c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Violence was second nature to the psychopathic and ultra-violent Stephen Moyle, who was already a seasoned street fighter, after having half his face torn off in a street fight with three other men.
— Stephen Richards, Psycho Stephen
Looking as sharp as Sweeney Todd’s razor, Roger struck a formidable figure as he donned his smart clothes and tie. At times, he would often talk of the night of his career when he fought John Conteh. He took the defeat of that match very personally and would often punch out a drunk who scoffed at his midlands accent and his past pride and glory.
— Stephen Richards, Psycho Stephen
Back then I had muscles on my muscles, I was tattooed and tanned, wore the tightest of jeans to accentuate my snakelike waist and the whitest of tight vests to accentuate my muscle packed torso. To top it all off, I had the nicest piece of eye-candy on my arm in the form of a stunning, long-legged, mini skirted blonde.
— Stephen Richards, Psycho Stephen
I was so incensed that I was oblivious to all as I ran over broken glass, holding a five-foot weightlifting bar. The glass tore the soles of my feet as I chased the gang’s car up the street. I remember breathing heavily as I cursed failing to catch my enemies.
— Stephen Richards, Psycho Stephen
Today, these doormen, they wear body armour, armoured gloves, stab proof vests and all sorts; it’s totally changed, you get shot at the door you are paid to stand at, never mind getting stabbed. Druggies go away, get a gun, return and start shooting at you! Yeah, times are changing fast and there are some nice kids out there and some of them are fucking wild. I can’t see it getting better with these drug mugs because they get on them and they can’t get off them again.
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
On this world you have the animals and they have as much right to be on this world as us; and it’s man who is the reason they are pushed to extinction. They’re killing them for their tusks and their horns, and these fucking idiots, they think claws will give them sex appeal and they get all fucking sissy on you.
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
Dicing with death is one man’s cup of tea, but another man’s poison. I just didn’t fear anything.
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
The difference between a heel and a coward and one who jumps in the fire and one who runs away from the fire
—  is up to the individual in how they manage a given situation.
I believe in most men there is a certain amount of violence. Every man has a bit of fight in him, but some of them have to look deeper within themselves, further than most. The fight is there if you search for it; people don’t think they’ve got it at all, but they have got it, like the weakest fucking crony you could see on earth. If someone broke in to the house, I believe he’d fucking have a go rather than somebody hurt his wife and kids; it would press him to his limits. If he’s not going to defend his pitch, he’s not worth a cup of cold fucking water.
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
I’ve had guns pointed at me, and I can tell you that it’s not the right place to be standing if some is really mad at you!
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
You know, the Lord said to Adam: ‘Come forth, come forth,’ and he came fifth and won the fucking apple, do you know what I mean. If you can walk away, walk away but it’s hard to do
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
People keep telling me that I’m a legend in Merthyr and a legend in many other places. Here’s my understanding on that, what’s a legend? I don’t really know what a legend is, I don’t even know the word. I’m not a King Arthur reincarnate either. I might be one of the Round Table, but I’m not King Arthur.
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
It was as if my sould had left my body, floated up to the ceiling, and was watching me destroy my own career with one deliberately assaultive punch. (Dark City Lights)
— Peter Hochstein
In a dancehall in Kendal, I chased the bouncers out of the fucking dancehall, they were wearing white coats and they took these coats off, put them on the floor and jacked; Ginger Harris and me, we put the white coats on and took over for the night!
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
A head can be beaten small enough until it fits the hat.
— G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
The old days are dead and gone days. For what I did in the past I have been punished. I have been cured.
— Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
That's the law, son. But you were never much of a one for following the law.
— Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Of course it was horrible,' smiled Dr. Branom. 'Violence is a very horrible thing. That's what you're learning now. Your body is learning it.
— Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Our subject is, you see, impelled towards the good by, paradoxically, being impelled towards evil. The intention to act violently is accompanied by strong feelings of physical distress. To counter these the subject has to switch to a diametrically opposed attitude.
— Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Obviously it’s hard for anyone to imagine, but these dance halls were powder kegs just waiting to erupt. Names were made and reputations were enhanced or blown in a flash!
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
The scenario where the sprawling anti-hero gets his comeuppance and the champion walks off into the sunset with his arm around the prize, usually a woman, is a pleasing one. This media personification of what a hero is all about used to be the common norm. Examining past events can confirm this convoluted outlook that sees the baddie being portrayed as some sort of evil manifestation sent to cause havoc by any means possible.
