Ayn Rand Quotes

If there are sound reasons or bases for the points you demand, then there is no need for violence. On the other hand, when there is no sound reason that concessions should be made to you but mainly your own desire, then reason cannot work and you have to rely on force. Thus using force is not a sign of strength but rather a sign of weakness.

The U.S. generally wants to solve problems with coercion. That's kind of the default way the American state wants to try to solve problems. So there are many parallels between that: mass incarceration, mass surveillance, and militarism.

Peacemakers not only live, they rule life.

Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.

Peace is never a perfect achievement.

Peacemaking calls for courage, much more so than warfare.

There is no time left for anything but to make peace work a dimension of our every waking activity.

Judith took a deep breath. "Aye, you captured Iain's wife," she said again. "But he married your daughter.

A general must be shot or befriended - but never hurt.

Convince an enemy, convince him that he's wrong. To win a bloodless battle, the victory is long. A simple act of faith, reason over might. To blow up his children would only prove him right.

Some people say, therefore, that violence and war are inevitable. I say rubbish: Our brains are fully capable of controlling instinctive behavior.

If the time comes when our culture tires of the endless homicidal feuds, despairs of the use of force and war as a means of bringing peace, becomes discontent with the half-lives that its members are living - only then will our culture seriously look for alternatives.

We have to start from the fact that there are always alternatives to violence.

Civilization is nothing else but the attempt to reduce force to being the last resort.

I don't want unnecessary violence, sergeant," said Blouse. "Right you are, sir!" said the sergeant. "Carborundum! First man comes through that door runnin', I want him nailed to the wall!" He caught the lieutenant's eye, and added: "But not too hard!

There are two ways to resolve conflicts, through violence or through negotiation. Violence is for wild beasts, negotiation is for human beings.

They have the troops; we only have the arguments.

The violent will not come to a natural end.

A war is only as good as the peace that follows.

What matters is not whether one talks to adversaries but what one says to them, which strategies of engagement are set in place, and how competently they are executed.

If politics is an art, it is not like sculpture or painting, where one side acts and the other is passive material. It is more like drama without a script, or dance without choreography - in other words, improvisation.

UN administrators ... think that no problem in the world is too intractable to be solved by negotiation. These mandarins fail to grasp that men with guns do not respect men with nothing but flapping gums ... Just as the US Marine Corps breeds warriors, so the UN’s culture breeds conciliators.

Conflicts between nations will continue to arise. The real issue is whether they are to be resolved by force, or by resort to peaceful methods and procedures, administered by impartial institutions.

Justice is inextricably linked to revenge, which is both morally right and a deeply internalized instinct as innate to man as breathing, having sex, falling in love, and making war.

There are only two means by which men can deal with one another: guns or logic. Force or persuasion. Those who know that they cannot win by means of logic, have always resorted to guns.