Violence has been a powerful and complex force throughout human history, shaping societies, inspiring change, and provoking deep reflection. Exploring thoughtful and impactful quotes about violence can provide valuable insights into its causes, consequences, and the human experience surrounding it. In this collection of the top 132 powerful violence quotes, you’ll find words that challenge, provoke, and inspire, offering perspectives from a range of voices across time and culture. Whether you’re seeking understanding, motivation, or a deeper look into the nature of violence, these quotes serve as a compelling starting point.
1. “This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence.” - Ben Elton
2. “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.” - Mahatma Gandhi
3. “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” - E.F. Schumacher
4. “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
5. “I get it,' said the prisoner. 'Good Cop, Bad Cop, eh?'If you like.' said Vimes. 'But we're a bit short staffed here, so if I give you a cigarette would you mind kicking yourself in the teeth?” - Terry Pratchett
6. “Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.” - Yehuda Bauer
7. “Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down.” - Malcom X
8. “If somebody says 'I love you' to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol holder requires? 'I love you, too'.” - Kurt Vonnegut
9. “Physical love is unthinkable without violence.” - Milan Kundera
10. “Let us not forget that violence does not and cannot exist by itself; it is invariably intertwined with the lie. They are linked in the most intimate, most organic and profound fashion: violence cannot conceal itself behind anything except lies, and lies have nothing to maintain them save violence. Anyone who has once proclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose the lie as his principle.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
11. “You better watch out. You better not cry. You better not pout, I'm telling you why,Cause Santa Clause might put a cap in your ass.” - Craig Ferguson
12. “The old Lie:Dulce et decorum estPro patria mori.” - Wilfred Owen
13. “Man is born violent but is kept in check by the people around him. If he nevertheless manages to throw off his fetters, he can count on applause, for everyone recognizes himself in him. Deeply ingrained, nay, buried dreams come true. The unlimited radiates its magic even upon crime, which, not coincidentally, is the main source of entertainment in Eumeswil. I, as an anarch, not uninterested but disinterested, can understand that. Freedom has a wide range and more facets than a diamond.” - Ernst Jünger
14. “In the preface of "The Rifles" "Another rule we followed was never kill an animal that we were not going to use for food or clothing." Barnabas Piryuaq"Well, in those high latitudes we found such quantities of seals and walruses that we simply did not know what to do with them.There were thousands and thousands lying there; we walked among them and hit them on the head, and laughed heartily in the abundance which God had created." Jan Welzi 1933. ” - William T. Vollmann
15. “As a teacher of fourth-graders in a public school, where corporal punishement was not allowed, she had years of violence stored up and was, truth be told, sort of enjoying letting it out on Kona, who she felt could have been the poster child for the failure of public education.” - Christopher Moore
16. “The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence humans have ever committed.” - Gil Bailie
17. “He, who thought it necessary to maintain himself in her good graces, strove to console her under her disappointment by committing a little violence upon truth.” - Matthew Lewis
18. “I had a romance novel inside me, but I paid three sailors to beat it out of me with steel pipes.” - Patton Oswalt
19. “[On Schopenhauer in Black and White] Schopenhauer's views of love are flawed. Love can't be merely an illusion of the mind to aid in procreation, but the path to redemption for an otherwise violently selfish species. Past human greatness has proven that when challenged, love can overpower impulsive instinct, and in essence, the vilest aspects of our nature.” - Tiffany Madison
20. “Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.” - Mahatma Gandhi
21. “I, on the other hand, interrupt people because my thoughts fly out of my mouth. My handbag's full of rubbish. And I want to do something that matters with my life. Right now I'd like to write plays, sing in musicals, and/or rid the world of poverty, violence, cruelty, and right-wing conservative politics.” - Alison Larkin
22. “There is a comfort in conformity, a security in control, that is appealing. There is a thrill in domination, and we are all secretly attracted to violence.” - Tom Robbins
23. “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.” - Mao Tse-tung
24. “The cost of growth is always a small act of violence.” - Jodi Picoult
25. “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
26. “I think it would be cool if we wore suits while we committed these violent acts of retribution. Not fancy suits. No. Cheap suits that we won't mind ruining. Then if we're caught by the police, well, think how amazing we'll look! All bloody and torn and grizzled.Plus, suits look official. They would add an air of credibility to our campaign of blood drenched disproportionate responses.” - Joey Comeau
27. “I think Bonzo died. I dreamed about it last night. I remembered the way he looked after I jammed his face with my head. I think I must have pushed his nose back into his brain. The blood was coming out of his eyes. I think he was dead right then.” - Orson Scott Card
28. “Things began to go wrong when I was seventeen. My band’s twenty-year-old lead guitarist earned seven years in jail for a drug-fuelled spree of violence. The other band members were quick to let go of their musical dreams, but I never did. They did the ‘mature’ thing: after writing off the band as a teenage fantasy, they got real jobs and made some money. They called it growing up. I called it giving up.” - Mark Rice
29. “Edward had a personal horror of violence and never endorsed or excused it, though in a documentary he made about the conflict he said that actions like the bombing of pilgrims at Tel Aviv airport 'did more harm than good,' which I remember thinking was (a) euphemistic and (b) a slipshod expression unworthy of a professor of English.” - Christopher Hitchens
30. “We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds- our own prejudices, fears and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still there, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we will make new bombs. To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. To prepare for war, to give millions of men and women the opportunity to practice killing day and night in their hearts, is to plant millions of seeds of violence, anger, frustration, and fear that will be passed on for generations to come. ” - Thich Nhat Hanh
31. “Learn this now and learn it well. Like a compass facing north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.” - Khaled Hosseini
32. “If everyone who had a gun just shot themselves, there wouldn't be a problem.” - George Harrison
33. “We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love.” - R.D. Laing
34. “Black people are victims of an enormous amount of violence. None of those things can take place without the complicity of the people who run the schools and the city.” - Toni Morrison
35. “There are certain verses in the Quran which convey injunctions similar to the following: 'Kill them wherever you find them.' (2:191) Referring to such verses, there are some who attempt to give the impression that Islam is a religion of war and violence. This is total untrue. Such verses relate in a restricted sense, to those who have unilaterally attacked the Muslims. The above verse does not convey the general command of Islam. (pp. 42-43)” - Wahiduddin Khan
36. “Not all Muslims become involved in acts of violence. Yet all might be held culpable. THis is because that section of Muslim--in fact, the majority--who are not personally involved, neither disown those members of their community who are engaged in violence, nor even condemn them. In such a case, according to the Islamic Shariah itself, if the involved Muslims are directly responsible, the uninvolved Muslims are also indirectly responsible. (p. 91)” - Wahiduddin Khan
37. “The Photograph is violent: not because it shows violent tings, but because on each occasion (i)it fills the sight by force(i), and because in it nothing can be refused or transformed (that we can sometimes call it mild does not contradict its violence: many say that sugar is mild, but to me sugar is violent, and I call it so).” - Roland Barthes
38. “Everything stayed hidden […] it was all secret – known by anyone who cared to know, but unacknowledged, like a priest’s feverish brightness around adolescent boys, or the beatings Mrs Wilson endured on those Saturdays when Dumfermline lost at home(p. 83-84)” - John Burnside
39. “In a world gushing blood day and night, you never stop mopping up pain.” - Aberjhani
40. “the story is not a pretty one. there is violence in it. And cruelty. But stories that are not pretty have a certain value, too, I suppose. Everything, as you well know (having lived in this world long enough to have figured out a thing or two for yourself), cannont always be sweetness and light.” - kate dicamillo
41. “Now, your Honor, I have spoken about the war. I believed in it. I don’t know whether I was crazy or not. Sometimes I think perhaps I was. I approved of it; I joined in the general cry of madness and despair. I urged men to fight. I was safe because I was too old to go. I was like the rest. What did they do? Right or wrong, justifiable or unjustifiable -- which I need not discuss today -- it changed the world. For four long years the civilized world was engaged in killing men. Christian against Christian, barbarian uniting with Christians to kill Christians; anything to kill. It was taught in every school, aye in the Sunday schools. The little children played at war. The toddling children on the street. Do you suppose this world has ever been the same since? How long, your Honor, will it take for the world to get back the humane emotions that were slowly growing before the war? How long will it take the calloused hearts of men before the scars of hatred and cruelty shall be removed?We read of killing one hundred thousand men in a day. We read about it and we rejoiced in it -- if it was the other fellows who were killed. We were fed on flesh and drank blood. Even down to the prattling babe. I need not tell you how many upright, honorable young boys have come into this court charged with murder, some saved and some sent to their death, boys who fought in this war and learned to place a cheap value on human life. You know it and I know it. These boys were brought up in it. The tales of death were in their homes, their playgrounds, their schools; they were in the newspapers that they read; it was a part of the common frenzy -- what was a life? It was nothing. It was the least sacred thing in existence and these boys were trained to this cruelty.” - Clarence Darrow
42. “Implicit in the stare of those eyes, the power of those knobbly hands, was labor's historic threat of violence against capital.” - Edmund Morris
43. “As for the military advantage of such a bombardment, I simply cannot grasp it. I have seen housewives disemboweled, children mutilated; I have seen the old itinerant market crone sponge from her treasure the brains with which they were spattered. I have seen a janitor's wife come out of her cellar and douse the sullied pavement with a bucket of water, and I am still unable to understand what part these humble slaughterhouse accidents play in warfare.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
44. “Peoples do not judge in the same way as courts of law; they do not hand down sentences, they throw thunderbolts; they do not condemn kings, they drop them back into the void; and this justice is worth just as much as that of the courts.” - Maximilien Robespierre
45. “You can take the barbarian out of the tavern, but he can take the blood out of your body.” - Greg X. Graves
46. “You see all the other fellows were so active and earnest and all that sort of thing- always rampaging, and skirmishing, and scouring the desert sands, and pacing the margin of the sea, and chasing knights all over the place, and devouring damsels, and going on generally- whereas I liked to get my meals regular and then to prop my back against a bit of rock and snooze a bit, and wake up and think of things going on and how they kept going on just the same, you know!” - Kenneth Grahame
47. “What's to be believed? Or does it matter at all? When mass murder's been answered with mass murder, rape with rape, hate with hate, there's no longer much meaning in asking whose ax is bloodier. Evil, on evil, piled on evil. Was there any justification for what they did—or was there? We only know what that thing says, and that thing is a captive. The Asian radio has to say what will least displease it's government; ours has to say what will least displease our fine patriotic opinionated rabble, which is what, coincidentally, the government wants it to say anyhow, so where's the difference?” - Walter M. Miller
48. “Get what you can with words, because words are free, but the words of an armed man ring that much sweeter.” - Joe Abercrombie
49. “You spoke to Nicodemus?' Vivian asked.[Francesca] 'We did.'V: 'And he trusts you?'F: 'As much as one might after a first impression involving hatchets.” - Blake Charlton
50. “What deep violence does the mind invent / As polar opposite to love. (In 'Hat Love').” - Tony Williams
51. “In violence there is often the quality of yearning - the yearning for completion. For closure. For that which is absent and would if present bring to fulfillment. For the body without which the wing is a useless frozen ornament. ("A Short Guide To The City")” - Peter Straub
52. “While significant strides have been made in the pursuit of life expectancy, healthcare, educational opportunities, and constitutional protections for women, the Supreme Court, in particular, still wrestles with their status, as evidenced by their problems in pursuing equal opportunity in education and employment, reproductive freedom, the military, and violence against women.” - David E. Wilkins
53. “You see Carter, people are two things: greedy and cruel. So we have a perfect set-up here. The greed part - a kid pays a buck for a chance to win a hundred. Plus fifty boxes of chocolates. The cruel part - watching two guys hitting each other, maybe hurting each other, while they're safe in the bleachers. That's why it works, Carter, because we're all bastards.” - Robert Cormier
54. “violence is an evil thing, but when the guns are all in the hands of the men without respect for human rights, then men are really in trouble.” - Louis L'Amour
55. “The fiendlike skill we display in the invention of all manner of death-dealing engines, the vindictiveness with which we carry on our wars, and the misery and desolation that follow in their train, are enough of themselves to distinguish the white civilized man as the most ferocious animal on the face of the earth.” - Herman Melville
56. “Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shore, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it. Our children are still taught to respect the violence which reduced a red-skinned people of an earlier culture into a few fragmented groups herded into impoverished reservations.” - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
57. “It isn't very nice to admit, but domestic violence has its uses. So raw and unleashed, it tears away the veil of civilization that comes between us as much as it makes life possible. A poor substitute for the sort of passion we like to extol perhaps, but real love shares more in common with hatred and rage than it does with geniality or politeness.” - Lionel Shriver