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
Malcolm Price embodies all that is Welsh, aside from the green valleys and male voice choirs. The will to win against insurmountable odds is a penchant of the Welsh, put this with a propensity to never say ‘die’ and that is what makes the Welsh so durable.
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
The anti-hero has played an important role in the history of mankind, so much so that the whole ethos of what is good and bad has become blurred.
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
Most of the pubs had barred Des, but he came in to the Tiger bar and he points to me and says, ‘And you, out! I want you by the back of the car park.’ So I obliged him and proceeded to kick the poor cunt all around the car park, he ended up in hospital for a week! Eventually, when he came out of hospital he said that I was the best thing that had happened to him, I’d cured him!
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
At that time, there was only one thing better that a good fight, and that was having a good fight and getting paid for it.
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
Examining the background of anyone can bring skeletons to our attention; a blot on the landscape can mar all what pleases the eye. This is how Malcolm Price was perceived by those who would stand back in fear of what he was all about, yet nothing could be further from the truth!
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
As one of the motorbikes came towards me, I let a big heavy right go, and knocked the rider’s head clean off his shoulders! Fucking hell, the guy’s head was still in his helmet and it was clattering all the way down the road.
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
These near death escapades didn’t put me off working in violent situations. If trouble happened then I couldn’t stop to think of what might happen. There were some good people about and my job was to protect them from trouble, I couldn’t let past experiences put me off.
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
As much as Merthyr is a fighting town, these people also have hearts of gold. I worked all over Monmouth, and then the Aberfan disaster happened! That was a very emotional episode in my life. I never want to see anything like that ever again! In my opinion, the tip should have been moved well before the rain got in to it, and the old tip came rolling down the hillside on the school and the walls just caved in!
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
Although I had committed just about every sort of assault imaginable on people and even the odd one or two against the police, I still had and still do have respect for the old school policeman.
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
Remember, I was only in to fighting; I wasn’t a high-ranking underworld figure selling the Crown Jewels! I wasn’t the Merthyr Mafia and I had no connections with the goings on of petty criminal matters.
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
He caught me neat, right on the fucking face and I took one step back and thought, you’re not getting away with that you bastard! I was punching the piss out of him, he kept going down, but I didn’t kick him, he’d had enough. I didn’t put the boot in to a man older than myself. But this confrontation was out of the blue, out of the fucking blue. That’s what I had to face.
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
Everyone in the valleys knew me and because of that, so many people used my name in the valleys that there must have been at least a hundred times a night that the name ‘Malcolm Price’ was used.
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
I never knew any of these people who were using my name, if I had a fiver for every time my name was used for protective purposes by these people to ward off trouble then I’d be a millionaire many times over by now.
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
There was just one cheeky bastard in the club that night and it started World War Three. There was a bloodbath down there, they all got locked up, and the police dogs didn’t need feeding for a week after that.
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
One lesson I learned from all of this, and that was a hard one, for all of the good I did people, it was never remembered. I was the one doing jail, not them. Apart from a small circle of close loyal friends, I was and am on my own.
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
A normal fighter in the street fights in a different way than a disciplined boxer, but a boxer is from the other world, it’s a big difference. A boxer can throw a six-inch punch. A six-inch punch can knock you clean down. I’m very wary of those boxers, I can tell you. If you get a boxer that can street fight and he mixes it together then it makes a lethal combination! I mixed boxing and street fighting in to a cocktail and when I knocked them down I kept them down by use of the boot.
— Stephen Richards, Street Warrior: The True Story of the Legendary Malcolm Price, Britain's Hardest Man
It was much easier to explain the veil than to answer questions about the wounds.
— Pawan Mishra, Coinman: An Untold Conspiracy
More violence does not necessarily equate with greater religious conviction.
— Maajid Nawaz, Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue
Never plan an act of violence. Just let it happen natural.
