VIOLENCE QUOTES II
quotations about violence
If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it's wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it's wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.
MALCOLM X
Message to the Grass Roots, November 10, 1963
I myself would go for nonviolence if it was consistent, if everybody was going to be nonviolent all the time. I'd say, okay, let's get with it, we'll all be nonviolent. But I don't go along with any kind of nonviolence unless everybody's going to be nonviolent. If they make the Ku Klux Klan nonviolent, I'll be nonviolent. If they make the White Citizens Council nonviolent, I'll be nonviolent. But as long as you've got somebody else not being nonviolent, I don't want anybody coming to me talking any nonviolent talk.
MALCOLM X
Advice to the Youth of Mississippi, December 31, 1964
Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.
HANNAH ARENDT
"On Violence", Crises of the Republic
I am not an absolute pacifist, because I can't rule out the possibility that under some, carefully defined circumstances, some degree of violence may be justified, if it is focused directly at a great evil. Slave revolts are justified, and if John Brown had really succeeded in arousing such revolts throughout the South, it would have been much preferable to losing 600,000 lives in the Civil War, where the makers of the war -- unlike slave rebels -- would not have as their first priority the plight of the black slaves, as shown by the betrayal of black interests after the war. Again, the Zapatista uprising seems justified to me, but some armed struggles that start for a good cause get out of hand and the ensuing violence becomes indiscriminate. Each situation has to be evaluated separately, for all are different. In general, I believe in non-violent direct action, which involve organizing large numbers of people, whereas too often violent uprisings are the product of a small group. If enough people are organized, violence can be minimized in bringing about social change.
HOWARD ZINN
ZNet forum reply, May 26, 1999
Violence is not the problem; it is a consequence of the problem.
JIM WALLIS
The Soul of Politics: A Practical and Prophetic Vision for Change
You should never be nonviolent unless you run into some nonviolence. I'm nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me. But when you drop that violence on me, then you've made me go insane, and I'm not responsible for what I do.
MALCOLM X
speech at Cory Methodist Church, Cleveland, Ohio, "The Ballot or the Bullet", April 3, 1964
Sex and violence: the greatest duo since the Three Stooges.
JAROD KINTZ
This Book is Not FOR SALE
Our fear of violence may have been as destructive as the violence itself.
HILARY BAILEY
"The Ramparts"
Violence is as American as cherry pie.
H. RAP BROWN
press conference at the Student Nonviolent Co-ordinating Committee headquarters, Washington, D.C., The Evening Star, July 27, 1967
Violence stinks no matter which side of it you're on. But now and then there's nothing left to do but hit the other person over the head with a frying pan.
TOM ROBBINS
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
No newsman in his right mind objects to a little violence, for that's what news is made of.
CLIFFORD D. SIMAK
"Sunspot Purge"
For as deeds of violence arise, if that emotion of the soul be corrupted, whence vehement action springs, stirring itself insolently and unrulily; and lusts, when that affection of the soul is ungoverned, whereby carnal pleasures are drunk in, so do errors and false opinions defile the conversation, if the reasonable soul itself be corrupted; as it was then in me, who knew not that it must be enlightened by another light, that it may be partaker of truth, seeing itself is not that nature of truth. For Thou shalt light my candle, O Lord my God, Thou shalt enlighten my darkness: and of Thy fulness have we all received, for Thou art the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world; for in Thee there is no variableness, neither shadow of change.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
No amount of violence you've done to others prepares you for violence done to yourself.
GLEN DUNCAN
Talulla Rising
What is gained by violence must be lost before superior violence.
MAHATMA GANDHI
attributed, Social Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi
Is war necessary? Can some conflicts only be solved by violence? Human history is indeed often presented as primarily a history of wars and battles, conquests and defeats. While that is only one perspective amongst many possible ones, violence of one sort or another has certainly been, if not centre-stage, at least lurking in the wings throughout the human story. Man (especially Man, but also Woman) clearly has the propensity not only to behave aggressively to other humans but also to do so in an organized way and not infrequently with calculated cruelty.
ROBERT AUBREY HINDE
War: The Bases of Institutionalized Violence
Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.
ROBERT HEINLEIN
Starship Troopers
One simply cannot engage in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian ... one cannot defend human values by calculated and unprovoked violence without doing mortal damage to the values one is trying to defend.
J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT
The Arrogance of Power
A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
Harper's Magazine, March 1985
Together let us declare the sacredness of every human life against every form of violence, whether physical, social, educational or psychological.
POPE FRANCIS
Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to the Participants in the International Peace Conference, April 28, 2017
Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity.
G. K. CHESTERTON
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare