"An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind."
— Mahatma Gandhi (GANDHI: An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth)

"I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
— Thomas Jefferson

"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent"
— Mahatma Gandhi

"This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence."
— Adrian Edmondson

"'I get it,' said the prisoner. 'Good Cop, Bad Cop, eh?'
'If you like.' said Vimes. 'But we're a bit short staffed here, so if I give you a cigarette would you mind kicking yourself in the teeth?'"
— Terry Pratchett (Night Watch)

""Humm humm haaa. Rahmumm humm haaaa," intoned Opal, finishing her chant. "Peace be inside me, tolerance all around me, forgiveness in my path. Now, Mervall, show me where the filthy human is so that I may feed him his organs.""
— Eoin Colfer (Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox)

"If somebody says "I love you" to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol holder requires? "I love you, too.""
— Kurt Vonnegut (Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons)

"Poverty is the worst form of violence."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence."
— Noam Chomsky

"Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"I don't want unnecessary violence, sergeant," said Blouse.
"Right you are, sir!" said the sergeant. "Carborundum! First man comes through that door runnin', I want him nailed to the wall!" He caught the lieutenant's eye, and added: "But not too hard!"
— Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment)

"Physical love is unthinkable without violence."
— Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

"I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence."
— John Lennon

"We should write as we dream; we should even try and write, we should all do it for ourselves, it’s very healthy, because it’s the only place where we never lie. At night we don’t lie. Now if we think that our whole lives are built on lying-they are strange buildings-we should try and write as our dreams teach us; shamelessly, fearlessly, and by facing what is inside very human being-sheer violence, disgust, terror, shit, invention, poetry. In our dreams we are criminals; we kill, and we kill with a lot of enjoyment. But we are also the happiest people on earth; we make love as we never make love in life."
— Hélène Cixous

"If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?"
— Joan Baez

"Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander."
— Yehuda Bauer

"We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds- our own prejudices, fears and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still there, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we will make new bombs. To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. To prepare for war, to give millions of men and women the opportunity to practice killing day and night in their hearts, is to plant millions of seeds of violence, anger, frustration, and fear that will be passed on for generations to come. "
— Thich Nhat Hanh (Living Buddha, Living Christ)

"Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor."
— Robert A. Heinlein (Starship Troopers)

"Violence is not the answer. It is the question and the answer is yes."
— Korey Sorenson

"A violent order is disorder; and a great disorder is an order.
These two things are one."
— Wallace Stevens

"There is a comfort in conformity, a security in control, that is appealing. There is a thrill in domination, and we are all secretly attracted to violence."
— Tom Robbins (Jitterbug Perfume)

"Si vis pacem, para bellum- "If you wish for peace, prepare for war.""
— Latin

"It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide, by their conduct and example, the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force."
— Alexander Hamilton (The Federalist Papers)

"The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence humans have ever committed. "
— -Gil Bailie, author and lecturer (b. 1944)

"Men just like the ones who killed his mother and father had now murdered an archbishop in a cathedral, as if to prove, beyond all possibility of doubt, that there was no authority that could prevail against the tyranny of a man with a sword (958)."
— Ken Follett (The Pillars of the Earth)

"When a child hits a child, we call it aggression.
When a child hits an adult, we call it hostility.
When an adult hits an adult, we call it assault.
When an adult hits a child, we call it discipline."
— Haim G. Ginott

"'If we can use an H-bomb--and as you said it's no checker game; it's real, it's war and nobody is fooling around--isn't it sort of ridiculous to go crawling around in the weeds, throwing knives and maybe getting yourself killed . . . and even losing the war . . . when you've got a real weapon you can use to win? What's the point in a whole lot of men risking their lives with obsolete weapons when one professor type can do so much more just by pushing a button?'
Zim didn't answer at once, which wasn't like him at all. Then he said softly, 'Are you happy in the Infantry, Hendrick? You can resign, you know.'
Hendrick muttered something; Zim said, 'Speak up!'
'I'm not itching to resign, sir. I'm going to sweat out my term.'
'I see. Well, the question you asked is one that a sergeant isn't really qualified to answer . . . and one that you shouldn't ask me. You're supposed to know the answer before you join up. Or you should. Did your school have a course in History and Moral Philosophy?'
'What? Sure--yes, sir.'
'Then you've heard the answer. But I'll give you my own--unofficial--views on it. If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cuts its head off?'
'Why . . . no, sir!'
'Of course not. You'd paddle it. There can be circumstances when it's just as foolish to hit an enemy with an H-Bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an ax. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him . . . but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing . . . but controlled and purposeful violence. But it's not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the control. It's never a soldier's business to decide when or where or how--or why--he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people--"older and wiser heads," as they say--supply the control. Which is as it should be. That's the best answer I can give you. If it doesn't satisfy you, I'll get you a chit to go talk to the regimental commander. If he can't convince you--then go home and be a civilian! Because in that case you will certainly never make a soldier.'"
— Robert A. Heinlein (Starship Troopers)