— Garth Ennis, Preacher, Volume 7: Salvation
Hersey was describing for the first time the war's true legacy: a permanent condition of helpless anger and universal dread. Hiroshima was the end of the line for the archaic idea that war was something that soldiers did on battlefields, somewhere on the far side of the horizon. The great strategic breakthrough of the war had been the targeting of civilian populations with weapons of mass destruction -- so that for the first time in history everybody, soldier and civilian alike, could share equally in the horror of battle. Now the postwar world was elevating this principle, making it the organizing fact of existence. After Hiroshima, Armageddon could erupt anytime, anywhere on earth, without warning, by accident. Even as people walked heedlessly in the streets, the bombs could be spiraling down from an invisible plane passing in the stratosphere; at dinnertime in the heartland, as the local news droned on about the Middle East, the missiles could already be arching over the north pole, like the ribs of a strange new cathedral.
— Lee Sandlin
The further from law you move, the closer to claw you come.
— Agona Apell, The Success Genome Unravelled: Turning Men from Rot to Rock
In late 1985, the Reagan White House blocked the use of CDC money for education, leaving the US behind other Western nations in telling its citizens how to avoid contracting the virus. Many Americans still thought you could get AIDS from a toilet seat or a glass of water. According to one poll, the majority of Americans supported quarantining AIDS patients.This heightened awareness set off waves of anxiety across the country, which was often express through jokes (Q: What do you call Rock Hudson in a wheelchair? A: Roll-AIDS!) and violence. Between the years 1985 and 1986, anti-gay violence increased by 42 percent in the US. Even in San Francisco, where Greyhound buses still dropped off gay men and women taking refuge from the prejudice of their hometowns, carloads of teenagers would drive through the Castro looking for targets.In December 1985, a group of teenagers, shouting “diseased faggot” and “you’re killing us all,” dragged a man named David Johnson from his car in a San Francisco parking lot. While his lover looked on in horror, the teenagers kicked and beat Johnson with their skateboards, breaking three of his ribs, bruising his kidneys, an gashing his face and neck with deep fingernail scratches.
— Alysia Abbott, Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father
At first, we both miss a few sharp bursts of wild punches and then, BANG! I catch him with a full swing left hook and he goes down like a ferret down a hole after a rabbit. When that punch landed, I broke my hand, again, and simultaneously broke his jaw. I wonder if that is an entry into the Guinness Book of records?
— Stephen Richards, Born to Fight: The True Story of Richy Crazy Horse Horsley
When I got off him, I spat the blood that was swamping my mouth in to his face, I looked down at him and it really looked like he was dying… shit!  The ambulance arrived in about a minute and they got an oxygen mask straight on him and I could see the life draining out of him. You see, this is the problem; we are only human and flesh and blood.
— Stephen Richards, Born to Fight: The True Story of Richy Crazy Horse Horsley
Mistaken ideas always end in bloodshed, but in every case it is someone else's blood. This is why our thinkers feel free to say just about anything.
— Albert Camus
So long as atrocities remain remote, abstract, they will be tolerated, even by decent people.
— Howard Zinn
But many people do not fully realize that there are terrible consequences when people becoming things. Self-image is deeply affected. The self-esteem of girls plummets as they reach adolescence partly because they cannot possibly escape the message that their bodies are objects, and imperfect objects at that. Boys learn that masculinity requires a kind of ruthlessness, even brutality. Violence becomes inevitable.
— Jean Kilbourne, Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel
There were in the camp a number of Mexican slaves and these ran forth calling out in spanish and were brained or shot and one of the Delawares emerged from the smoke with a naked infant dangling in each hand and squatted at a ring of midden stones and swung them by the heels each in turn and bashed their heads against the stones so that the brains burst forth through the fontanel in a bloody spew and humans on fire came shrieking forth like berserkers and the riders hacked them down with their enormous knives and a young woman ran up and embraced the bloodied forefeet of Glanton's warhorse.
— Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Emotional blackmails and psychological threats are the feces of a rotten soul.
— Angelica Hopes, Landscapes of a Heart, Whispers of a Soul
He had not joined in on the laughter or even on the beating. Violence of any sort horrified him. Nevertheless, he stood by while Mike, their leader, drove a boot down on Joe’s hand. The hideous cracking sound of breaking bones came into his mind and a helpless shudder ran through him. Joe, whose high piercing scream against the autumn skies of indifference, replayed in his memory with shrill agony. Several times, he had shouted: “He’s had enough! Let up on him!” Which earned him looks of contempt from the others. They had left the kid there, screaming in that back alley. He remembered trying to drown those screams out of his mind.
— Jaime Allison Parker, The Delta Highway
I show how much of the wars of religion involved Catholics killing Catholics, Lutherans killing Lutherans, and Catholic-Protestant collaboration. (Page 10 The Myth of Religious Violence)
— William Cavanaugh
Fire is often the weapon of choice for the insane.
