Quotes About Violence

asking myself from time to time if it might be possible to teach English in such a way that people would stop killing each other

The Swedes captured 5,000 new uniforms, broke into monasteries, held the monks to ransom, and opened the crypts to steal rings from the corpses. They took even more from the living, including 10,000 books which they sent to quench Queen Christina's thirst for knowledge.

material motivations for murder (in fact, I contend that they were secondary to ideological motives).

No: Human beings, by orders of magnitude, remained the most vicious animal on the planet.

The implacability and violence of nature always awed him. That it could be entirely heedless and yet so beautiful. That awed him. But also its intricate intelligence. Its balancings. Its quiet compensations. It was like some unnamed justice permeated everything. He would not go further than that. Still, the workings of nature made the voracious, self-satiating intelligence of humans seem of the lowest order, not the highest.

Human beings, by orders of magnitude, remained the most vicious animal on the planet.

When you kill do you also conjoin somehow? In some horrible communion you will never shake? Is that why soldiers come home and scream at night and kill themselves? Because they have become their targets?

No shit," Jack murmured. He was truly awed and relieved. The implacability and violence of nature always awed him. That it could be entirely heedless and yet so beautiful. That awed him. But also its intricate intelligence. Its balancings. Its quiet compensations. It was like some unnamed justice permeated everything. He would not go further than that. Still, the workings of nature made the voracious, self-satiating intelligence of humans seem of the lowest order, not the highest.

Increasingly I'm convinced that in a primitive society someone like me would have been clubbed to death quite early on just for being annoying.

I just hope I die naturally before somebody breaks into my house and beats me to death for whatever I happen to have in my wallet, it's just a race between the one and the other for me.

Batman: You can't build a better world by killing criminals--it bankrupts your soul and society's by reinforcing the same cycle of violence.

Violence is spiritual junk food, and boredom is spiritual anorexia.

Then Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out to the field.” And while they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

Then Lamech said to his wives: “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; wives of Lamech, listen to my speech. For I have slain a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me.

If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”

Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and full of violence.

Then God said to Noah, “The end of all living creatures has come before Me, because through them the earth is full of violence. Now behold, I will destroy both them and the earth.

And surely I will require the life of any man or beast by whose hand your lifeblood is shed. I will demand an accounting from anyone who takes the life of his fellow man:

Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood will be shed; for in His own image God has made mankind.

Before they had gone to bed, all the men of the city of Sodom, both young and old, surrounded the house.

They called out to Lot, saying, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Send them out to us so we can have relations with them!”

“Get out of the way!” they replied. And they declared, “This one came here as a foreigner, and he is already acting like a judge! Now we will treat you worse than them.” And they pressed in on Lot and moved in to break down the door.

When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the region, saw her, he took her and lay with her by force.

Three days later, while they were still in pain, two of Jacobís sons (Dinahís brothers Simeon and Levi) took their swords, went into the unsuspecting city, and slaughtered every male.