Quotes About Violence

the American Indian, who was ignorant by the same standards, nevertheless knew how to live in the country without making violence the invariable mode of his relation to it; in fact, from the ecologist's or the conservationist's point of view, he did it no violence. This is because he had, in place of what we would call education, a fully integrated culture, the content of which was a highly complex sense of his dependence on the earth.

Our governments have only occasionally recognized the need of land and people to be protected against economic violence. It is true that economic violence is not always as swift, and is rarely as bloody, as the violence of war, but it can be devastating nonetheless.

It is altogether conceivable that we may go right along with this business of "business," with our curious religious faith in technological progress, with our glorification of our own greed and violence always rationalized by our indignation at the greed and violence of others, until our land, our world, and ourselves are utterly destroyed.

Having paid for life, we receive death. By now, in this nineteen hundred and eighty-sixth Year of Our Lord, we all have purchased how many shares in death? How many bombs, shells, mines, guns, grenades, poisons, anonymous murders, nameless sufferings, official secrets? But not the controlling share. Death cannot be marketed in controlling shares.

Somewhere underneath of all the politics, the ambition, the harsh talk, the power, the violence, the will to destroy and waste and maim and burn, was this tenderness. Tenderness born into madness, preservable only by suffering, and finally not preservable at all. What can love do? Love waits, if it must, maybe forever.

Let me speak of Son of Sam. He has been called a mad dog. He is not a mad dog ?- he is a mad human being, perhaps only a step removed from the rest of us. One has to acknowledge him as a human being and to respect his dignity even in his madness. Otherwise, there is the danger that people may start to kill each other like mad dogs.

Anne says that fear of death is the basis of all violence

We human beings have a great defect, which is that we are all too often willing to both spread and enforce our ideas with violence.

They have been taught nothing but destruction and learned nothing except that a man's desires can be achieved simply by killing anybody who stands in his way.

Every one of them was armed, every one a trained soldier who had killed and would not hesitate to kill again.

These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished. Memory fingers in their hair of murders Multitudinous murders they once witnessed. Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander, Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.

What passing bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons.

I am the enemy you killed, my friend I knew you in this dark, for so you frowned Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed I parried, but my hands were loath and cold Let us sleep now.

Little I'd ever teach a son, but hitting, Shooting, war, hunting, all the arts of hurting.

There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.

When those who must do the fighting have the right to decide between war and peace, history will no longer be written in blood.

In other cities the process of decentralizing wealth was not so legal: the debtors of Mytilene massacred their creditors en masse, and excused themselves on the ground that they were hungry; the democrats of Argos (370) suddenly fell upon the rich, killed twelve hundred of them, and confiscated their property.

Most Romans defended the gladiatorial games on the ground that the victims had been condemned to death for serious crimes, that the sufferings they endured acted as a deterrent to others, that the courage with which the doomed men were trained to face wounds and death inspired the people to Spartan virtues, and that the frequent sight of blood and battle accustomed Romans to the demands and sacrifices of war.

War is one of the constants of history, and has not diminished with civilization or democracy. In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war.

In the last 3,421 years of recorded history, only 268 have seen no war

A Bible-quoting group of killers. I don't like it

The lamb misused breeds public strife And yet forgives the butcher's knife.

The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity, too great for the eye of man.

What sets our species apart is not just what men will do to other men, but how tirelessly they justify it.