— Douglas Preston, White Fire
As if violence could make light. Maybe violence could make light.
— Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir
We know that in the attempt to be freed of the enemy without, we can be tempted to feed the enemy within. To imitate the hatred and violence of tyrants and murderers is the best way to take their place.
— Pope Francis
Violence doesn't solve anything. Win would make a face when I said that, but the truth was, whenever I resorted to violence, it never just ended there. Violence ripples and reverberates. It echoes and really never seems to go silent.
— Harlan Coben, Long Lost
A man with a rifle or a club can only be stopped by a person who defends himself with a rifle or a club. That's equality. If the United States government doesn't want you and me to have rifles, then take the rifles away from those racists. If they don't want you and me to use clubs, take the clubs away from the racists. If they don't want you and me to get violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don't teach us non-violence!!!
— Malcolm X
Violence isn't the answer.
— Shannon Messenger, Let the Sky Fall
She decided that day to study Russian, the language of violence, terror, and absurdity. She knew she would never be bored.
— Natalie Standiford, The Boy on the Bridge
It isn't a coincidence that the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat happened after September 11. Gujarat is also one place where the toxic waste of the World Trade Center is being dumped right now. This waste is being dumped in Gujarat, and then taken of to Ludhiana and places like that to be recycled. I think it's quite a metaphor. The demonization of Muslims has also been given legitimacy by the world's superpower, by the emperor himself. We are at a stage where democracy - this corrupted, scandalous version of democracy - is the problem. So much of what politicians do is with an eye on elections. Wars are fought as election campaigns. In India, Muslims are killed as part of election campaigns. In 1984, after the massacre of Sikhs in Delhi, the Congress Party won, hands down. We must ask ourselves very serious questions about this particular brand of democracy.
— Arundhati Roy, The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with Arundhati Roy
All Sam Peckinpah ever did in his movies was show that getting hit on the chin doesn't sound like [makes a small popping noise]. When one grown man hits another grown man in the face, it splatters like an overripe tomato. And it's not fun getting killed. It's bloody and gory and altogether unpleasant. That's all Sam Peckinpah ever did.
— Harry Crews, Getting Naked with Harry Crews: Interviews
It takes abstract thinking to see how greed can lead to prosperity, but it takes wishful thinking to claim that violence can lead to charity.
— Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski, The Pith of Life: Aphorisms in Honor of Liberty
Throughout the history of the Kensington Rune Stone in the twentiethcentury, memories of an ancient battle were repeatedly evoked toaddress the concerns about more recent battles. The skræling enduredas a convenient symbol of the threats posed by secularization, urbanization,and diversification. As sociologist Richard K. Fenn observes,“Any society is a reservoir of old longings and ancient hatreds. Theseneed to be understood, addressed, resolved and transcended if a societyis to have a future that is different from its past.” Furthermore, whena society does not adequately confront its past, it perpetually finds “anew target that resembles but also differs from the source of originalconflict.” If Fenn is correct, old enemies will continue to emerge inthe face of new enemies unless Minnesotans can understand, address,resolve, and transcend the state’s original sin: the unjust treatment ofthe region’s first inhabitants.
— David M. Krueger, Myths of the Rune Stone: Viking Martyrs and the Birthplace of America
For twenty years and more the whole planet had been bombed, raped, ravaged, and gouged by people whose fury had so exceeded their judgment that the only thing they could think of to do to express their discontent was to kill somebody.
— Frederik Pohl, The Annals of the Heechee
Science & Love have progressed "either" ways with growth of violence!
— Vishwanath S J
Bonobo discipline involves being schooled in a gentler, more playful fashion.
— Susan Block, The Bonobo Way
War is a terrible, bloody thing.
— Katlyn Charlesworth, The Patriot's Daughter
Her eyes widen and she shoves me back and then there's a space between us, enough to paralyze me with all of the things I could do to her next. I could raise my hand and hit her in the face or bring my knee into her stomach, take a fistful of her hair and rip it out of her skull. You don't get to do this when you're a girl, so when the opportunity for violence finally presents itself, I want all of it at once.
— Courtney Summers, All the Rage
All violence is based on blindness, on a lack of reflection and empathy.
— Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books
Difficult times do not produce gentility, as if there is an angle hovering over the world of the oppressed.
— Jonny Steinberg, Thin Blue: The Unwritten Rules of Policing South Africa
There’s fear and violence under the surface. One always follows the other.
— James W. Bodden, The Red Light Princess
...The world's benefactor has no choice; he is the surgeon who wields the healing scalpel. He does not want the violence, but the reality (which he has invented) drives him to use violence, in a way, against his will. Throwing a bomb into a crowded department store thus becomes an act of revolutionary love for mankind (and, in general, to quote Lübbe again, 'his primary intention is not to throw bombs into department stores or police stations, but rather into public consciousness.')
— Paul Watzlawick, Münchhausen's Pigtail, or Psychotherapy & "Reality"
We are absolutely right to condemn the suicide bomber's targeting of innocent civilians and mourn his victims. But as we have seen, in war the state also targets such victims; during the 20th century, the rate of civilian deaths rose sharply and now stands at 90 percent. In the West we solemnize the deaths of our regular troops carefully and recurrently honor the memory of the soldier who dies do his country. Yet the civilian deaths we cause are rarely mentioned, and there has been no sustained outcry in the West against them. Suicide bombing shocks us to the core; but should it be more shocking than the deaths of thousands of children in their homelands every every year because of land mines? Or collateral damage in a drone strike?
— Karen Armstrong
Sir Arthur grimaced. He hated violence - perhaps his father ingrained that into him. But he still fought, for principle and for father's legacy. Now that legacy meant the protection of defenseless women. There were a few Persians in the way to execute that duty. He stabbed his blade into a Tatar's chest. Another one.
— Justus A. Platt, His Father's Command
Religions, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an ending of violence and hatred through a realization of the fundamental oneness of all life, they brought more violence and hatred, more divisions between people as well as between different religions and even within the same religion. They became ideologies; belief systems people could identify with and so use them to enhance their false sense of self. Through them they could make themselves “right” and others “wrong” and thus define their identity through their enemies, the “others”, the “nonbelievers” or “wrong believers” who not infrequently they saw themselves justified in the killing.
— Eckhart Tolle
In the immediate vicinity, there might well be stability and peace. In the garden, a breeze may be swaying the branches of the plum tree and dust may slowly be gathering on the bookshelves in the living room. But we are aware that such serenity does not do justice to the chaotic and violent fundamentals of existence and hence, after a time, it has a a habit of growing worrisome in its own way.
— Alain de Botton, The News: A User's Manual
She checked herself in the mirror. She was a roadmap of violence.
— Simon Wood, The One That Got Away
The notion that we've made vast moral progress and are now a less violent species is belied by our awesome powers of destruction, our military might, police forces as well-armed as soldiers. Without the threat of such violent force behind it, all law would be meaningless. I prefer stories that remind us of that. At its core, history is a story of violence at work. It all comes down to the old saw that, however much you can gain with a kind word, you can gain more with a kind word and a gun.
— James Carlos Blake
Violence is the most popular political commodity. Politicians are the wholesalers of violence. Ruling elites are the main beneficiary of violence and working classes are the innocent and silent victims of violence. When politician and corporate forces comes together to promote the gross violence they call that War, uprisings etc.
— William Gomes
Mellas continued to look at the wallet, saying nothing. Hawke, who had been watching Mellas through the steam that rose from his pear-can coffee mug, handed Mellas the cup. Mellas gave a brief smile and took a drink. His hand was shaking. Hawke said in a calm voice, 'Something happened. You want to talk about it?'Mellas didn't answer right away. Then he said, 'I think I know where the gooks are.' He pulled out his map and pointed to the spot, his hand still trembling.'How do you know that, Mel?' Hawke asked.'From the direction he crawled after he was shot.' Mellas tossed the wallet down at Fitch. Then he dug into his pocket and pulled out the soldier's unit and rank patches. he looked at them, then at Fitch and Hawke, who were no longer eating. 'I let him crawl toward home with his guts hanging out.' He started sobbing. 'I just left him there.' Snot was streaming from his nose. 'I'm so sorry. I'm so fucking sorry.' His hands were now shaking with his body as he clenched the two pieces of cloth to his eyes.
— Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn
In Labor movements generally, success through violence can hardly be expected except in circumstances where success without violence is attainable.
