Quotes About Violence

When the payoff for organizing violence at a large scale tumbles, the payoff from violence at a smaller scale is likely to jump. Violence will become more random and localized. Organized crime will grow in scope.

Microprocessing reduces the size that groups must stain in order to be effective in the use and control of violence.

Lane, "Economic Consequences of Organized Violence," op. cit.

In two previous volumes, Blood in the Streets and The Great Reckoning, we argued that the most important causes of change are not to be found in political manifestos or in the pronouncements of dead economists, but in the hidden factors that alter the boundaries where power is exercised. Often, subtle changes in climate, topography, microbes, and technology alter the logic of violence. They transform the way people organize their livelihoods and defend themselves.

As Tilly suggests, the important issue was "effectiveness (total output)," not "efficiency (the ratio of output to input)." In an increasingly violent world, the systems that predominated through five centuries of competition were necessarily those that facilitated the greatest access to resources needed to make war on a large scale.

DECIPHERING THE LOGIC OF EXTORTION To recognize the megapolitical implications of the current shift to the Information Age, you have to strip away the cant and focus on the real logic of violence in society. This is like stripping away the layers of an overripe onion. It may bring tears to your eyes, but don't look away.

This tended to increase the size of societies because contests of violence more often than not were won by the larger group.

Part of the reason that Rome fell is simply that it had expanded beyond the scale at which the economies of violence could be maintained. The cost of garrisoning the empire's far-flung borders exceeded the economic advantages that an ancient agricultural economy could support. The burden of taxation and regulation required to finance the military effort rose to exceed the carrying capacity of the economy. Corruption became endemic.

Part of the reason that Rome fell is simply that it had expanded beyond the scale at which the economies of violence could be maintained.

The control of violence is the most important dilemma every society faces.

Violence is the ultimate boundary force on behavior; this, if you can understand how the logic of violence will change, you can usefully predict where people will be dropping or picking up the equivalent of one-hundred-dollar bills in the future.

I'd love to see that rat nose smashed!

I ought to come up there and break your shuck nose.

I'm gonnna break your faces!

He shot me." It just came out, a new number one on the list of the dumbest things he'd ever said.

He'd killed Newt. He'd shot his own friend in the head.

I'm gonna kill you, shuck-face!

I know," he finally responded. "But it was so … vicious. So brutal. I wish I could've just shot him from a distance with a gun or something." "Yeah. Sorry it had to go down that way." "What if I see his nasty face every night when I go to sleep? What if he's in my dreams?" He felt a surge of irritation at Brenda for making him stab the Crank—maybe unwarranted when he really considered how desperate they'd been.

La daga golpeó el pecho de Chuck con un ruido húmedo y desagradable,

He'd kill Newt. He'd shot his own friend in the head.

I'm a Crank. I'm slowly going crazy. I keep wanting to chew off my own fingers and randomly kill people.

Like gangsters yelling out roll call before they slaughtered a group of weeping traitors.

He heard a sickening thunk, his head twisting to the side just in time to see that Darnell had a five-inch-long dart sticking out of his shoulder, its thin metal shaft planted deep within the muscle. Blood trickled down from the wound. The boy made a strange grunt as he collapsed to the ground.

His friend threw another couple of punches for good measure, then stood up, giving his guy one last kick. "I'm done. We can go.