Violence

Violence is any act of aggression and/or abuse that causes or intends to cause injury to persons, animals, or property. It may include random violence, (such as unpremeditated or small-scale violence) and coordinated violence (such as actions carried out by sanctioned or unsanctioned violent groups -- including war, revolution, or terrorism).

Sourced

Arranged alphabetically by author.

• Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
  • Isaac Asimov, Foundation, Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1942, (This appears three times in "Bridle and Saddle" which is titled "The Mayors" in the 1951 novelization). It plays on the famous quote by Samuel Johnson (1775): "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

• No matter what someone else has done, it still matters how we treat people. It matters to our humanity that we treat offenders according to standards that we recognize as just. Justice is not revenge — it's deciding for a solution that is oriented towards peace, peace being the harder but more human way of reacting to injury. That is the very basis of the idea of rights.
  • Judith Butler, The Believer, Interview - Issue 2

• Peace is a resistance to the terrible satisfactions of war.
  • Judith Butler, The Believer, Interview - Issue 2

• "I wish your revolt well, my friend," said Bakhtin, "but beware that you don't end up merely repeating the same old story. The state abhors only one thing in the end, and that's the sound of laughter. Violence it can understand."
  • Terry Eagleton, Saints and Scholars, Chapter 4 (1987)
  • Excerpted from a fictional conversation between Mikhail Bakhtin and James Connolly

• Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how I hate them! War seems to me a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business.
  • Albert Einstein, "Mein Weltbild" (1931) [English: My World-view] translated as the title essay "The World As I See It" in The World As I See It (1949) http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/worldsee2.html, New York: Philosophical Library, ISBN 0806527900

• Violence is man re-creating himself.
  • Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, Chapter 1 (1961)

• Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst.
  • Robert A. Heinlein, in Starship Troopers (1959)

• The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.
  • Dr. Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, "Cowley" (1781)

• The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
  • Martin Luther King Jr., "Where do we go from here: Chaos or community?" (1967)

• ... violence is the whole essence of authoritarianism, just as the repudiation of violence is the whole essence of anarchism.
  • Errico Malatesta, "Anarchism, Authoritarian Socialism and Communism" in What Is Anarchism?: An Introduction by Donald Rooum, ed. (London: Freedom Press, 1992, 1995) p. 59.

• Violence, contrary to popular belief, is not part of the anarchist philosophy. It has repeatedly been pointed out by anarchist thinkers that the revolution can neither be won, nor the anarchist society established and maintained, by armed violence. Recourse to violence then is an indication of weakness, not of strength, and the revolution with the greatest possibilities of a successful outcome will undoubtedly be the one in which there is no violence, or in which violence is reduced to a minimum, for such a revolution would indicate the near unanimity of the population in the objectives of the revolution. ... Violence as a means breeds violence; the cult of personalities as a means breeds dictators--big and small--and servile masses; government--even with the collaboration of socialists and anarchists--breeds more government. Surely then, freedom as a means breeds more freedom, possibly even the Free Society! To Those who say this condemns one to political sterility and the Ivory Tower our reply is that 'realism' and their 'circumstantialism' invariably lead to disaster. We believe there is something more real, more positive and more revolutionary to resisting war than in participation in it; that it is more civilised and more revolutionary to defend the right of a fascist to live than to support the Tribunals which have the legal power to shoot him; that it is more realistic to talk to the people from the gutter than from government benches; that in the long run it is more rewarding to influence minds by discussion than to mould them by coercion.
  • Vernon Richards, "Anarchism and violence" in What Is Anarchism?: An Introduction by Donald Rooum, ed. (London: Freedom Press, 1992, 1995) pp. 50-51.

• Violence stinks no matter which side of it you're on. But now and then there's nothing left to do but hit the other person over the head with a frying pan.
  • Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues (1976)

• Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings.
  • George F. Will, International Herald Tribune (7 May 1990)

• "Victory won by violence is tantamount to defeat, for it is momentary."
  • Mahatma Gandhi

• "Violent delights have violent ends."
  • William Shakespeare