Quotes About Violence

Imagine waking up and finding your first and last view of the world was a shotgun barrel. That'd be a hell of a life.

Harvey called it his Occam's razor theory of combat: The simplest way of kicking someone's ass was usually the correct one.

I looked at Fowler, who had had a bullet applied directly to her forehead.

This man had gone to new places, met new races and exterminated them on sight. He looked all of twenty-three years old.

Nadashe propped herself up and smiled at her mother. "Hi, Mom," she said. The Countess Nohamapetan slapped her daughter hard across the face. "That's for killing your brother," she said. Then she slapped Nadashe again. "What's that one for?" Nadashe asked. "For getting caught.

increasing blasé acceptance of the USA as a nation under siege from within, manning the barricades with the growing legions of hired cops, gypsy cops, rent-a-cops, uniformed thugs insulating the rich from the poor?

Look now -- in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, use it well, use it wisely. We put no checks on him. Go out and kill as many of a certain kind or classification of your brothers as you can. And we will reward you for it because it is a violation of your early training.

In marching, in mobs, in football games, and in war, outlines become vague; real things become unreal and a fog creeps over the mind. Tension and excitement, weariness, movement--all merge in one great gray dream, so that when it is over, it is hard to remember how it was when you killed men or ordered them to be killed. Then other people who were not there tell you what it was like and you say vaguely, yes, I guess that's how it was.

Why, they're the dirtiest guys in any town. They're the same ones that burned the houses of old German people during the war. They're the same ones that lynch Negroes. They like to be cruel. They like to hurt people, and they always give it a nice name, patriotism or protecting the constitution.

And now submarines are armed with mass murder, our silly, only way of deterring mass murder.

And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, Use it well, use it wisely.

We're a violent people, Cal. Does it seem strange to you that I include myself? Maybe it's true, that we are all descendants of the restless, the nervous, the criminals, the arguers, and brawlers. But also the brave, and independent, and generous. If our ancestors hadn't been that, they would've stayed in their home plots in the other world and starved over the squeezed-out soil.

Tom's cowardice was as huge as his courage, as it must be in great men. His violence balanced his tenderness, and himself was a pitted battlefield of his own forces. He was confused now, but Dessie could hold his bit and point him, the way a handler points a thoroughbred at the barrier to show his breeding and his form.

He was very rich; he bought eggs to throw at a Chinaman. And one of those eggs missed the Chinaman and hit a policeman. So, Danny was in jail.

Well, you keep your place then, Nigger. I could get you strung upon a tree so easy it ain't even funny.

War did not make a killer of me, although for a time I killed men.

Why don't you beat him?

Young Adam was always an obedient child. Something in him shrank from violence, from contention, from the silent shrieking tensions that can rip at a house. He contributed to the quiet he wished for by offering no violence, no contention, and to do this he had to retire into secretness, since there is some violence in everyone. He covered his life with a veil of vagueness, while behind his quiet eyes a rich full life went on. This did not protect him from assault but it allowed him an immunity.

Sometimes a sad man can talk the sadness right out through his mouth. Sometimes a killin' man can talk the murder right out of his mouth an' not do no murder.

Tom's cowardice was as huge as his courage, as it must be in great men. His violence balanced his tenderness, and himself was a pitted battlefield of his own forces.

And the books that came into the house, some of them secretly—well, Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe. But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands. Violence

It has always seemed strange to me that it is usually men like Adam who have to do the soldiering. He did not like fighting to start with, and far from learning to love it, as some men do, he felt an increasing revulsion for violence.

But in my little experience the end is never very different in its nature from the means. Damn it, Jim, you can only build a violent thing with violence.

I seen her beat the hell out of a tin peddler with a live chicken one time 'cause he give her a argument. She had the chicken in one han', an' the ax in the other, about to cut its head off. She aimed to go for that peddler with the ax, but she forgot which hand was which, an' she takes after him with the chicken. Couldn' even eat that chicken when she got done. They wasn't nothing but a pair a legs in her han'. Grampa throwed his hip outa joint laughin'. How'd my folks go so easy?