#violence

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."

"Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and follow them."

"I had a romance novel inside me, but I paid three sailors to beat it out of me with steel pipes."

"Can America get back to a point where politicians are honest? Not unless that point is the tip of a sword."

"Nobody peels a banana before stabbing themselves with it. But that’s exactly how I love—dangerously."

"When her boyfriend broke his leg, I knew it was my chance to ask her to dance. So I put down my baseball bat and approached her like Babe Ruth."

"If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?"

"I both made the knife-fighting team, and I got cut. If only love were so easy to understand."

"My grandpa died yesterday. I ought to know, because I shot him. So come, join me in the fight against patricide by killing your father’s father."

"As a teacher of fourth-graders in a public school, where corporal punishement was not allowed, she had years of violence stored up and was, truth be told, sort of enjoying letting it out on Kona, who she felt could have been the poster child for the failure of public education."

"Knocking on a door is so violent. Talk on the door. Try to get it to open up through communication, not violence."

"[On Schopenhauer in Black and White] Schopenhauer's views of love are flawed. Love can't be merely an illusion of the mind to aid in procreation, but the path to redemption for an otherwise violently selfish species. Past human greatness has proven that when challenged, love can overpower impulsive instinct, and in essence, the vilest aspects of our nature."

"I could scarf down a scarf faster than I could eat any other throat warmer, with the possible exception of your clenched hands around my neck."

"It's odd how violence and humor so often go together, isn't it?"

"I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil."

"Humm humm haaa. Rahmumm humm haaaa,"intoned Opal, finishing her chant. "Peace be inside me, tolerance all around me, forgiveness in my path. Now, Mervall, show me where the filthy human is so that I may feed him his organs."

"Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain."

"Knocking on a door is so violent. Instead, try talking to the door to get it to open up to you. I should write a self-help book for door-to-door salesmen."

"The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence humans have ever committed."

"This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence."