Quotes & Sayings About Violence In The World
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Top Violence In The World Quotes

There are two possible responses to a world suddenly gripped by terror and contention. There is the Moseley way: get mad and get even. But as the course of King Philip's War proved, unbridled arrogance and fear only feed the flames of violence. Then there is the (Benjamin) Church way. Instead of killing him, try to bring him around to your way of thinking. First and foremost, treat him like a human being. For Church, success in war was about coercion rather than slaughter, and in this he anticipated the welcoming, transformative beast that eventually became, once the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were in place, the United States. — Nathaniel Philbrick

As much as they deny it, I think people want to be scared. It's a phenomenon, why people want to be scared when there is so much violence and craziness in the world. People still really enjoy being scared. It's a conundrum to me. It's hard to explain. It's an unconscious thing, really, why people like that so much. — Dylan McDermott

People stand themselves next to the righteous They believe the things they say are true They speak in terms of what divides us To justify the violence they do But it is one, it is one One world spinning 'round the sun Wherever it is you call home Whatever country you come from It is one — Jackson Browne

Male dominance in society always means that out of public sight, in the private, ahistorical world of men with women, men are sexually dominating women. — Andrea Dworkin

What unites us all as human beings is an urge for happiness, which at heart is a yearning for union, for overcoming our feelings of separateness. We want to feel our identity with something larger than our small selves. We long to be one with our own lives and with each other. If we look at the root of even the most terrible addictions, even the most appalling violence in this world, somewhere we will find this urge to unite, to be happy. In some form it is there, even in the most distorted and odious disguises. We can touch that. We can draw near and open up. — Sharon Salzberg

In war, it feels like everything you're doing is more important because you're in the proximity of violence and death, and that proximity changes your relationship to America because it changes the way you see the world. — Phil Klay

Our Arab mothers and sisters are suffering from injustices like domestic violence, sexual harassment, child marriages and honour killings, some are still fighting for their right to drive or travel without male custody therefore our powerful Arab media was not only expected to broadcast this particular one of a kind Women's march it should have held panels to dissect the issues being brought forth in order for the Arab world to better understand that gender equality is not an idea that one believes in, it is a planned movement that requires an enormous effort on the part of both men and women to reach. — Aysha Taryam

In the world of so-called villains, what we need is not another hero. What we need is to stop the influx of people who dress themselves as menaces and proceed to harm others. — Vironika Tugaleva

War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to "a war against" whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off. This is puerile, misleading, and degrading. In stories, it evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance. All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the "right" side and therefore will win. Right makes might. — Ursula K. Le Guin

For the first time, I realize that it's not just the king who appears inhuman.
I do too.
The ferocity of the scar that runs down my cheek, the tightness of my jaw, the look in my eye - I'm no natural thing. Murder and violence have made me this way. Loss and war have made me this way.
I look like a savage.
A savage queen. One who doesn't need a crown or even a weapon to appear powerful.
I see it now - this world's faith in me. It's not just that I am an anachronism; the harshness of my face speaks to these people who have only ever known war.
No wonder the West wants me gone.
A century has gone by, and yet even after all that time I am still something to fear. — Laura Thalassa

Certitude leads to violence. This is a proposition that has an easy application and a difficult one. The easy application is to ideoologues, dogmatists, and bullies
people who think that their rigtness justifies them in imposing on anyone who does not happen to suscribe to their particular ideology, dogma or notion of turf. If the conviction of rightness is powerful enough, resistance to it will be met, sooner or later by force. There are people like this in every sphere of life, and it is natural to feel that the world would be a better place without them! — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

In America, Rousseauism has turned Freud's conflict-based psychoanalysis into weepy hand-holding. Contemporary liberalism is untruthful about cosmic realities. Therapy, defining anger and hostility in merely personal terms, seeks to cure what was never a problem before Rousseau. Mediterranean, as well as African-American, culture has a lavish system of language and gesture to channel and express negative emotion. Rousseauists who take the Utopian view of personality are always distressed or depressed over world outbreaks of violence and anarchy. But because, as a Sadean, I believe history is in nature and of it, I tend to be far more cheerful and optimistic than my liberal friends. Despite crime's omnipresence, things work in society, because biology compels it. Order eventually restores itself, by psychic equilibrium. Films like Seven Samurai (1954) and Two Women (1961) accurately show the breakdown of social controls as a regression to animal-like squalor. — Camille Paglia

People in Japan and the Faeroe Islands kill dolphins and pilot whales by running steel rods into their spinal columns while they squeal in pain and terror and thrash in agony. (In Japan, it's illegal to kill cows and pigs as painfully and inhumanely as they kill dolphins.) The lack of compassion for dolphins and whales indicates that humans' "theory of mind" is incomplete. We have an empathy shortfall, a compassion deficit. And human-on-human violence, abuse, and ethnic and religious genocide are all too pervasive in our world. No elephant will ever pilot a jetliner. And no elephant will ever pilot a jetliner into the World Trade Center. We have the capacity for wider compassion, but we don't fully live up to ourselves. Why do human egos seem so threatened by the thought that other animals think and feel? Is it because acknowledging the mind of another makes it harder to abuse them? We seem so unfinished and so defensive. Maybe incompleteness is one of the things that "makes us human. — Carl Safina

When we catch sight of the soul, we can become healers in a wounded world-in the family, in the neighborhood, in the workplace, and in political life-as we are called back to our "hidden wholeness" amid the violence of the storm. — Parker J. Palmer

Everything in the world bears witness of the use or misuse of man's inner talking. Negative inner talking, particularly evil and envious inner talking, are the breeding ground of the future battlefields and penitentiaries of the world. Through habit man has developed the secret affection for these negative inner conversations. Through them he justifies failure, criticizes his neighbors, gloats over the distress of others, and in general pours out his venom on all. Such misuse of the Word perpetuates the violence of the world. — Neville Goddard

Radicals often suspect beauty of corruption. Uptight fuckers though they sometimes are, they're right in one thing: art alone cannot change the world. Pens can't take on swords, let alone Predator drones. But as disappointment and violence spread, the antidote is a generosity that the best art can still inspire.
Art is hope against cynicism, creation against entropy. To make art is an act of both love and defiance. Though I'm a cynic, I believe these things are all we have. — Molly Crabapple

So I feared not just the violence of this world but the rules designed to protect you from it, the rules that would have you contort your body to address the block, and contort again to be taken seriously by colleagues, and contort again so as not to give the police a reason. All my life I'd heard people tell their black boys and black girls to "be twice as good," which is to say "accept half as much." These words would be spoken with a veneer of religious nobility, as though they evidenced some unspoken quality, some undetected courage, when in fact all they evidenced was the gun to our head and the hand in our pocket. This is how we lose our softness. This is how they steal our right to smile. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

My attitude to peace is rather based on the Burmese definition of peace - it really means removing all the negative factors that destroy peace in this world. So peace does not mean just putting an end to violence or to war, but to all other factors that threaten peace, such as discrimination, such as inequality, poverty. — Aung San Suu Kyi

This need to be always in guard was an unmeasured expenditure of energy, the slow siphoning of essence. It contributed to the fast breakdown of our bodies. So I feared not just the violence of the world but the rules designed to protect you from it, the rules that would have you contort your body to address the block, and contort again to be taken seriously by colleagues, a contort again so as not to give the police a reason. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

In the Eroica and other pieces of his middle years, Beethoven hailed the enlightened leader, the benevolent despot, the military spirit. Now for him the military spirit is nothing but destruction. By the end of this section the bugles are raging, the drums roaring, the choir crying Dona pacem! in terror. Now we understand what Beethoven meant by "prayer for inner and outer peace." The inner peace is that of the spirit. The outer peace is in the world. The fear and trembling in the Missa solemnis is not the fear of losing salvation in eternity; it is the human, secular fear of violence and chaos. — Jan Swafford

With Russia about to hold the Winter Games in Sochi, the country is open to pressure. American and world leaders must speak out against Mr. Putin's attacks and the violence they foster. The Olympic Committee must demand the retraction of these laws under threat of boycott. — Harvey Fierstein

Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges. I am sorry. But that is how I see it. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

The founders of the United Nations sought to replace a world at war with a world of civilized order. They hoped that a world of relentless conflict would give way to a new era, one where freedom from violence prevailed ... But the awful truth is that the use of violence for political gain has become more, not less, widespread in the last decade. — Ronald Reagan

