VIOLENCE QUOTES
quotations about violence
|
|
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
ISAAC ASIMOV, Astounding Science Fiction, May 1942
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
As long as people use violence to combat violence, we will always have violence.
MICHAEL BERG, CNN interview, Jun. 8, 2006
Violence is not a catalyst but a diversion.
JOSEPH CONRAD, The Secret Agent
You can no more eradicate violence than you could eradicate love or hate or laughter.... The love of violence is an aspect of our humanity. Even the weak wish to be strong primarily so they can wield the whip.
DAN SIMMONS, Carrion Comfort
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, Mar. 1985
- The sight of blood to crowds begets the thirst of more,
- As the first wine-cup leads to the long revel.
LORD BYRON, Marino Faliero
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
The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we do to each other.
FRANK HERBERT, Dune Messiah
The blood of violence daunts even those with much experience of it. The splash, the spray, the drip and drizzle create infinite Rorschach patterns in every one of which the observer reads the same meaning: the fragility of his existence, the truth of his mortality.
The only thing to do with atrocity, it's been said, is to chronicle it. There's no working it, shaping it, making art of it. Just history's obligation to document the facts.
We pay for the violence of our ancestors.
There's no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, The New York Times, Apr. 19, 1992
Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
I despair at the rise of modern violence. I truly give in to despair at times, that deep, futureless pit of despair.... I watch the American slaughterhouse, the casual attacks on popes, presidents, and uncounted others, and I wonder if there are many more out there with the Ability or if butchery has simply become the modern way of life.
DAN SIMMONS, Carrion Comfort
Not all men seek rest and peace; some are born with the spirit of the storm in their blood, restless harbingers of violence and bloodshed, knowing no other path."
ROBERT E. HOWARD, "A Witch Shall Be Born," Weird Tales (1934)
All violence flows from the same source ... the need for power. Power is the only true morality ... the only deathless god, and the appetite for violence is its only commandment.
DAN SIMMONS, Carrion Comfort
There are only three kinds of people. LEADERS. Those who take charge, build, inspire, and create. FOLLOWERS. Those who support leaders and work to achieve mutually beneficial goals.... [and] DESTROYERS. Destroyers cannot find it within themselves to follow anyone, their hatred and insecurity is too pure to see strength in any OTHER being. The utterly lack the ability to inspire or create, so they do the only thing left to them -- they tear down all they come in contact with.
RICK REMENDER, Uncanny X-Force, No. 19, Feb. 2012
You treat violence as an aberration ... when in truth it is the norm. It is the very essence of the human condition.
DAN SIMMONS, Carrion Comfort
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN, The Fellowship of the Ring
Violence is a dead end. It is a sign neither of courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children or to blow up old women on a bus. That's not how moral authority is claimed, that's how it is surrendered.
BARACK OBAMA, speech, Jun. 4, 2009
|
|
|
