Violence should not always beget more violence.
This is the law: blood spilt upon the ground cries out for more.
Wars do not end wars any more than an extraordinarily large conflagration does away with the fire hazard.
I joined the army to avenge the deaths of my family and to survive, but I've come to learn that if I am going to take revenge, in that process I will kill another person whose family will want revenge; then revenge and revenge and revenge will never come to an end.
An eye for an eye is elemental.
To fight tyranny and oppression by using tyrannical and oppressive means, to combat a single-minded and ruthless fanaticism by becoming equally fanatical and ruthless, will not further the cause of justice or bring about a meaningful democracy. It can only prolong the cycle of violence.
This much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.
Violence is impractical, because the old eye for an eye philosophy ends up leaving everybody blind .. It is immoral because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for everybody. Means and ends are inseparable. The means represent the ideal in the making; in the long run of history destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.
Maybe the realisation of the full human potential is the utopian thing. Maybe that is our collective struggle, is to find a way to get there. But right now it seems like we're duplicating what was written in the Bible, a millennium ago, which is "An eye for an eye." Revenge policy; "If you hit me, we'll hit you back worse"; ad infinitum.
War...is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.
An eye for an eye." "And the whole world goes blind," Coral puts in quietly.
Violence just hurts those who are already hurt...Instead of exposing the brutality of the oppressor, it justifies it.
Never be glad that another man has died. Not ever. [...] It never ends. Never... ever... be glad to kill.
I have long argued that ISIS and Assad are not separate problems to be chosen between, but are action and reaction, cause and symptom, chicken and egg: impossible to untangle no matter how much we might like to.
There's no war that will end all wars.
When you drop bombs on the enemy, you drop those same bombs on yourself, your own country.
Scare answers to scare, and force begets force, until at length it comes to be seen that we are racing one against another after a phantom security which continually vanishes as we approach.
What is it in our society that encourages us to periodically to turn on each other? What is it in our society that leads us to the cycle of violence.
... there has never been a period in history when there have been necessary killings which has not been instantly followed by a period when there have been unnecessary killings.
You, stupid one, who believe in laws which punish murder by murder...
Let bygones be bygones...but where I'm from, We buy guns and more guns, to give to the young.
Terrorism brings the reprisal; the reprisal brings the additional hatred; the additional hatred breeds the additional terrorism, and so on.
In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims.
