Violence

The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is to a more violent world. ~~ Hannah Arendt

Nonviolence does not admit of running away from danger… Between violence and cowardly flight I can only prefer violence to cowardice. ~~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself. ~~ James A. Froude

There is no American right to loot stores, or to burn buildings, or to fire rifles from the rooftops. That is crime -- and crime must be dealt with forcefully and swiftly, and certainly -- under the law. ~~ Lyndon Baines Johnson

The real 1960s began on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. It came to seem that Kennedy's murder opened some malign trap door in American culture, and the wild bats flapped out. ~~ Lance Morrow

Saints are usually killed by their own people. ~~ Eric Sevareid

Whom they have injured they also hate. ~~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun. ~~ P. G. Wodehouse

The human being who would not harm you on an individual, face-to-face basis, who is charitable, civic-minded, loving, and devout, will wound or kill you from behind the corporate veil. ~~ Morton Mintz

Violence is an admission that one's ideas and goals cannot prevail on their own merits. ~~ Edward M. Kennedy

Violence is, essentially, a confession of the ultimate inarticulateness. ~~ Time Magazine

The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future. ~~ Marya Mannes [More in Anger]

The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder, for the truth. ~~ Alfred Adler

I seem to be the only person in the world who doesn't mind being pitied. If you love me, pity me. The human state is pitiable: born to die, capable of so much, accomplishing so little; killing instead of creating, destroying instead of building, hating instead of loving. Pitiful, pitiful. ~~ Jessamyn West [Hide and Seek]

The insular, truculent Southerner, violence never far under the surface courtesy and indolence, has always known that he fights better and with more savagery than other Americans; he does not shirk a chance to spill blood in the name of honor. ~~ Anne Rivers Siddons [Peachtree Road]

I wanted to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. ~~ Harper Lee [To Kill a Mockingbird]

I don't suppose there's any public figure that's ever been subject to any more violent personal attacks than I have. ~~ William Jefferson Clinton

He who throws a bomb and kills a pedestrian, declares that as a victim of society he has rebelled against society. But could not the poor victim object: "Am I society?" ~~ Enrico Malatesta

Violence is a tool of the ignorant. ~~ Flip Wilson

Wars are not fought for territory, but for words. Man's deadliest weapon is language. He is as susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans as he is to infectious diseases. And where there is an epidemic, the group mind takes over. ~~ Arthur Koestler

All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum. ~~ John Kenneth Galbraith [The Age of Uncertainty]

All murders have the tang of melodrama somewhere along the line. ~~ Brett Halliday

Violence represents the worst kind of conformism. ~~ Mario Vargas Llosa

For me it's always midnight with the phone out of order and a murderer on the fire escape. What I suffer from nerves could be a Technicolor spectacle. ~~ Helen Hudson

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence. ~~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

I love New York City. I've got a gun. ~~ Charles Barkley

There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say. ~~ Cyril Connolly

We've all been blessed with God-given talents. Mine just happens to be beating people up. ~~ Sugar Ray Leonard

Violence of language leads to violence of action. Angry men seldom fight if their tongues do not lead the fray. ~~ Charles Victor Roman

Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ~~ George Orwell [Eric Blair]

War's a profanity, because let’s face it, you've got two opposing sides trying to settle their differences by killing as many of each other as they can. ~~ General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

Suicide is 180 degree murder. ~~ R. E. Phillips

The least stupid question a man asks in his lifetime is not: Is there a God and is He a god or a devil? But: Brother, why are you killing me? ~~ Storm Jameson

We really don’t have enemies. It’s just that some of our best friends are trying to kill us. ~~ Unattributed

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times. ~~ Sir Winston Spencer Churchill

A hypocrite is like the man who murdered both his parents and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan. ~~ Abraham Lincoln

Man is demolishing nature…We are killing things that keep us alive. ~~ Thor Heyerdahl

If you shoot at mimes, should you use a silencer? ~~ Stephen Wright

The art of creation is older than the art of killing. ~~ Andrei Voznesensky

The slaughter of innocents is probably a fate that is written into the destiny of places where dreams begin to dry up. ~~ John Denver

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. ~~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Men's indignation, it seems, is more excited by legal wrong than by violent wrong; the first looks like being cheated by an equal, the second like being compelled by a superior. ~~ Thucydides

The crisis of children having children has been eclipsed by the greater crisis of children killing children. ~~ Marian Wright Edelman

[When asked how he would choose to die:] You never know what's hit you. A gunshot is the perfect way. ~~ John F. Kennedy

No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded. ~~ Margaret Mead

If we are to abolish the death penalty, I should like to see the first step taken by my friends the murderers. ~~ Alphonse Karr

In this country it is considered good to kill an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others. ~~ Voltaire

Shooting has a fascination only for those who have never faced the wrong end of the gun; if animals were armed, instead of us, all humans would proclaim the sacred creed of vegetarianism. ~~ Unattributed

Thought: Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage. ~~ Woody Allen

Whoever has his foe at his mercy, and does not kill him, is his own enemy. ~~ Sa'di

Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous. ~~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination. ~~ Harry S Truman

[This is] an era of violent peace. ~~ Admiral James D. Watkins

A fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster. ~~ E. M. Cioran

Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest violence. ~~ Lord Francis Jeffrey

A reservoir of rage exists in each person, waiting to burst out. We fantasize about killing or humiliating our boss or the guy who took our parking space. It is only by growing up in a civilized society of law that we learn the idea of proportionate response. ~~ Ed Magnuson