— Bertrand Russell, Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism
Word warfare is going on, which is not less destructive than any War. Words can be more destructive than any type of destructive weapons. Violence of any form starts in human mind and manifests in emotions, behaviors and finally in actions.
— William Gomes
He can neither read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence. All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man.
— Cormac McCarthy
Dr. King's policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That's very good. He only made one fallacious assumption: In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.
— Stokely Carmichael
You can write the most detailed, vivid description of an ax entering a skull, and nobody will say a word in protest. But if you write a similarly detailed description of a penis entering a vagina, you get letters from people saying they'll never read you again. What the hell? Penises entering vaginas bring a lot more joy into the world than axes entering skulls.
— George R.R. Martin
But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives.
— Molly Ivins
Most people who watch a fight think it's all about the muscle: hitting harder, moving faster. And, yeah, sometimes it looked that way. But telling somebody that you won a fight by hitting the other person harder and more often was like telling somebody that the way you kept from drowning was by moving your arms and legs.
— Kameron Hurley, God's War
A man of peace shall always live in peace, if all chances are given and only shall he stand to fight for his rights if peace and freedom isn't granted to him.
— Auliq Ice
He beat me when you not here, I say.Who do, she say, Albert?Mr ____, I say.I can't believe it, she say. She sit down on the bench next to me real hard, like she drop.What he beat you for? she ast.For being me and not you.
— Alice Walker, The Color Purple
You can do a lot with diplomacy, but with diplomacy backed up by force you can get a lot more done.
— Kofi Annan
When fear meets fear nothing good ever happens.
— Charles F. Glassman
When fear meets fear nothing good every happens.
— Charles F. Glassman
As the most powerful people in history, we have climbed to the top of the world food chain, so to speak. Facing not one single enemy or predator who poses to us any danger of consequence, we've found the only prey left: ourselves.
— Gavin de Becker
The pony is mad. She can go from a relaxed walk to a flat out gallop in seconds if something spooks her, and she won’t stop until she practically crashes into something. I’ve seen her buck, rear and spin around in circles. She’s completely unpredictable and I don’t even trust her on the ground. As far as I’m concerned, Alec’s welcome to her, and he relishes the challenge. For some reason, he loves that pony most of all. Perhaps it’s because no-one else would give her a chance, that they’d written her off as crazy, mean, dangerous. Alec admires her independent spirit, I think, and maybe he likes that she still has that strength of spirit, that she still challenges him every time he rides her. He can’t completely dominate her, and he doesn’t try. He wants a partnership with her. And slowly, slowly, his father is taking that away from him, bullying the mare and his son at the same time, seeking to fit them into the same mould, the only one he knows. The strong succeed while the weak fall behind.
— Kate Lattey, Flying Changes
It seems symbolic of this all-pervading unpredictability that those engaged in the perfection of the means of destruction have finally brought about a level of technical development where their aim, namely warfare, is on the point of disappearing altogether.
— Hanna Arendt
A director's dream? No, Bollywood reality in 1995.Business is booming, but cliché's are passée. A different sort of breeze-fresh, young-is unsettling fatigued conventions.
— Anupama Chopra
For an instant he thought he grasped the truth of a terrifying world in which one could not escape horror, in which violence was eternal, the great and only verity, greater than the civilisations it created, greater than any god man worshiped, for it was the only true god. It was as if man existed only to transmit violence to ensure its domain is eternal. For the world did not change, this violence had always existed and would never be eradicated, men would die under the boot and fists and horror of other men until the end of time, and all human history was a history of violence.
— Richard Flanagan
In protesting for your rights in any form you may, but it's only good, If they can understand your problems and feelings and not only to judge you.
— Auliq Ice
We can't win the world with weapons or violence.We can win the world with love and practice of nonviolence.
— Debasish Mridha
Be an active bystander because sooner or later you or someone you love could be a victim too.
— Shahla Khan, Friends With Benefits: Rethinking Friendship, Dating & Violence
The time approachesThat will with due decision make us knowWhat we shall say we have and what we owe.Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate,But certain issue strokes must arbitrate;Towards which, advance th
— William Shakespeare, Macbeth
The saying goes, if you love something, let it go. I always though it was better to just shoot the damn thing so it'd never go anywhere.
— Karina Halle, Dirty Angels
A Dick and Jane story written in blood and battered bone.See Spot.See Spot run.See Spot run from a gaping chest wound.Run Spot run.See Detective smear Spot into a baggy for DNA testing.
