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Retaliation Quotes

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Retaliation Quotes

“His hand went into the skimmer's hull, an inch from her head. She didn't flinch. She turned her head slowly, trying to pretend her heart wasn't slamming against her chest. 'You missed,' she said calmly. Nehza pulled his hand away from the hull. Blood trickled down his knuckles from four crimson fots. She should have been afraid, but when she searched his face, she couldn't find a shred of anger. Just fear. She had no respect for fear. 'I don't want to hurt you,' he said. 'Of, trust me.' Her lip curled. 'You couldn't.”

“Forgiveness is moot if not heartfelt. The only thing we must do is protect our God-given souls! We must find it in our own hearts to forgive the men of Molotschna ... and even if the men don't ask for it themselves and even if they claim their innocence all the way to their graves!" "So you believe that maintaining the condition of your own soul is more important than obeying God?" Mirika says, less calm now. "They are the same thing really," Ona says, steadily. "I believe that my soul, my essence, my intangible energy is the presence of God within me and that by bringing peace to my soul I am honouring God. If I can understand how these crimes may have occurred, I am able to forgive these men and I am almost able, certainly from a distance, to pity them... to love them. Love is good and better than retaliation.”

“Rage swallowed remorse. Rage drop-kicked self-pity. Rage murdered sorrow. And then, like blood-red wine tucked into the refrigerator, rage chilled to become cold, calculating anger. Anger was a creature that arrived on her doorstep with a suitcase full of strategy and vengeance. It tipped its hat at her and hopped into her brain. It knocked on the Logic Department's door. It found a broken mirror somewhere in the crevices between her hippocampus and her hypothalamus, and it was wondering if somebody had misplaced it. No retaliation? It scoffed. Think again, missy.”

“Anger, resentment and jealousy doesn't change the heart of others-- it only changes yours.”

“I have been through the OSHA system twice and I can confirm that I did not have the right to a safe workplace or whistle-blower protection on either occasion.”

“If you let people shit all over your doorstep, you’re the one who looks like shit, not them. Go and shit on their doorstep. Or are you too liberal, prissy and up yourself for that? There’s nothing worse than dilettantes, posers and Ignavi. If you’ve got no fire in your belly, fuck off! Go and let someone shit on you. We’re not interested in coprophiliacs.”

“When you are constantly reacting to having been wronged (or perhaps to what you may regard as a wrong); when you are always giving in by practically living to defend, retaliating one time after another, again and again, you then spend double that time trying to prove the whole story: because to third parties, you will frequently appear to be on the attack, and therefore potentially receiving attacks once more - henceforth an unending pattern of misunderstood retaliations.”

“She never would admit it, but she felt utterly exposed at El Redentor, all those pale eyes gnawing at her duskiness like locusts––and she didn't know how to handle such vulnerability. Did what had always saved her in the past. Was defensive and aggressive and mad overreactive. You said something slightly off-color about her shoes and she brought up the fact that you had a slow eye and danced like a goat with a rock stuck in its ass. Ouch. You would just be playing and homegirl would be coming down on you off the top rope.”

“Retaliation retards your excellence. Nelson Mandela would not have been named as a great man if not for his courage to forgive those who schemed and plotted it for him to spend those 10000 bitter days in prison.”

“When these incidents started, I took them in stride, feeling that they were the work of a few hotheads who would soon be discouraged when they discovered that we would not fight back. But as the weeks passed, I began to see that many of the threats were in earnest. Soon I felt myself faltering and growing in fear. One day, a white friend told me that he had heard from reliable sources that plans were being made to take my life. For the first time I realized that something could happen to me. One night at a mass meeting, I found myself saying: 'If one day you find me sprawled out dead, I do not want you to retaliate with a single act of violence. I urge you to continue protesting with the same dignity and discipline you have shown so far.' A strange silence came over the audience.”

“The potential beauty of human life is constantly made ugly by man's ever recurring song of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever rising tides of revenge. Man has never risen above the injunction of the lex talionis: "Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." In spite of the fact that the law of revenge solves no social problems, men continue to follow its disastrous leading. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path.”

“It is frequently said that speech that is intentionally provocative and therefore invites physical retaliation can be punished or suppressed. Yet, plainly no such general proposition can be sustained. Quite the contrary.... The provocative nature of the communication does not make it any the less expression. Indeed, the whole theory of free expression contemplates that expression will in many circumstances be provocative and arouse hostility. The audience, just as the speaker, has an obligation to maintain physical restraint.”

“These missiles [Cruise and Pershing II] represent a new generation of missiles whose deployment will help give NATO first-strike capability. With this first-strike strategy, the West believes it could attack Russian military installations with such effectiveness that serious retaliation would be impossible.”

“When a uniform exercise of kindness to prisoners on our part has been returned by as uniform severity on the part of our enemies,you must excuse me for saying it is high time, by other lessons, to teach respect to the dictates of humanity; in such a case, retaliation becomes an act of benevolence.”

“What goes around, comes around.”

“What's somewhat puzzling is that Churchill himself knew what the reaction would be to any sort of aerial attack on cities, because in 1938 he said that in a future war British cities would be attacked by bombing, and that the response would be that all men would want to join the fight because they would be so incensed by this cowardly manner of attack. Which is a very natural response: when something drops on you from the air and blows up a bunch of buildings and kills people in their sleep, the reaction is going to be rage, confusion, and a search for something to destroy in retaliation.”