Quotes about violence

The world preferred to forget that men who knew how to heal also knew how to kill.

I guess I was just hoping there might be a way to do things other than the way that ends up with everyone getting killed.

He was not for that moment a human being, but a frenzied creature possessed by rage, turned into an animal. All that could be seen in him was the urge to hurt, and it was, as it will always be, the most dreadful sight in the world.

“Are we innately aggressive?” asked Aquinas. “Was the nuclear predicament symptomatic of a more profound depravity? Nobody knows. But if this is so—and I suspect that it is—then the responsibility for what we are pleased to call our inhumanity still rests squarely in our blood-soaked hands. The killer-ape hypothesis does not specify a fate—it lays out an agenda. Beware, the fable warns. Caution. Trouble ahead. Genocidal weapons in the hands of creatures who are bored by peace.”

“I think I’m going to throw up,” said Brat.

“But the fable went unheeded. And the weapons, unchecked. And then, one cold Christmas season, death came to an admirable species—a species that wrote symphonies and sired Leonardo da Vinci and would have gone to the stars. It did not have to be this way. Three virtues only were needed—creative diplomacy, technical ingenuity, and moral outrage. But the greatest of these is moral outrage.”

A second slash ended the monster’s misery. So, he thought, this is how my Earthling ancestors ran their affairs. This is how lands were won, empires expanded, insurrections resisted, prisoners taken, slaves kept, heretics converted, captives made loquacious. For the first time in his life, Minnix felt himself a part of history.

History, he decided, was a terrible idea.

The gun is a consequence of our minds. If we were in love with peace, and had no will to destroy each other, there would be no gun.

Historically, the developement of machines had amplified man's ability to destroy.

Perhaps justified violence is better than peace at any price.

Never be glad that another man has died. Not ever. [...] It never ends. Never ... ever ... be glad to kill.

As men we are all cursed by the violence in our natures. Men like the Moidart — aye, and Winterbourne — revel in that nature. We do not. We struggle to overcome it.

"I don't understand how any man would wish to pursue such a away of life.Causing pain, being hurt, risking death — and for what? so that a crowd of fat-bellied merchants can see blood flow."

Man is motion toward the world and toward his like. A movement of aggression, which leads to enslavement or to conquest; a movement of love, a gift of self, the ultimate stage of what by common accord is called ethical orientation. Every consciousness seems to have the capacity to demonstrate these two components, simultaneously or alternatively. The person I love will strengthen me by endorsing my assumption of my manhood, while the need to earn the admiration or the love of others will erect a value-making superstructure on my whole vision of the world.