— J.E. Mac, Damaged Good
It was uncanny. You press a button and a man drops dead a hundred meters away. It seemed hollow and remote, falsifying everything. It was a trick of the lenses. The man is an accurate picture. Then he is upside down. Then he is right side up. You shoot at a series of images conveyed to you through a metal tube. The force of a death should be enormous but how can you know what kind of man you’ve killed or who was the braver and stronger if you have to peer through layers of glass that deliver the image but obscure the meaning of the act? War has a conscience or it’s ordinary murder.
— Don DeLillo, Libra
What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord?Or to the dreadful summit of the cliffThat beetles o'er his base into the sea,And there assume some other horrible formWhich might deprive your sovereignty of reasonAnd draw you into madness? Think of it.[The very place puts toys of desperation,Without more motive, into every brainThat looks so many fathoms to the seaAnd hears it roar beneath.]
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet
The purpose of the bayonet training, Sergeant Gerheim explains, is to awaken our killer instincts. The killer instinct will make us fearless and aggressive, like animals. If the meek ever inherit the earth the strong will take it away from them. The weak exist to be devoured by the strong. Every Marine must pack his own gear. Every Marine must be the instrument of his own salvation. It's hard, but there it is.
— Gustav Hasford, The Short-Timers
Further, any way of life based on the importation of resources is also functionally based on violence, because if your way of life requires the importation of resources, trade will never be sufficiently reliable: if people in the next watershed over won't trade you for some necessary resource, you will take it, because you need it. So, to bring this to the present, we could all become enlightened, and the US military would still have to be huge: how else will they get access to the oil they need to run the economy, oil that just happens to lie under someone else's land? The point is that no matter what we think of the irredeemability of this culture's mass psychology or system of rewards, this culture–civilization–is also irredeemable on a purely functional level.
— Aric McBay, Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet
Today you closed your eyes on violence, tomorrow, the violence will close your eyes on you.
— VicDo
We were vicious and violent but elegant and discreet. There was a dance to all of this, one that kept all things flowing in the right direction, a circle that ensured the smartest and brightest would stay on top, not the man with the most guns and the smallest dick.
— Karina Halle, Dirty Angels
I slowly, deliberately began to work the blade into his throat. He squirmed and kicked and fought agains tme, but in his current state, I was stronger. His will to live was pathetic, just like he was. Eventually he stopped kicking. I kept cutting. When I was finally done, I was covered in sweat and only a few drops of blood on my shoes and pants. They'd come out in a good wash.I put his head into the garbage and pulled the bag out, making a knot at the end. I hoped it wouldn't leak through. Then I looked around the office. It was a mess before I came in, piles of paper and empty beer bottles scattered around. The addition of his blood and a headless corpse was barely noticeable.
— Karina Halle, Dirty Angels
Not one person on earth is immune to crime and trauma.
— Shahla Khan, Friends With Benefits: Rethinking Friendship, Dating & Violence
I suspect that a greater and more insidious influence [than violence in movies] may lie in what they tell us about being in love, and how to conduct ourselves while in that condition.
— David Thomson, The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood
We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world—a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. . . . No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we’ll kill you.Well, shit on that dumbness. George W. Bush does not speak for me or my son or my mother or my friends or the people I respect in this world. We didn’t vote for these cheap, greedy little killers who speak for America today—and we will not vote for them again in 2002. Or 2004. Or ever.Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us—they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis.And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
Where choice is set between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence ... I prefer to use arms in defense of honor rather than remain the vile witness of dishonor...
— Mahatma Gandhi
The system wears a mask of civility, yet will quickly reveal its true nature in the form of magnificently-purposed violence when needed.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Deeply-rooted conditioning has perverted us. We ARE the culture of violence. We must look at ourselves.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
In other words, they appeal to the state for protection, but the state is precisely that from which they require protection. To be protected from violence by the nation-state is to be exposed to the violence wielded by the nation-state, so to rely on the nation-state for protection from violence is precisely to exchange one potential violence for another. There may, indeed, be few other choices.
— Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?
We are currently facing many hurdles, BUT will never lose the sight of infinite hope.
— Widad Akreyi
Violence can be a gift. Violence belongs to everyone.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Love surrounds, softens and tires violence and force.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
I’m going to eat your fucking eyeballs and wear your faces when I’m done with you!
