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Violence Quotes

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Violence Quotes

“Government is violence, Christianity is meekness, non-resistance, love. And, therefore, government cannot be Christian, and a man who wishes to be a Christian must not serve government.”

Men Government Christian Wish Christianity Violence Resistance Meekness

Book:The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Memoirs, Letters & Essays on Art, Religion and Politics: Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Resurrection, The Death of Ivan Ilych, A Confession, The Cossacks, Correspondences with Gandhi, The Kreutzer Sonata, Fables and Stories for Childrenand Many More

Source: The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Memoirs, Letters & Essays on Art, Religion and Politics: Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Resurrection, The Death of Ivan Ilych, A Confession, The Cossacks, Correspondences with Gandhi, The Kreutzer Sonata, Fables and Stories for Childrenand Many More

“Violent resistance against the power of the state is the last resort of the minority in its effort to break loose from the oppression of the majority. ... The citizen must not be so narrowly circumscribed in his activities that, if he thinks differently from those in power, his only choice is either to perish or to destroy the machinery of state.”

Source: The free and prosperous commonwealth: an exposition of the ideas of classical liberalism

“The real resistance now is to an art which forces its audience to recognize and accept imaginatively, in their nerve ends, not the facts of life but the facts of death and violence: absurd, random, gratuitous, unjustified, and inescapably part of the society we have created.”

Art Real Ends Facts Force Accepting Audience Violence Resistance Absurd Nerves Facts Of Life Unjustified

Book:The Savage God: A Study of Suicide

Source: The Savage God: A Study of Suicide

“I myself am a very, very peaceful person. Throughout our history, from our own American revolution to the resistance against apartheid in South Africa, to labor strikes in the US, people have resorted to violence to achieve a more progressive society, from time to time.”

People Persons Violence Achieve Revolution Labor South Strikes Resistance Peaceful Progressive South Africa American Revolution Apartheid Progressive Society

Author:Tom Morello

“Much as being active in the antislavery movement of the last century involved more than not engaging in slavery oneself, so joining in an antiviolence movement has to go beyond opting for nonviolence in one's personal life. It calls for engaging in imaginative and forceful practices of nonviolent resistance to violence, including taking a stand toward entertainment violence.”

“However, the combination of civil resistance, of large-scale mass activities and strikes, with a certain degree of revolutionary violence, could provoke a crisis in the enemy's camp that would ultimately lead to essential changes.”

Certain Enemy Violence Activity Essentials Degrees Mass Crisis Strikes Scales Resistance Combination Revolutionary Camps Provoking Large Scale

Author:Joe Slovo

“Any act of violence creates resentment and resistance, because humans were meant to be free.”

Humans Violence Resistance Meant To Be Resentment Were Meant To Be Acts Of Violence

Author:Bryant H. McGill

“Wanting anything too desperately is a form of aggression and violence, which will always be met with resistance.”

Form Violence Mets Resistance Aggression Aggression And Violence

Author:Bryant H. McGill

“In my opinion while lynchings were quite possibly the most heinous crimes ever witnessed in American history, they helped in bringing people together for a sole purpose. It was because of these lynchings that armed self-resistance was created. If white people knew black people were capable of fighting back then there was less of a chance that violence actually would break out.”

“The function of violence is to obtain reform by external means, the function of passive resistance, that is, soul-force, is to obtain it by growth from within, which, in its turn, is obtained by self-suffering, self-purification.”

Mean Soul Self Suffering Turns Force Growth Violence Function Resistance Reform Passive Purification Soul Force Passive Resistance

Book:Gandhi: 'Hind Swaraj' and Other Writings

Source: Gandhi: 'Hind Swaraj' and Other Writings

“I don't think there's any way that war can have a place in peace. I think that peace is the active and difficult resistance to the temptation of war; it is the prerogative and the obligation of the injured. Peace is something that has to be vigilantly maintained; it is a vigilance, and it involves temptation, and it does not mean we as human beings are not aggressive. This is a mistaken way of understanding non-violence.”

