Quotes About Violence

the order of things, whereas structural violence becomes apparent because it stands out like an enormous rock in a creek, impeding the free flow, creating all kinds of eddies and turbulences.5

I kept seeing turning points. First the uprising. Then the creation of the Free Syrian Army, the FSA. Now a big assassination bombing in the heart of Assad's government. But the turn never came. It just got worse and worse.

For the world did not change, this violence had always existed and would never be eradicated, men would die under the boot and fists and horror of other men until the end of time, and all human history was a history of violence.

One of her classmates asked a prisoner what was the worst thing about being there. "The first time they fuck you in the ass," he replied, and this was the first time that she and her classmates learned about that kind of rape.

They have to square their well-earned reputation for kindness and hospitality with their equally well-earned reputation for violence and bigotry.

I have just come from a couple of raids, where we had a very lively time, and some of them had to pull their guns. I found it necessary to punch a few sports myself.

So yes, religion has caused and continues to cause some of the worst violence in history. And yes, it has used God to justify it. So if we mean by God the loving creator of the universe, then either he doesn't exist or religion has got him wrong. Either way, religion should make us wary. That doesn't necessarily mean we should abandon it altogether. We may decide to stick with it but to do so with humility, admitting the evil it has done as well as the good. It's up to us.

Tais pensamentos eram um testemunho hediondo do mundo que ele havia aceitado; um mundo no qual assassinar era mais fácil que ter esperanças.

The flailing storm of lead crumpled and threw Jake Holman like a giant hand wadding wastepaper.

The wave of anti-imperial nationalism proved this time to be irreversible, and it was met by the old imperial powers with an uneven mix of expedient compromise and extreme violence. The crises of empire when they came were not unpredictable, like an earthquake, but their effects were seismic. The collapse of the European Asian empires between 1946 and 1954 ended centuries of empire-building in eight years.

Every one imagines that fear and anger, violence and desire, rage laced with the surprise capacity to forgive—character—is all that matters in the end.

Humankind is a thug. The law is a goon.

His mind was on patriotism not being enough, politics not being enough, producing, consuming, all amounting to little in the climate of endless violence.

A six-foot-tall man and a ten-pound monkey are pretty evenly matched in a stand-up fight. The monkey will be all over the man. By the end of the fight, the man may need hundreds of stitches, and could be blinded.

Violence is an instrumentality, not a psychopathology or a character disorder. Violence is a means to an end—domination and control—one of many possible means. Since its essence is injury, its efficacy in the long term is marginal, but its short-term advantages are obvious.

Giving such violent caretakers second chances, as social workers and judges frequently do, with the best of intentions—attributing their violence to poverty or racial prejudice and propping them up with counseling, household helpers and other resources—cannot reverse their violentization. To the contrary, such endorsement implicitly authorizes further violence and makes the state complicit with the violators.

Violent actors act violently not because they are mentally ill or come from violent subcultures or are brain damaged or have low self-esteem but because they have different phantom communities from the rest of us. That difference is the reason they attach different, violent meanings to their social experiences.

If destructive technology amplifies violence, constructive technology amplifies compassion, and the lessons of technology are universal.

Our regime," Franco announced grandly, "is based on bayonets and blood, not on hypocritical elections.

All war is immoral. Logically, the 100 percent pacifist has the only impregnable position.

people are more likely to refrain from violence out of preference for a nonviolent existence than they are to do so out of fear of punishment.

Not testosterone per se but the patriarchal preference for subjecting males to violentization, and their physical advantage in achieving early successful violent performances, explains why men are much more likely than women to be seriously violent.

Preventing and limiting violence means protecting children from brutalization in a country where physically punishing children continues to be acceptable behavior.

it is possible to argue that some people are violent and mentally ill, but it is no longer defensible to argue that people are violent because they are mentally ill.