Nadine Gordimer Quotes

Force, no matter how concealed, begets resistance.

Force is legitimate where gentleness avails not.

The state has physical power and uses it when necessary; the power of religion is love and beneficence.

You have to show Israel that it's not going to be forced to do things it doesn't want to do and can't do.

The power which establishes a state is violence; the power which maintains it is violence; the power which eventually overthrows it is violence.

Those who 'abjure' violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.

When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat.

Power intoxicates men. It is never voluntarily surrendered. It must be taken from them.

Force in today's world, just as in the past, is what determines rights.

All political questions, all matters of right, are at bottom only questions of might.

In matters of government, justice means force as well as virtue.

Between the people and their enemies there can be nothing in common but the sword; we must govern by iron those who cannot be governed by justice; we must oppress the tyrant...

One precedent in favor of power is stronger than an hundred against it

… morality ends where the gun begins.

The ordered organization of coercion we call the State.

Government, in it's last analysis, is organized force.

The decisive means for politics is violence.

The establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, if necessary to maintain it's control, kill us

Every government on earth is the personification of violence and force, and yet the doctine of non-resistance is as old as human thought - even more than this, the instinct is as old as life upon the earth.

Indignation does no good unless it is backed with a club of sufficient size to awe the opposition.

All politics is a struggle for power; the ultimate kind of power is violence.

Power, however it has evolved, whatever its origins, will not be given up without a struggle.

The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.

the most elementary experience of life proves that the effects of compulsion last exactly as long as the physical or moral club can be applied.

Violence can always destroy power; out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What never can grow out of it is power.