Thinking Way Humans Mean Doe War Difficult Understanding Human Beings Violence Active Obligation Resistance Temptation Aggressive Mistaken Injured Non Violence Vigilance Prerogative

Author:Judith Butler

“I argue that legal equality has failed resistance movements aimed at transforming material conditions of violence, and that trans activists should take a decidedly different approach.”

Should Different Violence Conditions Movement Materials Approach Arguing Resistance Activist Transforming Trans Different Approach

Author:Dean Spade

“Violence is part of the resistance to occupation. The basic fact is not the violence; the basic fact is the occupation. Violence is a symptom; the occupation is the disease - a mortal disease for everybody concerned, the occupied and the occupiers.”

Facts Violence Disease Concerned Resistance Mortals Occupation Symptoms

Author:Uri Avnery

“Gandhi was important for another reason as well: his country was suffering under the British Empire, and yet he was leading a very singular kind of resistance to it. At the time he was speaking about the violence in Europe, his followers were in jail as prisoners of the British government.”

Wells Kind Important Country Reason Government Suffering Violence Europe British Resistance Empires Jail Prisoner Followers British Empire British Government

Author:Nicholson Baker

“Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would.”

Ifs Life Persons Nature Violence Gun Property Surrender Resistance Gun Control Preservation Limbs Compact Never Surrender

Book:The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations

Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations

“Every government on earth is the personification of violence and force, and yet the doctine of non-resistance is as old as human thought - even more than this, the instinct is as old as life upon the earth.”

Humans Government Earth Force Violence Instinct Resistance Human Thought Personification

Book:Resist Not Evil

Source: Resist Not Evil

“Firstly, as a Buddhist monk, I hold that violence is not good. Secondly, I am a firm believer in the Gandian ethic of passive resistance. And thirdly, in reality, violence is not our strength.”

Reality Violence Ethics Believer Resistance Buddhist Firm Passive Monk Buddhist Monk Passive Resistance

Author:Dalai Lama

“An act of violence against any innocent person eludes moral justification, disgraces the millions of Americans and people throughout the world who have united in peaceful protest against police brutality, and dishonors our proud inheritance of nonviolent resistance.”

“There are surely many ways that [media select and contextualise events determine the boundaries of public thinking] happens, but we can note at the most obvious level the way in which forms of resistance or violence get cast as "conflicts" that assume two sides that are fighting only against one another.”

Thinking Way Two Happens Form Fighting Sides Levels Violence Media Events Conflict Assuming Notes Casts Determine Obvious Boundaries Resistance Select Two Sides

Author:Judith Butler

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

“Violence [in Palestina] is part of the resistance to occupation. The basic fact is not the violence; the basic fact is the occupation.”

Facts Violence Resistance Occupation

Author:Uri Avnery

“Sadly, the same leaders who call on Palestinians to abandon violence have been silent in the face of Israeli repression. By condemning violent Palestinian resistance while remaining silent in the face of Israeli crackdowns and political arrests, they are simply endorsing violence against civilians by one side instead of the other.”

Has Beens Faces Political Sides Leader Violence Silent Violent Resistance Abandon Palestinian Civilians Israeli Repression Condemning Endorsing Remaining Silent

Author:Yousef Munayyer

“States have invested themselves with the right to legitimise violence - so who gets criminalised and delegitimised? Only - or well that's excessive - usually, the resistance.”

Wells States Violence Resistance

Author:Arundhati Roy

“Violence from protesters themselves is extremely rare, but has been made into a talking point by those who stand to benefit from breaking the perceived legitimacy of organized protest and resistance. Organized, disciplined nonviolent resistance is alive and well, and we see it all around us in cities across the country.”

Wells Has Beens Made Country Cities Talking Alive Violence Benefits Resistance Organized Protest Legitimacy Nonviolent Resistance

Author:Nate Powell