Quotes about Violence

The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence.

If the Tiber rises too high, or the Nile too low, the remedy is always feeding Christians to the lions.

You can't drive a bayonet through a chap's body in cold blood, he remembered him saying. And you can't go in for an exam. without drinking, said Edward.

Mr Lorry asks the witness questions: Ever been kicked? Might have been. Frequently? No. Ever kicked down stairs? Decidedly not; once received a kick at the top of a staircase, and fell down stairs of his own accord.

Thus violent deeds live after men upon the earth, and traces of war and bloodshed will survive in mournful shapes long after those who worked the desolation are but atoms of earth themselves.

Ah!" returned the man, with a relish; "he'll be drawn on a hurdle to be half hanged, and then he'll be taken down and sliced before his own face, and then his inside will be taken out and burnt while he looks on, and then his head will be chopped off, and he'll be cut into quarters. That's the sentence.

In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out

Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards.

But it's wonderful,' said Mr. Giles, when he had explained, 'what a man will do, when his blood is up. I should have committed murder—I know I should—if we'd caught one of them rascals.

Once out of this court, I'll smash that face of yourn!

Unembellished by any violence of gesticulation, this might have seemed no very high compliment to the lady's charms; but, as Mr. Bumble accompanied the threat with many warlike gestures, she was much touched with this proof of his devotion, and protested, with great admiration, that he was indeed a dove.

War presents itself as necessary for self-protection, when in fact it is necessary for self-identification.