Quotes About Violence

Wrangham estimated that around thirty per cent of adult male chimpanzees had died as the result of violence by another member of their own species.

A number of recent scholars have suggested that the answer lies in the abandonment of the ethics of identity altogether in favour of cosmopolitanism, a world without community.4 But no cosmopolitan society is as tolerant as it seems. In antiquity, both the Greeks and Romans attempted at one time or another to eliminate the practice of Judaism. Europe of the Enlightenment did not end anti-Semitism: it gave rise to a new and violent strain of it.

It was Machiavelli, not Moses or Mohammed, who said it is better to be feared than to be loved: the creed of the terrorist and the suicide bomber. It was Nietzsche, the man who first wrote the words 'God is dead', whose ethic was the will to power. To invoke God to justify violence against the innocent is not an act of sanctity but of sacrilege. It is a kind of blasphemy. It is to take God's name in vain.

Douglas Mock has assembled the animal behavioural evidence in More than Kin and Less than Kind.6 In the Galapagos Islands young fur seals attack their newborn siblings, seizing them by the throat and tossing them into the air, killing them unless the mother seal intervenes.

As Jews, Christians and Muslims, we have to be prepared to ask the most uncomfortable questions. Does the God of Abraham want his disciples to kill for his sake? Does he demand human sacrifice? Does he rejoice in holy war? Does he want us to hate our enemies and terrorise unbelievers? Have we read our sacred texts correctly? What is God saying to us, here, now? We are not prophets but we are their heirs and we are not bereft of guidance on these fateful issues.

In Gwoza, Nigeria, one of the survivors of a massacre by the Islamist group Boko Haram described to a reporter how the radicals calmly killed their fellow Muslims one by one. 'They told us they were doing God's work even though all the men they shot in front of me were Muslims. They seemed happy.'7

Once you can identify an enemy, reactivate a chosen trauma and unite all factions in fear and hate of a common threat, you activate the most primitive part of the brain, the amygdala with its instant and overwhelming defensive reactions, and render a culture susceptible to a pure and powerful dualism in which you are the innocent party and violence becomes both a justified revenge and the necessary protection of your group. The threefold defeat of morality then follows.

Baine lunged, grabbing hold of the guy's arm. Baine lunged, grabbing hold of the guy's arm, but the guy fired, once, twice, and Baine fell. But the gun fell too, just enough time for me to fire, and I did, again and again, until the gun was out of bullets.

Violence is the method by which the ruthless few can subdue the passive many. Nonviolence is the method by which the active many can overcome the ruthless few.

The enemy must in some way be dehumanized, degraded to less than full human status. Collectively, the population [and soldiers] of the other country must become "gooks," "Nips," "Japs," "Krauts," or "Huns." One must first hide from the full humanity of the opponent before [one] is able to kill him. -- Rev William Mahedy

Whether the berserker is beneath humanity as an animal, above it as a god, or both, he is cut off from all human community when he is in this state. No living human has any claim on him, not even the claim of being noticed and remembered.

Gang or individual rapes by soldiers -- whether or not these end in the woman's murder -- have never been counted as civilian war casualties. Psychological injuries to the surviving rape victims are often lifelong.

Zealots: Wild eyed persons afflicted with incurable certainty about the workings of the world, a certainty that can lead to violence when the world doesn't fit.

Is it just me,' Kipps said, 'or does that boy need punching?' 'It's not just you.

Stanley went on, "highly dangerous, fanatical and additictied to violence'- Blimey Fred, is it your mother writing this? They seem to know you so well

I'd never punched an old lady before; I didn't have any problem doing so now.

You speak with eerie calm, but your face promises violence. I feel a little frightened.

Sorry for what? Your appearance? Your character? Wait, I bet it's your smell. Twenty-four hours of terror, violence, chases, and being for all intents and purposes dead plays havoc with the armpits. Don't let Lockwood step downwind of you tonight, that's all I'm saying.

En pleine bagarre, vous vous en tenez au strict nécessaire, à savoir étriper l'adversaire en faisant en sorte que ce dernier ne vous arrache pas les bras pour vous assommer avec.

War! that mad game the world so loves to play.

Hobbes clearly proves that every creatureLives in a state of war by nature.

But moving from conversation to violence is just as hard as moving from flirting to kissing. There's that leap you have to take, to shed your inhibitions and expose your naked impulses.

Barbarians!' he roared. 'Filthy barbarians!

Really, dear," Brian's mother reassured him, as they lined up for tickets. "It's about war.