58. “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.” - Oscar A. Romero
59. “Christians, indeed, have a special obligation not to forget how great and how inextinguishable the human proclivity for violence is, or how many victims it has claimed, for they worship a God who does not merely take the part of those victims, but who was himself one of them, murdered by the combined authority and moral prudence of the political, religious, and legal powers of human society.” - David Bentley Hart
60. “Among peoples who possess a highly developed pugnacious instinct we find the greatest progress in the arts, sciences, social and political organization, commerce and industry. The instinct takes the milder form of rivalry which is the motive force of the great portion of the serious labors of mankind.” - Holly Estil Cunningham
61. “We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict.” - Jim Morrison
62. “Some day, my son, you are going to learn that the two greatest joys of being a man are beating the hell out of someone and getting the hell beaten out of you, good night.” - Richard Price
63. “It is not what you can do for your country, but what you can do for all of mankind.” - Mike Norton
64. “It was a strange monster, for beneath its exterior it was frightened and sickened by its own violence. It chastised itself for its savagery. And sometimes it had no heart for violence and rebelled against it utterly.” - Kristin Cashore
65. “Sentencing enhancements won't get police to investigate crimes they don't take seriously to begin with. They won't stop police from harassing trans women on the street because they assume all trans women are sex workers. They won't have any effect against police officers who believe they won't be held accountable. They won't sway the minds of jurors who think 'I killed her because she was trans' is an adequate excuse. Sentencing enhancements will allow them to dole out harsher punishments against the people they think are more deserving. And we already know that the legal system sees people of color, women, sex workers, immigrants, and the homeless as more deserving of punishment. (Tobi Hill-Meyer of COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere), "Disposable People," November 11, 2008, http://nodesignation.com)” - Kay Whitlock
66. “One way, he thought, the whole thing of ring fighting was hurting somebody else, deliberately, and particularly when it was not necessary. Two men who have nothing against each other get in a ring and try to hurt each other, to provide vicarious fear for people with less guts than themselves. And to cover it up they called it sports and gambled on it. He had never looked at that way before, and if there was any single thing he could not endure it was to be a dupe.” - James Jones
67. “I looked at her, with her hair spilled out on the pillows and the warmth of her body warming mine. And I thought, god-dang, if this ain't a heck of a way to be in bed with a pretty woman. The two of you arguing about murder, and threatening each other, when you're supposed to be in love and you could be doing something pretty nice. And then I thought, well, maybe it ain't so strange after all. Maybe it's like this with most people, everyone doing pretty much the same thing except in a different way. And all the time they're holding heaven in their hands.” - Jim Thompson
68. “One tended to lose one’s bearings in the presence of willful and persistent acts of craziness, and the more gentle the act, the crazier it seemed, as if rage and violence, being closer to the norm, were easier to accommodate.” - Tom Robbins
69. “The last thing we wanted was for the Machiguenga to be sad again. Sadness appeared to bring out their violence.” - Tahir Shah
70. “If history shows anything, it is that there's no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of debt—above all, because it immediately makes it seem that it's the victim who's doing something wrong.” - David Graeber
71. “Maxim 10: Sometimes the only way out is through... through the hull.-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries” - Howard Tayler
72. “Maxim 12: A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head.-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries” - Howard Tayler
73. “Maxim 27: Don't be afraid to be the first to resort to violence.-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries” - Howard Tayler
74. “What do you think? Overkill?""I don't believe there is any such thing.But in this case, 'yes, overkill.” - Howard Tayler
75. “The spirit of the law is the least of the things we're prepared to violate.” - Howard Tayler
76. “When the enemy of my enemy is willing to use plasma weapons inside a hotel, I think I can do better than stupid aphorisms, General.-Captain Kevyn Andreyasn” - Howard Tayler
77. “Being a mercenary, though... Hey, we just go wherever there's a mixture of money and trouble, and everyone in the galaxy is a potential customer.Even the people you're paid to shoot at?Well, yeah. There are customers we serve, and customers we service.-Captain Kevyn Andreyasn & General Tagon” - Howard Tayler
