# Quote — Judith Butler, The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind

> Violence as a tool is already operating in the world before anyone takes it up: that fact alone neither justifies nor discounts the use of the tool. What seems most important, however, is that the tool is already part of a practice, presupposing a world conducive to its use; that the use of the tool builds or rebuilds a specific kind of world, activating a sedimented legacy of use. When any of us commit acts of violence, we are, in and through those acts, building a more violent world.

- Author: [Judith Butler](https://www.leafyquotes.com/judith-butler.md)
- Book: [The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind](https://www.leafyquotes.com/judith-butler/the-force-of-nonviolence-an-ethico-political-bind.md)
- Page: 19
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Judith_Butler#Introduction) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/judith-butler/the-force-of-nonviolence-an-ethico-political-bind/violence-as-a-tool

## More from this book

> We are not yet speaking about equality if we have not yet spoken about equal grievability, or the equal attribution of grievability. Grievability is a defining feature of equality. Those whose grievability is not assumed are those who suffer inequality—unequal value.

p. 108 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/judith-butler/the-force-of-nonviolence-an-ethico-political-bind/we-are-not.md)

> Nonviolence does not necessarily emerge from a pacific or calm part of the soul. Very often it is an expression of rage, indignation, and aggression.

p. 21 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/judith-butler/the-force-of-nonviolence-an-ethico-political-bind/nonviolence-does-not.md)

> The ethical stand of nonviolence has to be linked to a commitment to radical equality. And more specifically, the practice of nonviolence requires an opposition to biopolitical forms of racism and war logics that regularly distinguish lives worth safeguarding from those that are not—populations conceived as collateral damage, or as obstructions to policy and military aims.

p. 62 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/judith-butler/the-force-of-nonviolence-an-ethico-political-bind/the-ethical-stand.md)