Jill Abramson Quotes

See, people with power understand exactly one thing: 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.

Beware of those who would use violence, too often it is violence they want and neither truth nor freedom.

Power is violence, its promise, its deed. Power cares nothing for reason, nothing for justice, nothing for compassion. It is, in fact, the singular abnegation of these things - once the cloak of deceits is stripped away, this one truth is revealed.

This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power.

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

Power corrupts; but absolute power is really neat.

Individuals and classes which have lost the force to maintain themselves in power make themselves more and more hated because of their outbursts of random violence. The strong man strikes only when it is absolutely necessary, and then nothing stops him. Trajan was strong, not violent: Caligula was violent, not strong.

One need only watch totalitarians at work to see that once men gain power over other men’s minds, that power is never used sparingly and wisely, but lavishly and brutally and with unspeakable results.

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

I have come to think of violence as a self-perpetuating mania of the power of the aggressive over those less strong.

One who uses coercion is guilty of deliberate violence. Coercion is inhuman.

Physical violence is the basis of authority.

I not only weaken the opposition, I’m going to make them dead ... and if anyone is strong enough to try to hold a demonstration, I will beat all those dogs and put them in a cage.

Unjust use of force, strength, and brutality. Those are the forces that make me feel vulnerable.

Fighting means you could lose. Bullying means you can't. A bully wants to beat somebody; he doesn't want to fight somebody.

There are certain wicked people in the world that you can't deal with except by force.

You can't trust anybody with power.

A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.

Force always attracts men of low morality.

There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power.

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.

Fear generates anger, and fear generates violence, and those were part of what built the Saudi state.