Mandy Patinkin Quotes

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.

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.

This is the vow to those consumed by hatred. We have but one path—waging war on them to the death.

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.

An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.

We do not celebrate the death of our enemies.

War is not the answer, because only love can conquer hate.

You have to see the human being in the enemy. If there is potential for change, there is still hope.

An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.

No problems are ever resolved by violence. It only aggravates the pain and the hurt on every side.

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

Violence against violence? That will never solve the problem.

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

I do not believe in loving enemies; I have pretty hard work to love my friends. Neither do I believe in revenge. No man can afford to keep the viper of revenge in his heart. But I believe in justice, in self-defense.

Ours is a nation that does not seek revenge.

I don't think vengeance is much good.

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

I don't feel bitterness, I don't feel anger towards anybody. Fighting is never emotional to me.

If your heart is large enough to envelop your adversaries, you can see right through them and avoid their attacks. And once you envelop them, you will be able to guide them along the path indicated to you by heaven and earth.

Until we have created a romance of peace that would equal that of war, violence will not disappear from people's lives.

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.

You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.

I do not even hate the Talib who shot me. Even if there was a gun in my hand and he stands in front of me, I would not shoot him.

We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it.