Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

Nobody knows through how many thousands of years fighting men have made a place for themselves while the weak and peaceable have gone to the wall.

Violence begets violence, and then you get leaders who are violent men. And you don't want that.

People are violent by nature. That’s why we rule the earth; we beat the crap out of everyone else.

The first accounts we have of mankind are but so many accounts of their butcheries. All empires have been cemented in blood; and, in those early periods, when the race of mankind began first to form themselves into parties and combinations, the first effect of the combination, and indeed the end for which it seems purposely formed, and best calculated, was their mutual destruction.

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.

In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer.

Men are fighting... because they are convinced that the extermination of adversaries is the only means of promoting their own well-being.

I think the brutality is important to convey as part of the story, to see how brutal it is to have these kids in battle with one another.

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

Let the madmen duke it out and then jump the one or two of them that are left.

Hit the Poles so hard that they despair of their life; I have full sympathy with their condition, but if we want to survive, we can only exterminate them; the wolf, too, cannot help having been created by God as he is, but people shoot him for it if they can.

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue and thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never solves anything, I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The Ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more disputes in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.

Attack and defence, want and war, victory and defeat, lordship and thraldom, all sealed with the seal of blood: this from henceforth is the History of Man.

The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest.

Violence commands both literature and life, and violence is always crude and distorted.

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.

If we go back in the history of different nations, violence and the use of force are part of their heritage. These are the traditions of mankind.

Where I'm from, they'll beat your head until it gets back down to normal size.

If we know anything about man, it's that he's not pacific. The temptation to butcher anyone considered undesirable seems to be a common temptation, not always resisted.

When I fight someone, I want to break his will. I want to take his manhood. I want to rip out his heart and show it to him.

Men are such power-seeking creatures, and they usually kill people to get to the throne.

There can be no peace with someone who wants to kill you.

Men killing other men really is an extraordinary phenomenon. Why does it happen? And how long has it gone on? And have the motives changed?

The quietly pacifist peaceful always die to make room for men who shout.

All men have an instinct for conflict: at least, all healthy men.