Quotes About Violence

In America, the advent of the modern serial killer coincided absolutely with the coming of the automobile.

Belle Gunness was a lady fair In Indiana State. She weighed about three hundred pounds, And that is quite some weight. That she was stronger than a man Her neighbors all did own; She butchered hogs right easily, And did it all alone. But hogs were just a sideline She indulged in now and then; Her favorite occupation Was a-butchering of men.

There are two very different types of "psychos": psychopaths and psychotics. Most serial killers fall into the first category, though some belong to the latter.

There's little doubt that America is the world's leading producer of serial killers, though any true measurement has to take into account the sheer size of our population. The FBI estimates that there are between thirty and fifty serial killers at large in our country at any given time. That might seem like a shockingly high number, but in a nation of more than 280,000,000 people, it's a minuscule percentage.

The best estimate of experts like James Alan Fox of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University is that, at any given time, there are two to three dozen serial killers at large in the country, responsible for the deaths of between one and two hundred victims.

The term "target of opportunity" is also used to describe victims who are randomly slain by a serial murderer simply because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

If serial murder is, in essence, a sex crime, mass murder is almost always a suicidal one. In blind, apocalyptic fury, the mass murderer has decided to go out with a bang and take as many people with him as possible. Typically, once the bloodbath is over, the mass murderer will either end his own life or provoke a fatal shoot-out with the police ("suicide by cop," as it is called).

Indeed, anyone inclined to blame psychopathic violence on a killer's favorite books or movies must deal with the discomfiting fact that a significant number of serial murderers have been devoted students of the Bible.

Because of the prominent role that such vicious daydreams play as a preliminary to the act of serial murder, Robert Ressler and his colleagues reached the conclusion that fantasy is the mainspring of sexual homicide. "My research convinced me that the key was not the early trauma but the development of perverse thought patterns," Ressler has written. "These men were motivated to murder by their fantasies.

A little chloral in a glass of beer or coffee brings quick death. So does a well directed blow with a hammer or hatchet.

By contrast, Andrew Kehoe's appalling deed—an unholy blend of school massacre, terrorist bombing, and suicide attack—was seen not as a symptom of societal breakdown but as a sheer aberration, the singular act of a midwestern madman. As such, it provided the public with a brief frisson of horror before being relegated to obscurity. Decades would pass before its true relevance became clear, as a precursor of our own era's worst nightmares.

It is not enough for a woman to murder an enemy; she wants to make him suffer, and she enjoys his death.

To be sure, not every abused child grows up to be a psychopathic killer. But virtually every psychopathic killer has suffered extreme, often grotesque, mistreatment at the hands of his or her parents or guardians. In the language of logic, severe child abuse may not be a sufficient cause in the creation of serial murderers, but it appears to be a necessary one.

a symptom of a widespread social ill: "the vain principle of personal honor," an insidious ideal that led "the youth of the present age of the world" to demand violent satisfaction for any insult. To Bennett and others, Colt's murderous deed was the direct consequence of this "false and bloody code" and Colt himself the living incarnation of what was widely perceived as a prevailing social pathology.

The scene is an early example of a theme that preoccupied Lang throughout his career: the speed at which ordinary, law-abiding citizens can turn into a savage mob.

Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear.

Absolutely every government regulation is enforced by violence. If you've never seen that violence, it's because you've been careful, obedient, or lucky.

I stamp out vast empires. I crush palaces in my rigid hands. I harden my heart against churches. I blot out cemetaries. I feed the people with stinging nettles. I resurrect madness. I thrust my naked sword between the ribs of the world. I murder the world!

Liberation by destruction was on the way! We would free them even if we had to kill them all to do it!

A shot was fired, the mob jumped back for a second then set about the car with renewed fury. In the end, two men were taken out and shot dead. They were Corporals Derek Wood and Robert Howes.

When we heard those shots and he saw Ploeg lying in front of the house, what he said was, 'My God, the lizards!'" With wide-eyed disbelief Anton looked out over her head.

The nature of the congressional investigating committee has suffered violence at the hands of some who have not understood or appreciated the scope and function of such a committee. Too often, in recent times, the committees have been used for publicity rather than for the original purposes intended.

Lee stepped over two bodies in gray and one in green, walked inside. The fellow whose head and torso he had seen from the street had fought from a window here. Bullets had chewed up the wall opposite that window; the picture that hung there was no longer recognizable. One of the bandsmen who guarded Lee looked around and said, "Take away the dead men and it ain't so very peculiar

Assassins murdered freedom merely by existing.