Benjamin Franklin Quotes

We can forgive you for killing our children, but we can never forgive you for making us kill your children.

It is not violence that best overcomes hate -- nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.

Too often, we think that, when we have a problem with our lives or our country, that the way to fix it is to take an eye for an eye. That doesn't help anything or anyone.

The potential beauty of human life is constantly made ugly by man's ever recurring song of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever rising tides of revenge. Man has never risen above the injunction of the lex talionis: "Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." In spite of the fact that the law of revenge solves no social problems, men continue to follow its disastrous leading. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path.

hate is a virus, revenge its only cure!

We can forgive [the Arabs] for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with [the Arabs] when they love their children more than they hate us...

The sun should not set upon our anger, neither should he rise upon our confidence. We should forgive freely, but forget rarely. I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself.

Gandhi was right: if we all live by 'an eye for an eye' the whole world will be blind. The only way out is forgiveness.

I once met a man who had forgiven an injury. I hope some day to meet the man who has forgiven an insult.

I think everyone makes a mistake at least once in their life. The important thing is what you learn from it. That's why I have problems with our Pashtunwali code. We are supposed to take revenge for wrongs done to us, but where does that end? If a man in one family is killed or hurt by another man, revenge must be exacted to restore nang (honor).

I don't think vengeance is much good.

Isn't it easier to forgive than to hate? Until we learn how to forgive, that sort of thing is going to keep on happening." He pointed at the tall pillars of smoke rising to the north. "Hate is a sterile thing, Belgarion.

We do not celebrate the death of our enemies.

I don't believe in being vengeful or trying to send a message to someone. You waste your energy that way.

Instead of a man of peace and love, I have become a man of violence and revenge.

There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a hatred of all injury.

I was filled with hate and anger. But during my trial, something decisive happened: Amnesty International adopted me as a prisoner of conscience, and it was an unbelievable feeling to know that there is someone fighting for you on the outside. Amnesty's 'soft' approach made me seriously consider alternatives to revenge.

The South is the home of 'an eye for an eye.' 'Turning the other cheek'? The South can't see that.

Forgiveness is better than revenge

What we need is anger management right now …. The reaction right now is just anger. We tried to get even. But we shouldn’t try to get even—we should try and reconcile.

The highest hallmark of a civilized society is not the rapidity by which it exacts vengeance, but its ability to hold victim and victimizer in its compassionate heart.

I'm a believer in forgiveness. I have worked with people who have been in gangs and now dedicate their lives to helping inner city kids. I've run offender services with teachings of responsibility, empathy and understanding of the victims at their heart. I've seen people change.

What is forgiveness? An emotion? A coping mechanism? An element of deepest faith? A way for the heart and soul to combat the type of hate, anger, rage and a thirst for revenge that could ultimately consume a person? All of those and more?

We must recognize that anger only agitates and incites. It cannot squelch or satisfy the hunger for justice.

I can never hold a grudge against anyone, even if I know that he has done something wrong to me.