Eduard Shevardnadze Quotes

Suddenly in a matter of months there were more than 100 thousand Boxers in the capital, from ordinary people to soldiers to princes and grandees … The capital would be plunged into unthinkable peril if I tried to use the army to crush them. I have to go along with them and salvage the situation somehow...

Any government is concerned whenever you have public demonstrations in large measure.

The commotions that have taken place in America, as far as they are yet known to me, offer nothing threatening. They are a proof that the people have liberty enough, and I could not wish them less than they have. If the happiness of the mass of the people can be secured at the expense of a little tempest now and then, or even of a little blood, it will be a precious purchase.

The fires of discord are busy in every city. Redress is sought in the street, in demonstrations, parades and protests which create tensions and threaten violence. We face, therefore, a moral crisis as a country and as a people.

This is a breath of fresh air for our region—solving a political problem without resorting to violence …

If it's to be a bloodbath, let it be now. Appeasement is not the answer.

The violent rioting that is sometimes now being called protesting - it makes the emotions so high that you almost cannot see the insults and injuries that are the people are suffering.

The longer it takes to respond to a major development or crisis, the higher the chance of violence being seen as the only answer.

The actions I took at a time of national crisis in 2003 were necessary to protect lives and property and restore law and order. Regrettably, lives were lost among both the government forces and armed protesters.

From the quarrels and seditions which are often stirred up in a commonwealth, it never results that the citizens dissolve it, as often happens in the case of other associations; but only that they change its form into some other

I wish that the television would show the long shot. They show you an angry mob violently protesting. But if you look at a long shot, you see that it is 10 idiots in a parking lot.

I make an earnest appeal to those who hold responsible positions both in this country and abroad to weigh their words very carefully before they utter them on this matter, bearing in mind the consequences that may flow from some rash or thoughtless phrase. By exercising caution and patience and self-restraint we may yet be able to save the peace of Europe.

A demonstration sometimes doesn’t stop with expressing opinion….it moves to incitement to violence and then to violence

My poor friends, you know as much about starting a riot as the Italians know about writing a symphony.

I am sick of answering questions about the fucking peace process.

We have to deal with it diplomatically if we can, militarily if we must.

Hundreds of policemen and detectives, swinging nightsticks, blackjacks, and bare fists, rushed into the crowd, hitting out at all with whom they came into contract, chasing many across the street and into adjacent thoroughfares and pushing hundreds off their feet. From all parts of the scene of battle came the screams of women and cries of men with bloody heads and faces.

You always have to decide whether an international problem is like a skinned knee or an abscessed tooth. If it’s a skinned knew with a scab and you start messing with the scab you can make it worse. But if you let it alone, it will heal itself. If it is an abscessed tooth, and you leave it alone, it will only fester more and become a bigger problem.

All at present is quiet in Paris. There are Socialist risings in many parts of the country, but all these will do the President [coup leader Louis Napoleon] good, and strengthen his hands, for even the people who have been treated with indignity will pardon him if their châteaux are saved from an infuriated and brutal peasantry.

Yesterday a crowd of women assembled on the public square and marching thence down Main, sacked several shoe, grocery and other stores. Their pretense was bread; but their motive really was license. Few of them have really felt want. The President went down amongst them and said a few words to them telling them that the course they were pursuing was the one most likely to bring scarcity of food on the city.... It was a real women’s riot, but as yet there is really little cause for one—there is scarcity, but little want.

… in a tense situation, if time could be given for everyone to discuss what was going on before they actually went to war, we might come to our senses. Most of us are taught as children to count to 30 before we open our mouths when we were angry, and that same lesson should apply to nations.

I cannot take the responsibility for the shedding a single drop of blood. I believe this bloodshed could have been avoided.

I am against revolutions. We have had negative experience with coups and rallies in the past. We remember the shooting at the White House in Moscow The new Russian protest is the most beautiful, most peaceful, most intelligent protest in the world—not a single broken window, not a single burned care or victim.

If you are not willing to spill blood between elections, you’ll spill it on Election Day, and it’ll be yours.

Rebellions broke out, from the full-scale political revolution of Dorr’s rebellion in Rhode Island to urban violence and protest, often by out of work whites taking out their anger on African Americans or Irish Americans. In response, leaders had to come to terms with the role of force in a democracy.