78. “So you're a fellow mercenary, then.""Does this mean you'll afford me some professional courtesy?""Don't ask for that. All it means is that you might get to face the person who kills you. . . But only if it's convenient.” - Howard Tayler
79. “I always ask myself one question: what is human? What does it mean to be human? Maybe people will consider my new films brutal again. But this violence is just a reflection of what they really are, of what is in each one of us to certain degree.” - Kim Ki-duk
80. “To me, the best zombie movies aren’t the splatter fests of gore and violence with goofy characters and tongue in cheek antics. Good zombie movies show us how messed up we are, they make us question our station in society… and our society’s station in the world. They show us gore and violence and all that cool stuff too… but there’s always an undercurrent of social commentary and thoughtfulness.” - Robert Kirkman
81. “The silences after his last gasp were sung together by a blackbird. I lay there, my eyes unable to close. His were unable to open. I listed the places where I hurt, and how much. My loins felt ripped. Something inside had torn. There were seven places on my body where he had sunk his fangs into my skin and bitten. He'd dug his nails into my neck, and twisted my head to one side, and clawed my face. I hadn't made a noise. He had made all the noise for both of us. Had it hurt him?” - David Mitchell
82. “[Picasso] loved...women for the sexual, carnivorous impulses they aroused in him. Mixing blood and sperm, he exalted women in his paintings, imposed his violence on them, and sentenced them to death once he felt their mystery had been discharged and the sexual power they instilled in him had dulled... Women were his prey. He was the Minotaur. These were bloody, indecent bullfights from which he always emerged the dazzling victor.” - Marina Picasso
83. “Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive.” - Anthony Burgess
84. “En chacun de nous existe un Mr Hyde; le tout est d’empêcher que les conditions d'émergence du monstre ne soient rassemblées.” - amin maalouf
85. “I am glad," he said, "that I do not dwell in your country among such savage peoples. Here, in Caspak, men fight with men when they meet - men of different races - but their weapons are first for the slaying of beasts in the chase and defense. We do not fashion weapons solely for the killing of man as do your peoples. Your country must indeed be a savage country, from which you are fortunate to have escaped to the peace and security of Caspak.” - Edgar Rice Burroughs
86. “No violence, gentlemen — no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!” - Arthur Conan Doyle
87. “I was trying to foment a little dissension.' He paused. 'No, that's too flippant. How about trying to make the system less warlike—injecting a little love?' He snorted. 'Through violence, of course, like all religious reformers.” - L.E. Modesitt Jr
88. “CRUEL HARVEST by Fran Elizabeth Grubb is a compelling, riveting, unforgetable memoir that will keep you turning the pages. Published by Thomas Nelson and due for release August 2012. Kidnapped from an orphanage Frances is dragged across the country working in the fields. Youtubefrangrubb to see video book trailer.” - Fran Elizabeth Grubb
89. “The problem with our society is that our values aren’t in the right place. There’s an awful lot of bleeding and naked bodies on prime-time networks, but not nearly enough cable television on public programming.” - Bauvard
90. “I will see my father in every anger.” - Courtney Summers
91. “I’ve seen daggers pierce the chest,Children dying in the road,Crawling things hooked and baited,Rapists bound and then castrated,Villains singed in public square.Yet none these sights did make me cringeLike when my Love cut all her hair.” - Roman Payne
92. “People today are trying to hang on to the dignity of man, but they do not know how to, because they have lost the truth that man is made in the image of God. . . . We are watching our culture put into effect the fact that when you tell men long enough that they are machines, it soon begins to show in their actions. You see it in our whole culture -- in the theater of cruelty, in the violence in the streets, in the death of man in art and life.” - Francis A. Schaeffer
93. “We owe our children – the most vulnerable citizens in any society – a life free from violence and fear.” - Nelson Mandela
94. “If man is not made in the image of God, nothing then stands in the way of inhumanity. There is no good reason why mankind should be perceived as special. Human life is cheapened. We can see this in many of the major issues being debated in our society today: abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, the increase of child abuse and violence of all kinds, pornography ... , the routine torture of political prisoners in many parts of the world, the crime explosion, and the random violence which surrounds us.” - Francis A. Schaeffer
95. “Even now when I'm furious, what I would like to do is to punch the infuriating person flat on the ground. That solves nothing I know, and I spent a lot of time understanding my own violence, which is not of the pussycat kind. There are people who could never commit murder; I am not one of those people. It's better to know it, better to know who you are, and what lies in you, and what you could do, might do, under extreme provocation.” - Jeanette Winterson
