosophy is still necessary, it is so only in the way it has been from time immemorial: as critique, as resistance to the expanding heteronomy, even if only as thought’s powerless attempt to remain its own master and to convict of untruth, by their own criteria, both a fabricated mythology and a conniving, resigned acquiescence. … It is incumbent upon philosophy … to provide a refuge for freedom. Not that there is any hope that it could break the political tendencies that are throttling freedom throughout the world both from within and without and whose violence permeates the very fabric of philosophical argumentation.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Source: Wozu noch Philosophie? [Why still philosophy?] (1963), p. 10

World, Hope, Way, Freedom

“We have never preached violence, except the violence of love, which left Christ nailed to a cross, the violence that we must each do to ourselves to overcome our selfishness and such cruel inequalities among us. The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love, of brotherhood, the violence that wills to beat weapons into sickles for work.”

Óscar Romero (1917–1980) Fourth Archbishop of San Salvador

Oscar A. Romero, The Violence of Love http://data.plough.com/ebooks/ViolenceOfLove.pdf (1977).

Love, Christ, Selfishness

“With kings, nations, and private individuals, the strongest assume to themselves rights over the weakest, and the same rule is followed by animals, by matter, by the elements, so that everything is performed in the universe by violence. And that order which we blame with some appearance of justice is the most universal, most absolute, most unchangeable, and most ancient law of nature.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 176.

Justice, Law, Nature, Universe

“It’s just sex and violence, melody and silence.”

Richard Ashcroft (1971) English singer-songwriter

Bitter Sweet Symphony
Urban Hymns (1997)

Sex, Silence

“Nationwide, the nonreligious population is both the fastest growing, and the most despised. I ask you all, why is that? Why are we hated, when we endorse no violence, incite no racism or hatred, and demand nothing more than equal treatment? I'll tell you why: It's easy to hate what you don't know, and the theists don't know us. Well, actually, they do know us, but they don't know they know us, because most atheists in this country are closeted. Bigotry is born of ignorance, but ignorance can be cured. If the atheists weren't closeted, it would be harder to hate us, because in the end, you can't hate what you already love.”

David Silverman (1957) American animator and director

Love, Hate, Country

“As long as psychotherapy concerns itself with the relief of psychic distress, avoiding the larger questions which arise from involvement with the creative process, it can perform its medical healing function without doing major violence to the social assets which creativity supplies.”

Paul Rosenfels (1909–1985) American sociologist

8. Psychotherapy and Social Welfare
Love and Power: The Psychology of Interpersonal Creativity (1966)

Question

“The face of globalisation is contradictory. The internet and television can bring knowledge and information, but also offensive sexuality and mindless violence into the home. Trade can bring new wealth and opportunities, but also huge disruptions and change to communities. In all nations - including America - this change can bring fear. Fear that because of modernity we will lose of control over our economic choices, our politics, and most importantly our identities - those things we most cherish about our communities, our families, our traditions, and our faith. But I also know that human progress cannot be denied. There need not be contradictions between development and tradition.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2009, A New Beginning (June 2009)

Fear, Family, Faith, Home

“[In the world below…] The wise and orderly soul is conscious of her situation, and follows in the path; but the soul which desires the body, and which… has long been fluttering about the lifeless frame and the world of sight, is after many struggles and many sufferings hardly and with violence carried away by her attendant genius, and when she arrives at the place where the other souls are gathered, if she be impure and have done impure deeds or have been concerned in foul murders or other crimes… from that soul everyone flees and turns away; no one will be her companion, no one her guide, but alone she wanders in extremity of evil until certain times are fulfilled…”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

World, Soul, Suffering, Evil

“We are joined today by inspiring entrepreneurs from more than 120 countries and many from across Africa. And all of you embody a spirit that we need to take on some of the biggest challenges that we face in the world -- the spirit of entrepreneurship, the idea that there are no limits to the human imagination; that ingenuity can overcome what is and create what needs to be. And everywhere I go, across the United States and around the world, I hear from people, but especially young people, who are ready to start something of their own -- to lift up people’s lives and shape their own destinies. And that’s entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship creates new jobs and new businesses, new ways to deliver basic services, new ways of seeing the world -- it’s the spark of prosperity. It helps citizens stand up for their rights and push back against corruption. Entrepreneurship offers a positive alternative to the ideologies of violence and division that can all too often fill the void when young people don’t see a future for themselves. Entrepreneurship means ownership and self-determination, as opposed to simply being dependent on somebody else for your livelihood and your future. Entrepreneurship brings down barriers between communities and cultures and builds bridges that help us take on common challenges together. Because one thing that entrepreneurs understand is, is that you don't have to look a certain way, or be of a certain faith, or have a certain last name in order to have a good idea.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by President Obama at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit at United Nations Compound in Nairobi, Kenya (July 25, 2015) https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/25/remarks-president-obama-global-entrepreneurship-summit 2015

People, World, Faith, Way

“No religion, without exception, will ever serve to bring men together and reconcile them. They have been and will continue to be a cause of unspeakable sufferings, of carnage, or monstrous physical and spiritual acts of violence that constitute one of the darkest chapters in human history.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Le religioni, tutte, senza eccezione, non serviranno mai per avvicinare e riconciliare gli uomini e, al contrario, sono state e continuano a essere causa di sofferenze inenarrabili, di stragi, di mostruose violenze fisiche e spirituali che costituiscono uno dei più tenebrosi capitoli della misera storia umana. La Repubblica http://www.repubblica.it/online/mondo/saramago/saramago/saramago.html (20 September 2001)

Men, Religion, History, Suffering