Quotations about Violence
Civil wars and religious hatred... had for the time changed our countrymen to beasts. ~Stanley J. Weyman, The House of the Wolf, 1888 [story takes place in 16th century Paris
I object to violence because, when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent. ~Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948), in Young India, 1925
Ernst Toller was not very great. But he was wholly poet. He was not great enough for the awful violence of the times in which he lived. Who is? ~Dorothy Thompson, Let the Record Speak, 1939
...who overcomes
By force, hath overcome but half his foe.
~John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1667
Violence in the voice is often only the death-rattle of reason in the throat... ~J. F. Boyes (1811–1879)
Let us thank God that we live in an age, when something has influence besides the bayonet... ~Daniel Webster, 1825
In violence we forget who we are, just as we forget who we are when engaged in sheer perception. ~Mary McCarthy
With rope, knife, gun, brass knucks, and bloody laws
Earth everywhere is noisy... This is the age of anger...
This is the age of gluttony and spite.
With lash and bomb, blue fire and bayonet
Earth everywhere is littered. Earth is wet
With blood not drained for drinking, earth is loud
With sounds not made for hearing, earth is plowed
By steel that will not reap it. Earth is least
Like what earth was when beast was simple beast.
~Mark Van Doren, "Simple Beast," A Winter Diary And Other Poems, 1935
We can view five hundred ways men can wreak havoc on men. Killing adults on TV is acceptable. Violence is not considered dirty but love is. ~Rod Serling, 1974
It used to take me all vacation to grow a new hide in place of the one they flogged off me during the school term. ~Mark Twain, 1867
I will not carry a gun... I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to old Virginia, I'll even hari-kari if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun! ~M*A*S*H, "Officer of the Day," 1974, written by Laurence Marks
And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand. ~Bernard Shaw, Cæsar and Cleopatra: A Page of History, 1900
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind. ~Bernard Shaw, "Maxims for Revolutionists"
So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs. ~Elbert Hubbard, 1899
He who loves the bristle of bayonets only sees in their glitter what beforehand he feels in his heart. It is avarice and hatred; it is that quivering lip, that cold, hating eye, which built magazines and powder-houses. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "War"