Quotes about Threat of Force

Herbert Hoover

One who brandishes a pistol must be prepared to shoot.

Kurt Volker

Deterrence is when someone who is your potential adversary, decides not to bother because they know it’s not going to work.

Kevin de Leon

President Trump's threat to weaponize federal funding is not only unconstitutional but emblematic of the cruelty he seeks to impose on our most vulnerable communities.

John F. Kennedy

For in a government of laws and not of men, no man, however prominent or powerful, and no mob however unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy a court of law. If this country should ever reach the point where any man or group of men by force or threat of force could long defy the commands of our court and our Constitution, then no law would stand free from doubt, no judge would be sure of his writ, and no citizen would be safe from his neighbors.

Winston Churchill

The Czechoslovakian partition amounted to the complete surrender of the Western Democracies to the Nazi threat of force.

In 1938 Germany had rearmed and resumed its aggressive designs of expansion. Hitler wanted the Sudetenland part of Czechoslovakia and threatened an invasion of that country. England had France had a treaty obligation to militarily support Czechoslovakia if it were attacked. British Prime minister Neville Chamberlain and the French were desperately trying to avoid war, not realizing that with Hitler, that position was the very thing that would bring on war. So they agreed to Hitler’s demand and allowed Czechoslovakia to be partitioned and the Sudetenland was annexed to Germany. This craven appeasement emboldened Hitler who then decided to conquer all of Europe as he had no serious opposition from France and England—the two powers that might have stopped him. (At the time, the French had a larger army than the Germans.)

Adam Gopnik

If we are willing to act violently in pursuit of a peripheral interest, everyone can be certain that, when a vital interest is at stake, we will be still more violent. 'Credibility' is defined as the willingness to kill a lot of people now for a not very good cause to assure the world that we'll kill a lot more people if we can find a better one.

Thomas Sowell

Freedom... refer[s] to a social relationship among people-namely, the absence of force as a prospective instrument of decision making. Freedom is reduced whenever a decision is made under threat of force, whether or not force actually materializes or is evident in retrospect.

Benjamin Netanyahu

The application of military force, or the prospect of such application, inhibits terrorist violence.

Ludwig von Mises

The state is essentially an apparatus of compulsion and coercion. The characteristic feature of its activities is to compel people through the application or the threat of force to behave otherwise than they would like to behave.

Henry Giroux

Of course, the new domestic paramilitary forces will also undermine free speech and dissent with the threat of force while simultaneously threatening core civil liberties, rights and civic responsibilities.

Threat of Force Quotes