State Brutality Quotes & Sayings

As had been the case in the founding of Citizens Alert in 1965, the point that most linked gay politics to the struggles of other marginalized communities was that of state violence - in particular, police brutality. — Christina B. Hanhardt

I'm done with trying to be perfect. A perfect body belongs to somebody else - and it's not me. — Geri Halliwell

A small-state world would not only solve the problems of social brutality and war; it would solve the problems of oppression and tyranny. It would solve all problems arising from power. — Leopold Kohr

The choice is between acting with energy or losing by default. — George C. Marshall

Never trust an armed police officer. — Steven Magee

Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter - with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It's a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me. I have issued the command - and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad - that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness - for the present only in the East - with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians? — Adolf Hitler

Meditation is not the pursuit of pleasure and the search for happiness. Meditation, on the contrary, is a state of mind in which there is no concept or formula, and therefore total freedom. It is only to such a mind that this bliss comes unsought and uninvited. Once it is there, though you may live in the world with all its noise, pleasure and brutality, they will not touch that mind. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

They were complicated years. The order of the world in which we had grown up was dissolving. The old skills resulting from long study and knowledge of the correct political line suddenly seemed senseless. Anarchist, Marxist, Gramscian, Communist, Leninist, Trotskyite, Maoist, worker were quickly becoming obsolete labels or, worse, a mark of brutality. The exploitation of man by man and the logic of maximum profit, which before had been considered an abomination, had returned to become the linchpins of freedom and democracy everywhere. Meanwhile, by means legal and illegal, all the accounts that remained open in the state and in the revolutionary organizations were being closed with a heavy hand. One might easily end up murdered or in jail, and among the common people a stampede had begun. — Elena Ferrante

We Americans" is a fabrication of the rulers. There are the tens and tens and tens of millions of workers and farmers in the United States; we are part of a "we" with our class brothers and sisters throughout the world. There is a "they": the tiny handful of propertied families in whose interests the imperialist United States government acts at home and abroad. It is "they," their state, that "we" must overthrow in order to end imperialism's inexorable advance toward deepening crisis, violence, brutality, and devastation - toward fascism and world war. — Jack Barnes

Ain't no decent woman ever had that many husbands to die from natural causes. — K. Martin Beckner

The police have lost sight of the fact that they are public servants. — Steven Magee

I tried to understand you... I tried with the best codes to upgrade myself... but I more likely become a victim on myself. — Deyth Banger

Like most Americans I am no lover of cops, and the consistent investigation of city forces for bribery, brutality, and a long and picturesque list of malfeasances is not designed to reassure me. However, my hostility does not extend to the state troopers now maintained in most parts of the country. By the simple expedient of recruiting intelligent and educated men, paying them adequately, and setting them beyond political coercion, many states have succeeded in creating elite corps of men, secure in their dignity and proud of their service. Eventually our cities may find it necessary to reorganize their police on the pattern of the state police. But this will never happen while political organizations retain the slightest power to reward or to punish. — John Steinbeck

There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned or oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won. — Will Durant

Life is nothing but a sea shell in the ocean of love. — Debasish Mridha

While police officers who blatantly shaft the common people believe that they are God, they are the Devil to those that they wrong. — Steven Magee

Speaking for myself, I am no flag waver, no patriot, and I am fully aware that venality, brutality, and hypocrisy are imprinted on the leaden soul of every state. But when a country ceases to be merely a country and becomes an empire, then the scale of operations changes dramatically. So may I clarify that tonight I speak as a subject of the American empire? I speak as a slave who presumes to criticize her king. — Arundhati Roy

It is eminently possible to have a market-based economy that requires no such brutality and demands no such ideological purity. A free market in consumer products can coexist with free public health care, with public schools, with a large segment of the economy
like a national oil company
held in state hands. It's equally possible to require corporations to pay decent wages, to respect the right of workers to form unions, and for governments to tax and redistribute wealth so that the sharp inequalities that mark the corporatist state are reduced. Markets need not be fundamentalist. — Naomi Klein

All I knew now was that nothing lasted forever, not even a friendship, and that being "different" felt the same as being alone. — Lauren Myracle

There is no shortage of despicable law enforcement departments in the USA. — Steven Magee

We do terrible things to the ones we love. We cheat and lie and betray them, for thirty pieces of silver or our own selfish hearts. The only way love endures is because of one simple gift. Forgiveness. — Vanessa Woods

Fill your heart with kindness and love; you will never be poor again. — Debasish Mridha

As human beings living in this monstrously ugly world, let us ask ourselves, can this society, based on competition, brutality and fear, come to an end? Not as an intellectual conception, not as a hope, but as an actual fact, so that the mind is made fresh, new and innocent and can bring about a different world altogether? It can only happen, I think, if each one of us recognises the central fact that we, as individuals, as human beings, in whatever part of the world we happen to live or whatever culture we happen to belong to, are totally responsible for the whole state of the world. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

We wanted to describe society from our Left point of view. Per had written political books, but they'd only sold 300 copies. We realised that people read crime and through the stories we could show the reader that under the official image of welfare-state Sweden there was another layer of poverty, criminality and brutality. — Maj Sjowall

It is the common peoples duty to police the police. — Steven Magee

Should assaulting an officer of the state be a capital offense, rendered without trial, with the officer as judge and executioner? Is that what we wish civilization to be? — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Tapas is a fancy way of saying a morsel of food for a fuckload of money, but I didn't mind, I was feeling flush. — Peter Heller

Morning and night strangers bodies represent possible landscapes, possible escapes, possible novelty that looks new and feels new and smells new, landscapes which have no knowledge of the state of my insides or my folds of loneliness of nameless reactions to utter doom, strangers are easy to look at, easy to kiss, loved ones are museums of brutality. — Abeer Abdullah