96. “What can bombs know of the illuminated fields so golden with heaven in your heart’s sacred lands?” - Aberjhani
97. “Mercy is stronger than your sword.” - P.C. Cast
98. “Violence send deep roots into the heart, it has no seasons, it is always ripe, evergreen.” - Pat Conroy
99. “...robots pencil prescriptions for acid gas sunsets” - Allen Ginsberg
100. “Before I met No I thought that violence meant shouting and hitting and war and blood. Now I know that there can also be violence in silence and that it’s sometimes invisible to the naked eye. There’s violence in the time that conceals wounds, the relentless succession of days, the impossibility of turning back the clock. Violence is what escapes us. It’s silent and hidden. Violence is what remains inexplicable, what stays forever opaque...My mother stands there at the living room door with her arms by her sides. And I think that there's violence in that too - in her inability to reach out to me, to make the gesture which is impossible and so forever suspended.” - Delphine de Vigan
101. “Remember, I'm the only person her who's paid to be nice to you. But not too nice. Give me any lip and I'll break your face. OK?” - Orson Scott Card
102. “It is a terrible thing to witness death by violence, a thousand times worse to hold a man’s life in your own hands and to willingly, consciously take it from him. Acknowledged or not, something noble has been scoured from your insides, never to be replaced. You saved a friend’s life, and there lies ample justification. But never peace, never balance, never the same. At least that is how it seems to me.” - Andrew Levkoff
103. “Peace requires something far more difficult than revenge or merely turning the other cheek; it requires empathizing with the fears and unmet needs that provide the impetus for people to attack each other. Being aware of these feelings and needs, people lose their desire to attack back because they can see the human ignorance leading to these attacks; instead, their goal becomes providing the empathic connection and education that will enable them to transcend their violence and engage in cooperative relationships.” - Marshall B. Rosenberg
104. “Is this, Miriam wonders, what they call the march of history? And even if she doesn't fully understand, it doesn't mean she can't appreciate the need, the periodic need for some people to resort to gasoline, rags, and matches. Doesn't it always come to this? Isn't history as much about tearing things down as it is about building things up?” - Peter Orner
105. “... in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only "rights", the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.” - David Mitchell
106. “Never on me let such wrath lay hold, as the wrath you cherish, you whose valor causes harm!” - A.T. Murray
107. “Revolutionary behavior and violence are usually only indulged in when people are at their wits’ end. So social stability depends a lot on how long their wits are.” - George Hammond
108. “The scriptures present a God who delights in genocide, rape, slavery, and the execution of nonconformists, and for millennia those writings were used to rationalize the massacre of infidels, the ownership of women, the beating of children, dominion over animals, and the persecution of heretics and homosexuals. Humanitarian reforms such as the elimination of cruel punishment, the dissemination of empathy-inducing novels, and the abolition of slavery were met with fierce opposition in their time by ecclesiastical authorities and their apologists. The elevation of parochial values to the realm of the sacred is a license to dismiss other people’s interests, and an imperative to reject the possibility of compromise.” - Steven Pinker
109. “It's despair at the lack of (I'm cheating, I didn't say all these things - but I'm going to write what I want to say as well as what I did) feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world.” - John Fowles
110. “..each bloodletting hastens the next, and as the value of human life is degraded and violence becomes tolerated, the unimaginable becomes more conceivable.” - Bill Clinton
111. “But strength doesn’t always mean brute force. You don’t have to kick ass to be a fighter. Violence doesn’t equal strength. Lead your army by example. There’s a better answer to all this. War isn’t going to solve anything, but it will tear our two worlds apart, and there will be casualties, including humans. There’s nothing heroic about this war. It will lead to a destruction unlike anything you or I have ever seen” - Becca Fitzpatrick
112. “There is nothing wrong with standing back and thinking. To paraphrase several sages: 'Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time.” - Susan Sontag
113. “It’ll turn me into a weapon,’ I say, my voice suddenly loud. ‘All you got to do is curl your hands into fists and you turn into a weapon,’ says Jim. ‘Your body is just another tool. This technology changes nothing; it only amplifies. You decide how to use your tools. Whether to do good or evil.” - Daniel H. Wilson
114. “Nothing is ‘wrong’ with me, Dan. What’s wrong with you? she said in the same eerily quiet voice, dark eyes fixated on Dan, as she breathed heavily.” - Martin Hopkins