I've thought often about why - why?! - anyone, especially other women, would try to disrupt feminist work that combats violence. What in the world could be the point of that? The only reason I've come up with, and I think it makes sense, is fear of becoming that "impure" woman. — Jessica Valenti

...this, he thinks, is the true curve of the world - now I glimpse it: all things are blended under the surface like the mass of us were blended in the water, it's the separateness of skin and rock and mind that is the great illusion. We are not discrete; we are not solid. People and things and even cities are meant to flow together, they are meant to connect, and this is why we're always full of longing, the way I long for the girl, and the girl longs for truth, and the truth longs for volume, and volume longs for people to hear it, and people long for - what? - for everything, air, home, violence, chaos, beauty, hope, flight, sight, each other. Always, whether to stroke or maim, each other, above all. — Carolina De Robertis

He who trusts has never yet lost in the world. A suspicious man is lost to himself and the eworld ... Suspicion is of the brood of violence. Non-violence cannot but trust ... — Mahatma Gandhi

I think it was smart that you're wary of using the word "terrorism," and if you talk about the cycle of violence, or "an eye for an eye," you could be perpetuating the idea that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a balanced conflict, instead of a largely unarmed people against the fourth most powerful military in the world. — Rachel Corrie

Someone who accepts that in the world as currently divided war can become inevitable, and even just, might reply that the photographs supply no evidence, none at all, for renouncing war - except to those form whom the notions of valor and sacrifice have been emptied of meaning and credibility. The destructiveness of war - short of total destruction, which is not war but suicide - is not in itself an argument against waging war unless one thinks (as few people actually do think) that violence is always unjustifiable, that force is always and in all circumstances wrong - wrong because, as Simone Weil affirms in her sublime essay on war, "The Iliad, or The Poem of Force" (1940), violence turns anybody subjected to it into a thing. No, retort those who in a given situation see no alternative to armed struggle, violence can exalt someone subjected to it into a martyr or hero. — Susan Sontag

If more people were stoned there would be less violence in the world. — Tommy Chong

The movement that Jesus begins is constituted by people who believe that they have all the time in the world, made possible by God's patience, to challenge the world's impatient violence by cross and resurrection. — Stanley Hauerwas

We know that ISIL and other terrorist groups are actively encouraging people, around the world and in our country, to commit terrible acts of violence, oftentimes as lone-wolf actors. — Barack Obama

So I heard on the news that the Tard died and your house burnt down. I bet secretly you're relieved you don't have to live with him anymore in that dump."
The whole commotion in the hallway immediately stopped, as if her words had been spoken over the intercom. It became so quiet that you could hear Mina's and Nan's sharp intakes of breath. Mina wasn't prone to violence and was about to think of something mean to say back to Savannah, but she didn't have the chance to, because Nan Taylor, perky, happy-go-lucky Nan Taylor, pulled back her fist and punched Savannah in the face.
Savannah wasn't prepared, and fell to the floor. Nan stood over her shocked face and yelled, "No way was he handicapped, or different. He was the most special, coolest and smartest kid ever. And the world is a much sadder place because he's not here. And don't you ever, EVER, insult him again!" Nan shook with anger.
The hall was full of students and teachers, and one by one they started to clap. — Chanda Hahn

That both Muslim fundamentalists and the Christian right are today focusing their attempts to regain control in a rapidly changing world on frantic efforts to maintain control over women, particularly over women's sexuality. Moreover, given their mythologies about "holy wars," it is also understandable that they should use "divinely approved" violence to do so ... — Riane Eisler