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one. ~~ Henry Miller

I haven't killed anyone all day -- help me keep it that way. ~~ Max Allan Collins

Real, deliberate, unprovoked rudeness can be quite as shocking as physical violence. ~~ Michael Gilbert

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. ~~ James Madison

Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend. ~~ Agatha Christie

We are unalterably opposed to the presentation of the female body being stripped, bound, raped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered in the name of commercial entertainment and free speech. ~~ Susan Brownmiller

The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of 500 yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man. ~~ G. K. Chesterton

To save a man's life against his will is the same as killing him. ~~ Horace

The art of living is to function in society without doing violence to one's own needs or to the needs of others. The art of mothering is to teach the art of living to children. ~~ Elaine Heffner

An 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

In the 1940s a survey listed the top seven discipline problems in public schools: talking, chewing gum, making noise, running in the halls, getting out of line, wearing improper clothes, and not putting paper in wastebaskets. A more recent survey lists these top seven: drug abuse, alcohol abuse, pregnancy, suicide, rape, robbery, and assault. (Arson, gang warfare, and venereal disease are also-rans). ~~ George F. Will

Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity. ~~ William Hazlitt

The greatest violence is when you attack somebody with the notion that they're hopeless; that they can't change. That is violence. ~~ Sean Penn

Jellinek's disease (alcoholism) is responsible for:
50 percent of all auto fatalities
80 percent of all home violence
30 percent of all suicides
60 percent of all child abuse
65 percent of all drownings... ~~ Kathleen Whalen Fitzgerald

All dope can do for you is kill you … the long hard way. And it can kill the people you love right along with you. ~~ Billie Holiday

I have received memos so swollen with managerial babble that they struck me as the literary equivalent of assault with a deadly weapon. ~~ Peter Baida

The private terror of the liberal spirit is invariably suicide, not murder. ~~ Norman Mailer

All violence... is not power but the absence of power. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are in a period of transition. We are opening a new page of the history of mankind. Nobody can predict the future. However it may be hoped that the next millennium will see the emergence of a multipolar, multicultural world in which the men will have more opportunity to manifest their creativity. The past is full of violence. Our hope is in the future. Science and technology have to become instruments of cultural diffusion to make this hope a reality. ~~ Viscount Ilya Prigogine

He who injured you was either stronger or weaker. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare yourself. ~~ Seneca [De Ira]

You can kill a man but you can't kill an idea. ~~ Medgar Evers

In the name of religion many great and fine deeds have been performed. In the name of religion also, thousands and millions have been killed, and every possible crime has been committed. ~~ Jawaharlal Nehru

You may be too old to spank, but I've still got my staple gun. ~~ It Had to Be You [film]

Rebellion: The words and acts of violence by people who have been deeply hurt. ~~ R. E. Phillips

Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best. ~~ Oscar Wilde

War is always the same. It is young men dying in the fullness of their promise. It is trying to kill a man that you do not even know well enough to hate. Therefore, to know war is to know that there is still madness in the world. ~~ Lyndon Baines Johnson

How greatness grows, and by what steps ascends;
What murders, treasons, perjuries, deceit,
How many fall, to make one monster great. ~~ Unattributed

Non-violence is a powerful and just weapon. It is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals. ~~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

You do not lead by hitting people over the head. That's assault, not leadership. ~~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

My, my, my, such a lot of guns around town and so few brains. ~~ The Big Sleep [film, 1946]

Pacifists lead a lonely life. Not even gathering together can take the place of that vast, warm sun of approval that is shed on motherhood, on law-abiding, on killing, and on making money. Someday will we come into our own? Well, motherhood may move into the shade. Law-abiding is going through a trauma. But killing and making money are good for a long, long time. ~~ Josephine W. Johnson

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. ~~ William Shakespeare

In our times, significantly, the three outstanding voices against violence have been silenced by murder--Mahatma Gandhi in India, Archbishop Romero in El Salvador, and Dr. Martin Luther King, here at home. ~~ Millicent Fenwick

What in the name of conscience will it take to pass a truly effective gun-control law? Now in this new hour of tragedy, let us spell out our grief in constructive action. ~~ Lyndon Baines Johnson (See Said Who?)

All Southern women have murder just under the surface, but we cloak it in graciousness. ~~ Sue Grafton

Parenting is a negative thing. Keep your children from killing themselves, or anyone else, and hope for the best. ~~ Donald G. Smith

During the Vietnam War, more people were killed in the United States by guns and explosives than US soldiers in the war zone. ~~ Deane Jordan

Rambo isn't violent. I see Rambo as a philanthropist. ~~ Sylvester Stallone

Men don't show emotion, except rage, because it takes strength to show soft emotions. Most men don't have that kind of strength. They keep things inside. Then they kill someone. ~~ George Carlin

If your time hasn't come not even a doctor can kill you. ~~ Joe Moore

Fortunately, not everyone who could kill you does. ~~ Mignon McLaughlin

It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up. ~~ Muhammad Ali

...the danger of futility; the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills -- against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. ~~ Robert F. Kennedy

Violence of the tongue is very real--sharper than any knife. ~~ Mother Teresa [In the Silence of the Heart]

America has become numb to violence because it just drowns in it, day in and day out. ~~ Janet Reno

[On the pesticide chlordane] Sure, it's going to kill a lot of people, but they may be dying of something else anyway. ~~ Othal Brand

If it tastes good, it's trying to kill you. ~~ Roy Qualley

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him. ~~ Mark Twain

I'm a little wounded, but I am not slain; I will lay me down to bleed a while. Then I'll rise and fight again. ~~ John Dryden