— Jake Bible, One Foggy Night
To obtain and possess the kingdoms of the world, with their power and glory, by violent injustice is to worship Satan. To obtain and possess the kingdom, the power, and the glory by nonviolent justice is to worship God.
— John Dominic Crossan, The Greatest Prayer: A Revolutionary Manifesto and Hymn of Hope
As long as we do violence to other animals, we’ll keep on doing violence to ourselves.
— Paul Russell, The Coming Storm
Precarity designates that politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death.
— Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?
I argue that even as the war is framed in certain ways to control and heighten affect in relation to the differential grievability of lives, so war has come to frame ways of thinking multiculturalism and debates on sexual freedom, issues largely considered separate from "foreign affairs.
— Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?
We are currently facing countless hurdles and obstacles, BUT will never lose the sight of infinite hope.
— Widad Akreyi
Governments are committed to preserving the myth of their monopoly on violence. Violence belongs to everyone.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
TV is a pornographic cacophony of violence, death obsession, screams, gunfire and drama. You think it's fine because you are damaged.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Here's a rule of life: You don't get to pick what bad things happen to you
— Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence
Violent revolution fails because it is not revolutionary enough. It changes the rulers but not the rules, the ends but not the means. Most of the old androcratic values and delusional assumptions remain intact.
— Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination
[Merlin - on realizing the he'd killed a man with his m
— FayJay, The Student Prince
Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create.
— John Paul II
When you've committed yourself to violence it takes an almost inhuman effort to stop short. It's one of those things that once you've started need to be finished, rather like coitus, interrupting that's a sin, even the priests say so.
— Mark  Lawrence, King of Thorns
We have placed such idolatrous faith in our ability to protect ourselves that we call it more courageous to die killing than to die loving.
— Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
Critics of soccer contend that the game inherently culminates in death and destruction. They argue that the game gives life to tribal identities which should be disappearing in a world where a European Union and globalization are happily shredding such ancient sentiments. Another similar widely spread thesis that holds that the root cause of violence can be found in the pace of the game itself. Because goals come so irregularly, fans spend far too much time sublimating their emotions, anticipating but never releasing. When those emotions swell and become uncontainable, the fans erupt into dark, Dionysian fits of ecstatic violence.
— Franklin Foer, How Soccer Explains the World
I aint sure we've seen these people before. Their kind. I dont know what to do about em even. If you killed em all they'd have to build a annex on to hell.
— Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
Violence and resistance are the only answer. Empire has to feel pain or it will never stop devouring you. It is only when a gun is put in a person’s face that anything changes. All empires are hungry cannibals...
— Rawi Hage, Carnival
The rivers fight with each other with the only currency that they know water. We humans fight with the only currency that we know in this age violence.
— Amish Tripathi
Every time our government chooses to use military force to bring about change in the world, it once again teaches our children the myth of redemptive violence, the myth that violence can be an instrument for good.
— Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
It’s estimated that $55 million dollars is spent on aftercare in Kenya alone every year. This model is not practical or sustainable and does nothing to address the growing epidemic of sexual violence. It’s crucial to get the world community to recognize self-defense as a viable means to prevention and begin a dialogue about how every single young or old woman can learn these simple life-saving techniques.
— Lisa Cole
And what is it, according to Plato, that philosophy is supposed to do? Nothing less than to render violence to our sense of ourselves and our world, our sense of ourselves in the world. (p. 40)
— Rebecca Goldstein, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away
Studies conducted in a city in Zimbabwe found that half of reported rape cases involve girls less than 15 years of age and that girls are most vulnerable to sexual abuse by male relatives, neighbors and school teachers.
— Njovana Watts
They understood what had really held the market together before. Violence. After all, what good was a debt if the creditor couldn't compel it to be paid?
— Alex London, Guardian
We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots ad executions. We kill every time we close our eyes to poverty, suffering and shame.
— Eberhard Arnold, Salt and Light: Talks and Writings on the Sermon on the Mount
I know you didn’t see the violence and need for control in him in the beginning, but I’m sure it was there. Nothing you did turned him into such an abusive man. And you … well, you just didn’t see your own value before that. It’s an easy thing for a woman to overlook. We’re taught from the cradle that men rule.
— Susan Crandall, Whistling Past the Graveyard
Through our expectations, we violently expand and try to fill the world with our proofs of worth.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life