In the United States the legacy of settler colonialism can be seen in the endless wars of aggression and occupations; the trillions spent on war machinery, military bases, and personnel instead of social services and quality public education; the gross profits of corporations, each of which has greater resources and funds than more than half the countries in the world yet pay minimal taxes and provide few jobs for US citizens; the repression of generation after generation of activists who seek to change the system; the incarceration of the poor, particularly descendants of enslaved Africans; the individualism, carefully inculcated, that on the one hand produces self-blame for personal failure and on the other exalts ruthless dog-eat-dog competition for possible success, even though it rarely results; and high rates of suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism, sexual violence against women and children, homelessness, dropping out of school, and gun violence. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Gosh, it's easy!' he marveled, open-mouthed. 'I never knew before how easy it is to kill anyone! Twenty years to grow 'em, and all it takes is one little push!'
He was suddenly drunk with some new kind of power, undiscovered until this minute. The power of life and death over his fellowmen! Everyone had it, everyone strong enough to raise a violent arm, but they were afraid to use it. Well, he wasn't! And here he'd been going around for weeks living from hand to mouth, without any money, without enough food, when everything he wanted lay within his reach all the while! He had been green all right, and no mistake about it!
Death had become familiar. At seven it had been the most mysterious thing in the world to him, by midnight it was already an old story. ("Dusk To Dawn") — Cornell Woolrich

There is no more reprehensible god playing than the use of children for sexual gratification, the exploitation of widows and their children by distant relatives after the death of a father, the misuse of police powers to extort false confessions and protect the perpetrators of sexual violence, or the serial enslavement of generation after generation to extract payments on unpayable debts. All of these and more are abuses of power that IJM targets in countries around the world where the public justice system does not work on behalf of the poor and powerless. — Andy Crouch

Our work in Britain suggests that radicalization is driven by an ideology which claims that Muslims around the world are being oppressed and - and this is the key bit of the argument - which then legitimizes violence in their supposed defense. — Pauline Neville-Jones

There is no city or country in the world where women and girls live free of the fear of violence. No leader can claim: 'this is not happening in my backyard.' — Michelle Bachelet

It was a cruel world though. More than half of all children died before they could reach maturity, thanks to chronic epidemics and malnutrition. People dropped like flies from polio and tuberculosis and smallpox and measles. There probably weren't many people who lived past forty. Women bore so many children, they became toothless old hags by the time they were in their thirties. People often had to resort to violence to survive. Tiny children were forced to do such heavy labor that their bones became deformed, and little girls were forced to become prostitutes on a daily basis. Little boys too, I suspect. Most people led minimal lives in worlds that had nothing to do with richness of perception or spirit. City streets were full of cripples and beggars and criminals. Only a small fraction of the population could gaze at the moon with deep feeling or enjoy a Shakespeare play or listen to the beautiful music of Dowland. — Haruki Murakami

What holds an Arab leader in power is a mixture of violence and prestige. Both President Assad and King Hussein were felt to have defended Arab interests against the world. That, in the end, is more important than what they wear on their head. — James Buchan

Who is the more righteous? The stoic farmer who dutifully tends his fields while the world burns? Or the man who brings merciless violence to the enemies of peace? Is the common criminal an equal villain to the agent who kills on behalf of a cause greater than himself? I've answered these questions and made peace with their consequences. As I mounted my horse alongside Vettias, my mentor in the dark arts, I would need to draw on the fortitude these answers provided more than ever. We — Christian Kachel

In the history of the world the prize has not gone to those species which specialized in methods of violence, or even in defensive armor. In fact, nature began with producing animals encased in hard shells for defense against the ill of life. But smaller animals, without external armor, warm-blooded, sensitive, alert, have cleared those monsters off the face of the earth. — Alfred North Whitehead

The sufferings of Christ on the cross are not just his sufferings; they are "the sufferings of the poor and weak, which Jesus shares in his own body and in his own soul, in solidarity with them" (Moltmann 1992, 130). And since God was in Christ, "through his passion Christ brings into the passion history of this world the eternal fellowship of God and divine justice and righteousness that creates life" (131). On the cross, Christ both "identifies God with the victims of violence" and identifies "the victims with God, so that they are put under God's protection and with him are given the rights of which they have been deprived — Miroslav Volf

If everyone is a product of this society, who will say the things that need to be said, and do the things that need to be done, without compromise? Truth will never start out popular in a world more concerned with marketability than righteousness. It will initially suffer ridicule and even violence- yet ultimately it is undeniable. All of humanity is living in a dream world, but suffering real consequences. — Lauryn Hill

Everyone in the world should sleep without fear at least for one night, sleep without fear. Everyone in the world should eat to their fill, at least for one day, eat to their fill. There should be one day when there is no violence, no one is injured, no one is harmed. All people young and old should serve the poor and needy, at least for one day serve selflessly. This is my dream ... this is my prayer. Love is the answer, love is the way. Love is the answer, love is the way. — Mata Amritanandamayi

