Violence

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.

—Jack Handey

A man who lives with nature is used to violence and is companionable with death. There is more violence in an English hedgerow than in the meanest streets of a great city.

—P.D. James

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 Rosenberg

The most violent element in society is ignorance.

—Emma Goldman

In our struggle to restrain the violence and contain the damage, we tend to forget that the human capacity for aggression is more than a monstrous defect, that it is also a crucial survival tool.

—Katherine Dunn

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

—Mahatma Gandhi

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

—John Lennon

You have to want to lose your appetite for violence or aggression. And to do that, you have to lose your self-righteousness.

—Pema Chödrön

Even fighting in self-defense is wrong, though it is higher than fighting in aggression. There is no “righteous” indignation, because indignation comes from not recognizing sameness in all things.

—Vivekananda

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

—George Orwell

The warrior energy of men now has to be used paradoxically to destroy the warrior psyche and the politics of warfare. It will require more courage and aggression than we’ve ever seen on the battlefield.

—Sam Keen

War is murder writ large.

—Carl Sagan in Cosmos

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

—Isaac Asimov

Football is a mistake. It combines the two worst elements of American life. Violence and committee meetings.

—George Will