115. “Not only are animals unable to avail themselves of language to assert their own rights, but many fewer humans have a clear sense of kinship with animals than have a clear sense of kinship with other humans. Among beings with subjective states of awareness, animals are the untouchable caste, those whom human others would rather not acknowledge, let alone render assistance.” - Gary Steiner
116. “You don't get it boy... this isn't a mudhole... its an operating table. (KRAKKKKK) And I'm the surgeon.” - Frank Miller
117. “And what, brothers, I had to escape into sleep from then was the horrible and wrong feeling that it was better to get the hit than give it. If that veck had stayed I might even have like presented the other cheek.” - Anthony Burgess
118. “There are few genuine conservatives within the U.S. political system, and it is a sign of the intellectual corruption of the age that the honorable term 'conservatism' can be appropriated to disguise the advocacy of a powerful, lawless, aggressive and violent state, a welfare state for the rich dedicated to a lunatic form of Keynesian economic intervention that enhances state and private power while mortgaging the country's future.” - Noam Chomsky
119. “Violence and cruelty were just a stupid person's way of making himself felt, because it was easier to use your hands to strike a blow then to use your brain to find a logical and just solution to a problem.” - Anne Holm
120. “Among the many symbols used to frighten and manipulate the populace of the democratic states, few have been more important than "terror" and "terrorism." These terms have generally been confined to the use of violence by individuals and marginal groups. Official violence, which is far more extensive in both scale and destructiveness, is placed in a different category altogether. This usage has nothing to do with justice, causal sequence, or numbers abused. Whatever the actual sequence of cause and effect, official violence is described as responsive or provoked ("retaliation," "protective reaction," etc.), not as the active and initiating source of abuse. Similarly, the massive long-term violence inherent in the oppressive social structures that U.S. power has supported or imposed is typically disregarded. The numbers tormented and killed by official violence-wholesale as opposed to retail terror-during recent decades have exceeded those of unofficial terrorists by a factor running into the thousands. But this is not "terror," [...] "security forces" only retaliate and engage in "police action."These terminological devices serve important functions. They help to justify the far more extensive violence of (friendly) state authorities by interpreting them as "reactive" and they implicitly sanction the suppression of information on the methods and scale of official violence by removing it from the category of "terrorism." [...] Thus the language is well-designed for apologetics for wholesale terror.” - Noam Chomsky
121. “The way I’d put it,” said Makin, “is that Rike can’t make an omelet without wading thigh deep in the blood of chickens and wearing their entrails as a necklace.” - Mark Lawrence
122. “The tank, the submarine, the torpedo, the machine-gun, even the rifle and the hand grenade are still in use.” - George Orwell
123. “Marxism teaches that exploitation and degradation somehow produce resistance and revolution. It's been hard to say why. What I've learned from women's experience with sexuality is that exploitation and degradation produce grateful complicity in exchange for survival. They produce self-loathing to the point of extinction of self, and it is respect for self that makes resistance conceivable.” - Catharine A. MacKinnon
124. “Peace in patriarchy is war against women.” - Maria Mies
125. “Comme une envie de lui faire du mal… beaucoup de mal.Il n’a jamais ressenti ça vis-à-vis d’une fille. Il ne comprend pas, mais c’est plus fort que lui, des idées plus brutales les unes que les autres forcent son esprit, des scènes atroces se succèdent où les cris de la jeune fille excitent son imagination. Les battements de son cœur s’accélèrent, il tremble comme un junkie en manque.” - Myra Eljundir
126. “We are all a part of a culture of violence that dominates every aspect of our lives.” - Bryant McGill
127. “Control is violence; cooperation is friendship.” - Bryant McGill
128. “All violence demands reform, and all violence desperately begs to be healed.” - Bryant McGillns
129. “All violence demands reform, and all violence desperately begs to be healed.” - Bryant McGill
130. “I am sometimes asked, "How do you know there won't be a war tomorrow (or a genocide, or an act of terrorism) that will refute your whole thesis?" The question misses the point of this book. The point is not that we have entered an Age of Aquarius in which every last earthling has been pacified forever. It is that substantial reductions in violence have taken place, and it is important to understand them. Declines in violence are caused by political, economic, and ideological conditions that take hold in particular cultures at particular times. If the conditions reverse, violence could go right back up.” - Steven Pinker
131. “The passive and overt violence waged against the women and children of the world must end.” - Bryant McGill
132. “I was not frightened as they were, for the very violence of his threats showed how weak he was.” - Erik Christian Haugaard
