Quotes about violence

“My own kind,” she said. “Let me tell you about my own kind. There are two sides in this, but they aren’t inner planets and outer ones. Belters and everyone else. It’s not like that. It’s the people who want more violence and the ones who want less. And no matter what other variable you sample out of, you’ll find some of both.”

Action led to action, free of any moorings, and the way to be someone, the way to catch the attention of the young and recruit them to one's cause, was to be enraged. It seemed as if the only way this lure of violence could be avoided was by having no causes, by being magnificently isolated from all loyalties. But was that not an ethical lapse graver than rage itself?

Aah, violence is the only way I can make people pay attention to me.

“Be careful what you learn from me,” he said. “What is written with a sword cannot be erased.”

Enlightenment and peace can never be achieved by force.

Firearms were as likely to create as to solve difficulties.

Another war is always coming, Robert. They are never properly extinguished. What sparks war? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence, is the instrument of this dreadful will… The nation state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QES, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be.

[...] in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only "rights," the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.

“Desperate people do desperate things,” said Spencer-Talbot. “Perhaps if we all did more to make things less desperate, then perhaps there would be less violence.”

Change is a difficult, often violent process, both for individuals and for whole species. The more rapidly change, the uglier the conflict.

Every religion I’ve studied has laws or commandments against killing.

Historically, humanity has shown tremendous creativity in finding every possible loophole, rationalization, and justification to ignore these commandments.

The important thing to know about an assassination or an attempted assassination is not who fired the shot, but who paid for the bullet.