"We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love."
— R.D. Laing

"People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assault, a momentary death?"
— P.D. James (Innocent Blood)

"Their violence (the jungle wars of the '70s), and all violence for that matter, reflects the neutral exploration of sensation that is taking place, within sex as elsewhere and the sense that the perversions are valuable precisely because they provide a readily accessible anthology of exploratory techniques."
— J.G. Ballard (The Atrocity Exhibition)

"Everyone in prison has an ideal of violence, murder. Beneath all relationships between prisoners is the ever-present fact of murder. It ultimately defines our relationship among ourselves."
— Jack Henry Abbott (In the Belly of the Beast: Letters From Prison)

"The Church is in the world, it is part of the suffering in the world, and though Christ condemned the disciple who struck off the ear of the high priest's servant, our hearts go out in sympathy to all who are moved to violence by the suffering of others. The Church condemns violence, but it condemns indifference more harshly. Violence can be the expression of love, indifference never. One is an imperfection of charity, the other the perfection of egoism."
— Graham Greene (The Comedians)

"This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!"
— Albert Einstein

"War
By Pam Gray
War is filled with hate and violence
Some shots, some screams and then a silence.
The men in war kill one another
Not knowing that they may have liked each other.

Do you know how much blood is shed?
And how many men are reported dead?
Well, when you find your son is gone
Then you’ll know that war is wrong."
— Pam Grey

" "The pressure is mounting on Egypt. How come you keep the Israeli ambassador here? How come you keep the Egyptian ambassador in Israel? How come you still export gas to Israel in spite of a court order to stop? The system is on the defensive."
."
— ABDEL RAOUF EL-REEDY, a former Egyptian ambassador to the United States, on the violence in Gaza

"Gewalt ist die letzte Zuflucht des Unfähigen."
— Isaac Asimov

"I think Bonzo died. I dreamed about it last night. I remembered the way he looked after I jammed his face with my head. I think I must have pushed his nose back into his brain. The blood was coming out of his eyes. I think he was dead right then."
— Orson Scott Card

"I, on the other hand, interrupt people because my thoughts fly out of my mouth. My handbag's full of rubbish. And I want to do something that matters with my life. Right now I'd like to write plays, sing in musicals, and/or rid the world of poverty, violence, cruelty, and right-wing conservative politics."
— Alison Larkin (The English American: A Novel)

"He, who thought it necessary to maintain himself in her good graces, strove to console her under her disappointment by committing a little violence upon truth."
— Matthew Gregory Lewis (The Monk)

""The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants and for peace like retarded pygmies."
— Lester B. Pearson



"The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations."
"
— David Friedman

""The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations."
"
— David Friedman

"Black people are victims of an enormous amount of violence. None of those things can take place without the complicity of the people who run the schools and the city."
— Toni Morrison

"All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished."
— Marshall B. Rosenberg (Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Create Your Life, Your Relationships, and Your World in Harmony with Your Values)

"In the preface of "The Rifles"
"Another rule we followed was never kill an animal that we were not going to use for food or clothing." Barnabas Piryuaq
"Well, in those high latitudes we found such quantities of seals and walruses that we simply did not know what to do with them.There were thousands and thousands lying there; we walked among them and hit them on the head, and laughed heartily in the abundance which God had created." Jan Welzi 1933. "
— William T. Vollmann (The Rifles)

"Violence is as American as cherry pie"
— H.R. Schiffman