And whatsoever is repressed has to be repressed again because victory is never complete. There is no way to destroy sex by force, by violence. There is no way to control and discipline it. The people who have tried to control and discipline it have made the world very pornographic. Your so-called saints have a very pornographic mind. If a window can be created and a hole can be made in their heads, you will be able to see just sex, pornography. it is bound to be so. It is natural. — Rajneesh

For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment that we can savor - and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible. — Steven Pinker

There is simply too much unnecessary suffering in our world. And we should see that as a national security risk, by the way. Given enough time, desperate people will tend to do desperate things. At a certain point you won't be able to build enough prisons or enough bombs to eradicate the effects of all that violence inside so many hearts. — Marianne Williamson

Every day in the news we're hearing how rampant violence is in our communities, both here in America and around the world. I believe that the establishement of a United States Department of Peace can greatly help alleviate the many problems that we hear about on a daily basis. Our children deserve so much better. It is our job right here and now to build a better world. By establishing a US Department of Peace we are doing just that. Please get involved ... It's up to us to be the change that we wish for and the time is now to co-create it. — Paula Abdul

All the great Shakespeare plays are about killing. 'Alas, poor Yorick,' that's about death. And in 'Romeo and Juliet' everyone up ends up dying. The greatest dramas in the world are all about sex, violence and death. — Ray Winstone

The most important part of vegetarianism is the real shift in consciousness that takes place. There is a true correlation between our food choices and violence in the world. The only person who would disagree with that is a meat-eater — Peter Burwash

And how will this come to pass?' He paused and lowered his voice. ' In the same way all change comes to pass, I fear, And I am sorry it is so. It will come to pass by violence and upheaval, by flame and by fury, for no change comes calmly over the world. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

In a world where change is inevitable and continuous, the need to achieve that change without violence is essential for survival. — Andrew Young

As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence - as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual. Do not resist the evil-doer and take no part in doing so, either in the violent deeds of the administration, in the law courts, the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, and no one in the world will be able to enslave you. — Mahatma Gandhi

We can bring peace in the world, not by eliminating violence in the world, but by finding the causes of violence and by preventing those from infecting the society. — Debasish Mridha

Our call is to trust that the foolishness of self-sacrificial love will overcome evil in the end. Our call is to manifest the beauty of a Savior who loves indiscriminately while revolting against all hatred and violence. This is the humble mustard seed revolution that will in the end transform the world. — Gregory A. Boyd

The wondrous theme of the Bible that frightens so many people is that the only visible sign of God in the world is the cross. Christ is not carried away from earth to heaven in glory, but He must go to the cross. And precisely there, where the cross stands, the resurrection is near; even there, where everyone begins to doubt God, where everyone despairs of God's power, there God is whole, there Christ is active and near. Where the power of darkness does violence to the light of God, there God triumphs and judges the darkness. Then — Michael Van Dyke

Now, for the moment, we are safe. The only kind of international violence that worries most people in the developed countries is terrorism: from imminent heart attack to a bad case of hangnail in fifteen years flat. We are very lucky people
but we need to use the time we have been granted wisely, because total war is only sleeping. All the major states are still organized for war, and all that is needed for the world to slide back into a nuclear confrontation is a twist of the kaleidoscope that shifts international relations into a new pattern of rival alliances. — Gwynne Dyer

Two thirds of the work in the world is done by women. Women own 1 percent of the assets. Young women are sold into prostitution, forced labour, premature marriage, forced to have children they don't want or they can't support. They're abused, raped, beaten up. Domestic violence is supposed to be a cultural problem. They are the first victims of war, fundamentalism, conflict, recession. And young women who have access to education and health care and have resources think that everything was done, they don't have to worry. — Isabel Allende

You never believed in the meaning of this world, and you therefore deduced the idea that everything was equivalent and that good and evil could be defined according to one's wishes. You supposed that in the absence of any human or divine code the only values were those of the animal world - in other words, violence and cunning. Hence you concluded that man was negligible and that his soul could be killed, that in the maddest of histories the only pursuit for the individual was the adventure of power and his own morality, the realism of conquests. — Albert Camus

