quotations about violence
Violence is a disease, a disease that corrupts all who use it regardless of the cause.
CHRIS HEDGES
attributed, What About War
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.
GLEN DUNCAN
I, Lucifer
The question begs to be asked: Why do we as a society so repeatedly and in so many ways throw images of real and fictional violence all over our screens and newspapers? Why do we allow our society to give the male perpetrators of violence such an outrageous amount of attention? We know that this, in effect, rewards the violence, and we also know it encourages more copycat violence.
JOHN NASSIVERA
"Media and male aggression", Rutland Herald, April 26, 2017
As religious leaders, we are called, therefore, to unmask the violence that masquerades as purported sanctity and is based more on the "absolutizing" of selfishness than on authentic openness to the Absolute. We have an obligation to denounce violations of human dignity and human rights, to expose attempts to justify every form of hatred in the name of religion, and to condemn these attempts as idolatrous caricatures of God: Holy is his name, he is the God of peace.
POPE FRANCIS
Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to the Participants in the International Peace Conference, April 28, 2017
All persons are selective as to the objects of their violence. For example, we swat flies, poison ants and trap or poison mice. In each of us there is a point beyond which we will forego our patience and respond in violence. That point, for each of us, depends upon our level of fear or hostility.
GENE DAVENPORT
"The inevitable outcome of violence is more violence", The Jackson Sun, April 28, 2017
The slaughter he had just witnessed struck him as abysmally repetitive of a great deal of recent history, and he did not wish to belong to that history anymore.
MICHAEL BISHOP
"The Quickening"
The use of violence as an instrument of persuasion is therefore inviting and seems to the discontented to be the only effective protest.
WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS
Points of Rebellion
For he will rescue the poor who cry for help,
Also the lowly one and whoever has no helper.
He will have pity on the lowly and the poor,
And the lives of the poor he will save.
From oppression and from violence he will rescue them,
And their blood will be precious in his eyes.
BIBLE
Psalms 72:12-14
Most societies assign the task of suppressing violence by the use of violence -- to the police and the military, i.e., to the State. People who are or have been imprisoned have thereby experienced that violence. And just as in individual life, so in warfare, the violence is blamed upon the enemy. The opponent or the enemy either committed an act to which the nation or the individual responded, or acted in such a terrible way that to ignore it would have been inhuman. In the final analysis, however, the police and the soldier, by the very nature of their task, inescapably contribute to society's violence and its escalation. They are hired to do so.
GENE DAVENPORT
"The inevitable outcome of violence is more violence", The Jackson Sun, April 28, 2017
A person who commits a violence against another is obviously in need of medical care.
MACK REYNOLDS
"Gun for Hire"
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
ANONYMOUS
often dubiously attributed to George Orwell
Domestic violence can no longer be pushed into the too-hard basket. It requires a united approach from police, governments, health authorities, the broader community, the media -- all of us. Because nobody, absolutely nobody, should feel unsafe in their own home.
JASON SHIELDS
"Daily Matters: Violence is everyone's problem", Sunraysia Daily, April 1, 2017
Peace alone, therefore, is holy, and no act of violence can be perpetrated in the name of God, for it would profane his name.
POPE FRANCIS
"Pope Francis in Egypt", National Catholic Register, April 28, 2017
I wouldn't use physical violence even if I could, because one of my romantic ideas is that physical violence is beneath the dignity of a man, and that whatever you get by physical aggression costs more than it is worth.
REX STOUT
Too Many Cooks
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
Jesus empowered us to choose mercy on the cross. The crucifixion exposes human violence -- the kind that continues to put the living image of God to death -- for the atrocity that it is. In Jesus, we recognize the ways in which we all participate in systems of death. And in Jesus, we learn that even killers are to be forgiven.
LINDSAY PARIS-LOPEZ
"Are We Really Ready for New Life in Christ?", Sojourners, April 28, 2017
It's so easy for people to come to the conclusion that he was a monster for what he did. But the reality is, violence is a part of so many people's lives and it is essential that we not categorize this as something that only evil, inhumane people do.
ATTIYA KHAN
"In a story of survival, a different way to understand domestic abuse", Maclean's, April 27, 2017
It is essential that we reject any "absolutizing" that would justify violence. For violence is the negation of every authentic religious expression.
POPE FRANCIS
"Pope Francis in Egypt", National Catholic Register, April 28, 2017
Our tax dollars fund warped priorities, and our culture of vengeance infects our hearts and minds, lying to us and telling us that some violence is righteous, and that some people are beyond redemption.
LINDSAY PARIS-LOPEZ
"Are We Really Ready for New Life in Christ?", Sojourners, April 28, 2017
Physical love is unthinkable without violence.
MILAN KUNDERA
The Unbearable Lightness of Being