Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

Say there’s a white kid who lives in a nice home, goes to an all-white school, and is pretty much having everything handed to him on a platter – for him to pick up a rap tape is incredible to me, because what that’s saying is that he’s living a fantasy life of rebellion.

Nothing good ever comes of violence.

Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.

I can relax with bums because I am a bum. I don’t like laws, morals, religions, rules. I don’t like to be shaped by society.

Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.

Our numbers have increased in Vietnam because the aggression of others has increased in Vietnam. There is not, and there will not be, a mindless escalation.

It is a big temptation to me, when I create a character for a novel, to say that he is what he is because of faulty wiring, or because of microscopic amounts of chemicals which he ate or failed to eat on that particular day.

Radical Islamist extremists surely hope that an attack on Iraq will kill many people and destroy much of the country, providing recruits for terrorist actions.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

Violent means will give violent freedom. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself.

The most violent show on TV is the six o’clock news.

You can rebel in different ways. Civil disobedience is rebelling. As long as it’s peaceful, of course.

We will stand up for our friends in the world. And one of the most important friends is the State of Israel. My administration will be steadfast in support Israel against terrorism and violence, and in seeking the peace for which all Israelis pray.

To be clear: we have fights and problems like any other couple.

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

No matter what cause one defends, it will suffer permanent disgrace if one resorts to blind attacks on crowds of innocent people.

We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

We had violence directed at us by the growers themselves, trying to run us down by cars, pointing rifles at us, spraying the people when they were on the picket line with sulfur.

War settles nothing.

Methods of thought which claim to give the lead to our world in the name of revolution have become, in reality, ideologies of consent and not of rebellion.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.

My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.

Auschwitz stands as a tragic reminder of the terrible potential man has for violence and inhumanity.

Prejudice of any kind implies that you are identified with the thinking mind. It means you don’t see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence.

In ninth grade, I came up with a new form of rebellion. I hadn’t been getting good grades, but I decided to get all A’s without taking a book home. I didn’t go to math class, because I knew enough and had read ahead, and I placed within the top 10 people in the nation on an aptitude exam.

War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.

It is the failing of youth not to be able to restrain its own violence.

It’s true that I’ve never had a burning desire to rebel against my parents.

The crimes against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and elsewhere, particularly Lebanon, are so shocking that the only emotionally valid reaction is rage and a call for extreme actions. But that does not help the victims. And, in fact, it’s likely to harm them.

The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship.

Women have a certain sexuality, and I think their bodies are beautiful, and I’m not embarrassed to explore that in a film. But there are things you get offered that are vulgar and violent – just like there’s a side of me that’s vulgar and violent.

In Kosovo, the U.S. has chosen a course of action that escalates atrocities and violence. It is also a course of action that strikes a blow against the regime of international order, but which offers the weak at least some protection from predatory states.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

The former colonies, in Latin America in particular, have a better chance than ever before to overcome centuries of subjugation, violence and foreign intervention, which they have so far survived as dependencies with islands of luxury in a sea of misery.

There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.

Sir one more comment like that and I will strangle you with my microphone wire!

I like to talk to myself ahead of time so when temptation comes, I’ve already made up my mind that I have the victory.

The hippie movement politicized my generation. When it ended, we all started looking back at our own history, looking, in my case, for motives of rebellion.

I can resist everything except temptation.

The reason why I am proud of my part in the punk movement is that I think it really did implant a message that was already there. The hippies told it to me, but punk made it something cool for people to stand up for, which is that we do not believe government, that we are against government.

I’ve had just about everything punched. I’ve had things grabbed that just shouldn’t be grapped.

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

How hard, how bitter it is to become a man!

He that has not got a wife is not yet a complete man.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.

One of the powerful temptations is that of the cinema palace. The cinema has undoubtedly an enormous attraction for boys, and people are constantly cudgelling their brains how to stop it. But it is one of those things which would be very difficult to stop even if it were altogether desirable.

Chimps are very quick to have a sudden fight or aggressive episode, but they’re equally as good at reconciliation.

The Vietnamese see their history as an unending series of struggles of resistance to aggression, by the Chinese, the Mongols, the Japanese, the French, and now the Americans.

You see, rebellion, and the disobedience it causes, keeps us from having the power of God that’s available to us as Christians.

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.

I find rebellion packaged by a major corporation a little hard to take seriously.

We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace.

But does that mean that war and violence are inevitable? I would argue not because we have also evolved this amazingly sophisticated intellect, and we are capable of controlling our innate behavior a lot of the time.

By that sin fell the angels.

I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.

Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour’s buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.