The biggest problem of the world is not lack of education but brainwashing of innocent children by the religion institutes in the name of education. Brainwashing of innocent children no less a violence. — Amit Ray

Throughout the world we see human suffering, anger, revenge, addictions, violence in the street, and tremendous injustice. — Miguel Ruiz

When I'm talking about a developing world, I also look at clean-water access - women who are more vulnerable to sexual violence when they're fetching water. And talking about what we have going on here, with our carbon footprints and our emissions, is just as important to me as figuring out how to provide clean water to people who need it in regions around the world. — Sophia Bush

The problem is this: when we separate Jesus from his ideas for an alternative social structure, we inevitably succumb to the temptation to harness Jesus to our ideas - thus conferring upon our human political ideas an assumed divine endorsement. With little awareness of what we are doing, we find ourselves in collusion with the principalities and powers to keep the world in lockstep with the ancient choreography of violence, war, and death. We do this mostly unconsciously, but we do it. I've done it. And the result is that we reduce Jesus to being the Savior who guarantees our reservation in heaven while using him to endorse our own ideas about how to run the world. This feeds into a nationalized narrative of the gospel and leads to a state-owned Jesus. Thus, our understanding of Christ has mutated from Roman Jesus to Byzantine Jesus to German Jesus to American Jesus, etc. — Brian Zahnd

It is my belief that in our mad world where there is so much pain, rivalry, hatred, violence, inequality, and oppression, it is people who are weak, rejected, marginalized, counted as useless, who can become a source of life and of salvation for us as individuals as well as for our world. And it is my hope that each one of you may experience the incredible gift of the friendship of people who are poor and weak, that you too, may receive life from them. For they call us to love, to communion, to compassion and to community. — Jean Vanier

It is natural that people should differ most, and most violently, about the unknowable ... There is all the room in the world for divergence of opinion about something that, so far as we can realistically perceive, does not exist. — E. Haldeman-Julius

The censor pretends he is protecting tender hearts, shielding children from sex and violence, keeping the righteous in the right path, guarding against temptation, preserving virtue. How? by burning books, tearing out tongues, stretching necks, stoning women; through torture and imprisonment; by threats of violence against the victim's friends and family; by force-feeding his own people a philosophy not only false and wicked now but false and wicked the day it was first announced by some imaginary lord and used to purchase or preserve his privileges and hoodwink the world. — William H Gass

One thing that I noticed is having met some former Taliban is even they, as children, grew up being indoctrinated. They grew up in violence. They grew up in war. They were taught to hate. They were, they grew up in very ignorant cultures where they didn't learn about the outside world. — Greg Mortenson

a dream world, a world of magic and ritual, yet there are images there of the burning cars and radar systems, which remind you there is a price to be paid in order to gain this dream in the face of a world of violence. — Derek Jarman

Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil. Each believes that when he dies he is going to heaven. Each believes that if he could kill the other, his path to paradise in the next world would be even swifter. The delusional "next world" is welcome to both of them. This world would be a much better place without either of them. — Richard Dawkins

It was not the violence of our enemies [in World War I] that would undo us, I thought, but our own spiritual weakness, the shallowness of our convictions. — Learned Hand

The real problem here is a massive elephant in the room: our own culture. Our social values, our media - so influential on impressionable young girls - that have been allowed, for millenia, to send out this powerful, alienating message about girls and sport: that sport is unfeminine, that sport makes you sweaty and muscular, that sport is swearing and violence, that sport is ugliness in a world where women's sole priority, value and focus should be beauty and becoming an object of desire. — Anna Kessel

The story is not a pretty one. there is violence in it. And cruelty. But stories that are not pretty have a certain value, too, I suppose. Everything, as you well know (having lived in this world long enough to have figured out a thing or two for yourself), cannont always be sweetness and light. — Kate DiCamillo

While it is often said that necessity is the father of invention, it is indeed an irony that some of mankind's greatest technological advancements were born out of the human race's propensity for power, greed, violence and destruction. October 24, 1945 saw the birth of a global power called the United Nations in a bid to prevent yet another devastating world war. The world could ill afford a third global conflict which could wipe out the human race forever. — Yusuf R. Shaik

I think the violence in the world right now is being reflected inside people. And I also believe the violence inside people is being reflected in the world. — Marianne Williamson

There is in fact no good reason al-Ghazali and his ilk should have the last word in defining Islam. Muslims around the world cannot go on claiming that "true" Islam has somehow been "hijacked" by a group of extremists. Instead they must acknowledge that inducements to violence lie at the root of their own most sacred texts, and take responsibility for actively redefining their faith. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

In a world where no one listens, where no one seems to care, where hatred is greater than love, where hearts are hardened by vengeance and pride, where violence is preferable to peace, what else is there for him to do but heal the wounded, and bury the dead, in a war that could go on forever? — Ben Okri

If you or I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world. — Deepak Chopra

I was born the year the Troubles began, in 1968. That world of violence was all I knew - people murdered, maimed, kneecapped, bombed. I don't remember a time without a major atrocity of some kind every week. — Adrian McKinty

The world has always needed human beings who refuse to believe that history is nothing but a dull, monstrous selfrepetition, a selfperpetuating, meaningless game, only varied in outer garb, who cannot be converted from their conviction that history signifies progress in morality, that our race is ascending on an invisible ladder from an animal nature towards divinity, from brutal violence to the wisely ordering intellect, and that the ultimate stage of complete understanding is already close at hand, indeed has almost been attained. — Stefan Zweig

Despite the conviction that our era is revolutionary, we must also recognize that under the appearance of movement and development we are in fact living in complete stasis. There is undoubtedly much chaos and violence, there is technical progress, there are social and political experiments. But in reality our world is static, because its structures remain absolutely fixed and its development unfolds along a completely expected rather than revolutionary path. — Jacques Ellul

Science proclaims that Planet Earth and its inhabitants are a meaningless speck in the grand scheme. A cosmic accident." He paused. "Even the technology that promises to unite us, divides us. Each of us is now electronically connected to the globe, and yet we feel utterly alone. We are bombarded with violence, division, fracture, and betrayal. Skepticism has become a virtue. Cynicism and demand for proof has become enlightened thought. Is it any wonder that humans now feel more depressed and defeated than they have at any point in human history? Does science hold anything sacred? Science looks for answers by probing our unborn fetuses. Science even presumes to rearrange our own DNA. It shatters God's world into smaller and smaller pieces in quest of meaning ... and all it finds is more questions. — Anonymous

Nelson Mandela went to jail believing in violence, and 27 years later he and his colleagues had slowly and carefully honed the skills, the incredible skills, that they needed to turn one of the most vicious governments the world has known into a democracy. And they did it in a total devotion to non-violence. — Scilla Elworthy

Don't forget the real business of war is buying and selling. The murdering and violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a stimolous to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while they're still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets. — Thomas Pynchon

If you compare the violence in 'Happy Valley' to the violence in something like 'Game of Thrones,' it's nothing. But it is shocking because it's so real and grounded. The characters could live next door to you - they're not in a remote fantasy world. — James Norton

I did it for political, moral reasons, thinking that I was making this great sacrifice, but it was absolutely necessary; I was not going to contribute to the violence in the world anymore. — Alicia Silverstone

In their overestimation of the role of civilization, the humanists misunderstand the primary forces of the world of primitive human drives with their untamable violence. With their optimistic view of the role of culture, they (the humanists) trivialize the terrifying, hardly solvable problems of mass hatred and of the great passionate psychoses of the human race. — Stefan Zweig

Ah, God, Lys he breathed, and she opened her eyes to look up at him. She was the love of his heart, his true partner in both work and life, and the idea of losing her to the violence of the world they lived in scared the living shit out of him.
But her smile lit her eyes, her face, and he pushed the darkness away and let himself grin back at her like the damn fool that he was. This moment-now-was perfect, and he wasn't going to let his fears interfere. — Suzanne Brockmann

History lessons remind us that the states in which we live, their institutions, even their laws, have come to us through conflict, often of the most bloodthirsty sort. Our daily diet of news brings us reports of the shedding of blood, often in regions quite close to our homelands, in circumstances that deny our conception of cultural normality altogether. We succeed, all the same, in consigning the lessons both of history and of reportage to a special and separate category of "otherness" which invalidate our expectations of how our own world will be tomorrow and the day after not at all. Our institutions and our laws, we tell ourselves, have set the human potentiality for violence about with such restraints that violence in everyday life will be punished as criminal by our laws, while its use by our institutions of state will take the particular form of "civilised warfare. — Steven Pinker

He wished he understood where they come from: all the terrorists, religious revolutionists
and hate-criminals. Did terrorizing entire communities of people help them sleep sound at
night? Did it make them happy? Or are they just in for the attention? Have they nothing to
lose? Or are they simply bored and spit balling issues that have always been there? Can all
global acts of violence and terror be summed up, as just a whole other level of a mixture of
bad parenting, psychological disorders and unattended anger management issues? Can they
be treated, medically or spiritually? Are we waiting for the birth of another great visionary
like Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ or Prophet Muhammad, who will 'make the world a better
place'? Or are we just too soaked in the idea that religion is a dying concept and spirituality
is overrated? Is it too late? Are we too far behind? He wanted to know. — Thisuri Wanniarachchi

One of the main purveyors of violence in this world has been this country. — Danny Glover

One reason for the spiritual sickness of our society is that so many do not know or care about what is morally right and wrong. So many things are justified on the basis of expediency and the acquiring of money and goods. In recent times, those few individuals and institutions that have been courageous enough to stand up and speak out against adultery, dishonesty, violence, and other forms of evil are often held up to ridicule. Many things are just plain and simply wrong, whether they are illegal or not. Those who persist in following after the evil things of the world cannot know 'the peace of God, which passeth all understanding. — James E. Faust

I also believe that US backing for Israeli policies of expansion of the Israeli state and oppression of the Palestinian people is the major cause of bitter division and violence in the world. — Clare Short

You're doing it again and it really annoys me. In fact, I will have to kill you now because I have a lot of untamed energy because of the Sex God. I'm going to have to give you a bit of a duffing up." And I shoved her.
She said, "Don't be silly and childish."
I said, "I'm not."
She got up and started making her hair have more bouncability with the air brush thing again. I waited until she had got it just right (in her opinion); then I hit her over the head with a pillow. She started to say, "Look, this is not funn-" but before she could finish I hit her over the head again with the pillow. And every time she tried to talk I did it again. She got all red-faced, which in Jas's case is very red indeed. It made me feel much better. Violence may be the answer to the world's problems. I may write to the Dalai Lama and suggest he tries my new approach. — Louise Rennison

War is a great destroyer. And human history has arrived at a pivotal moment. We can choose a path built on cooperation, where our caring and sharing side uplifts us, or we can continue to embrace a worldview where domination using violence imprisons us in cycles of killing and destruction. I'm a biologist, and war is not genetically fixed. War is a cultural invention. It's time to end this abomination, and this World Beyond War movement is uniquely focused on unifying the human community to create one of the biggest revolutions in history. I'm in. Join us! — Judith Hand

A universal renunciation of violence requires the commitment of the whole of society. These are not matters of government but matters of State; not only matters for the authoirities, but for society in its entirety, including civilian, military, and religious bodies. The mobilization which is urgently needed to effect the transition within two or three years from a culture of war to a culture of peace demands co-operation from everyone. In order to change, the world needs everyone. — Federico Mayor Zaragoza

Look carefully at any region of the world where you find intractable enmity and violence between rival groups today. I cannot guarantee that you'll find religions as the dominant labels for in-groups and out-groups. But it's a good bet. — Richard Dawkins

Here's the core problem we have with the Sermon on the Mount: it isn't that Jesus' teachings are absurd; it's that we don't see the world that Jesus sees. We see a world of injustice and anger and hatred and violence--a world where everything good is in short supply and life itself is fragile. But Jesus saw a world in which his father was in control, in which justice was guaranteed, in which goodness was breaking forth, and in which life itself is without end. And if you see that world through the lens of the gospel, then what Jesus tells us to do and how he informs us to live makes perfect sense. — Skye Jethani

The policies the US government is following are dangerous for its citizens. It's true that you can bomb or buy out anybody that you want to, but you can't control the rage that's building in the world. You just can't. And that rage will express itself in some way or the other. Condemning violence when a section of your economy is based on selling weapons and making bombs and piling up chemical and biological weapons? When the soul of your culture worships violence? On what grounds are you going to condemn terrorism, unless you change your attitude toward violence? — Arundhati Roy