Quotes about Violence

Behind the violence of the birthing of galaxies and stars and planets came a quiet and tender melody, a gentle love song. All the raging of creation, the continuing hydrogen explosions on the countless suns, the heaving of planetary bodies, all was enfolded in a patient, waiting love.

Matt, I saw a man with his face blown off and no mouth to scream with, and yet he screamed and could not die. I saw two brothers, and one was in blue and one was in grey, and I will not tell you which one took his saber and ran it through the other. Oh God, it was brother against brother, Cain and Abel all over again. And I was turned into Cain. What would God have to do with a nation where brothers can turn against each other with such brutality?

I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence.

Government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force.

I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed, without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.

Civil disobedience is not only the natural right of a people, especially when they have no effective voice in their own Government, but that it is also a substitute for violence or armed rebellion.

History is a bath of blood.

If I go home, get a gun, come back and shoot you, that may not be legal under New York law because you would have alternative ways to defend.

A nation that destroys its own people is a nation without hope.

War is and always has been a brutal exercise that destroys lives, families and communities. It is never something for which we hope.

War is a defeat for humanity.

War should belong to the tragic past, to history: it should find no place on humanity's agenda for the future.