“The whole concept of "violence" is flawed from the get-go, for it makes no distinction between legitimate and illegitimate force. The use of the word in this generic sense implies that the "violence" of the criminal is no different from the "violence" of the policeman who subdues him. Originally a Marxist idea, this worked its way into the mainstream beginning about 50 or 60 years ago, when people began to think it very clever and sophisticated to act as if there were no difference between the two things, or that the difference was only a matter of how "society" had distributed power between them. Since then, the idea of "violence" as generic and not in its original sense -- related to "violate" -- of criminal and illegitimate violence has steadily gained ground until it is now a commonplace of moral debate, in America as it is everywhere else in the Western world.”

“Our conceptual maps tend to lack a way to conceive the immanence of violence and power in the ideals and practices that have become dominant in the Western tradition. Mass death has tended to be conceived as something accidental, something outside the ordinary run of events. I think the difficulty in coming to terms with the peculiarities of the Western will to power has to do with the absence of a central metaphor capable of describing the link between consumption and death. The consumptive mentality has in many respects been normalized, as has the violence that underpins and is the effect of systems of universal judgment. Certainly the aestheticization of difference is coextensive with the romance with violence that has become so characteristic of contemporary Western society.”

“The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy.”

“All of my work is, in one way or another, about power. Who has it and why? Who doesn't have it and why? What happens to people and societies when power relationships become seriously unequal? How are power structures and power relationships created, how are they maintained, how are they changed? What ideas and myths form their foundations? What are the connections between power and religion? Power and sexuality? Power and ethics? Power and the use of violence?”

“It's always the same with these bogus equivalences: They start by pretending loftily to find no difference between aggressor and victim, and they end up by saying that it's the victim of violence who is "really" inciting it.”

“It's time that America wakes up and take a moral stand against all violence especially that is committed against women & children. Violence is wrong and sadly will only produce more violence upon our nation and humanity.”