W. H. Auden Quotes

The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

Some day we may be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our children, but we will never forgive them for making us kill some of theirs.

Violence is a great breeder of violence.

Revenge does not long remain unrevenged.

An eye for any eye makes the whole world blind.

Those who are beaten become beaters.

Violence does not resolve. It always leads to more violence.

You must understand that if you indulge in revenge exclusively, it will come back to you, because those who are revenged upon - even if the whole world believes they deserve it - will in some way express exactly what was expressed towards them. Why perpetuate suffering, no matter how justified it may seem to be, if it only perpetuates suffering in the future for future generations?

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.

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

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.

Warmaking doesn't stop warmaking. If it did, our problems would have stopped millennia ago.

The problem with revenge is that it never evens the score. It ties both the injured and the injurer to an escalator of pain. Both are stuck on the escalator as long as parity is demanded, and the escalator never stops.

Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.

The natural reaction people have when violence has been used against them is to react violently.

Answer a violent action with another action still more violent.

Those to whom evil is done do evil in return.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.

Blood neither frays or is eaten by worms: Generation upon generation will seek revenge.

I always blamed Israel for my father's death, because that's what I was taught. I never looked at why Israel killed my father. They killed my father because the Fedayeen were killing Israelis. They killed my father because when I was growing up, we had to recite poetry pledging jihad against Israel. We would have tears in our eyes, pledging that we wanted to die. I speak to people who think there was no terrorism against Israel before the '67 war. How can they deny it? My father died in it.

I've been beaten. I know what that's like. They say, 'Who has been a nail can learn to be a hammer.' So I know what it is to beat people.

I think, personally, nothing comes from violence other than more violence.

Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and predator alike, by all who learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself - a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred.