Benjamin Franklin Quotes

The one means that wins the easiest victory over reason is terror and force.

When imperialism feels weak, it resorts to brute force.

Physical violence is the basis of authority.

Violence can always destroy power; out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What never can grow out of it is power.

One man with a gun can control 100 without one.

Force is not a remedy.

All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.

Might was the measure of right.

The power that is supported by force alone will have cause often to tremble.

The power which establishes a state is violence; the power which maintains it is violence; the power which eventually overthrows it is violence.

The world is ruled by violence, or at least the imminent threat of violence. It always has been.

Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.

Aggression is simply another name for government.

Reason has never failed men. Only force and repression have made the wrecks in the world.

War is an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.

Force, no matter how concealed, begets resistance.

To correct senseless people, the sword has to be taken up.

War is about killing on both sides until one side says I will do what you want me to do.

A man with a club is a law-maker.

The art of power often involves brutality — and other offenses too.

The exercise of one coercion always makes another inevitable

In this world, all power rests upon force.

The violent have been victorious for most of history because they kindled the fear with which everyone is born.