My speculation is that the U.S. does not want to establish the principle that it has to defer to some higher authority before carrying out the use of violence.

Almost half of the population of the world lives in rural regions and mostly in a state of poverty. Such inequalities in human development have been one of the primary reasons for unrest and, in some parts of the world, even violence.

If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.

I have long understood that losing always comes with the territory when you wander into the gambling business, just as getting crippled for life is an acceptable risk in the linebacker business. They both are extremely violent sports, and pain is part of the bargain. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

Time destroys the speculation of men, but it confirms nature.

Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.

I’m aware that, whatever the circumstances, there will always be speculation about me.

It is always a strain when people are being killed. I don’t think anybody has held this job who hasn’t felt personally responsible for those being killed.

The virtues, like the Muses, are always seen in groups. A good principle was never found solitary in any breast.

I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.

Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

So many killings of black men in my lifetime. The physical shock is astounding.

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.

The universal order and the personal order are nothing but different expressions and manifestations of a common underlying principle.

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.

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.

Colombia has been the leading western recipient of U.S. arms and training as violence has grown through the ’90s.

War settles nothing.

The level of destruction and terror and violence carried out by the powerful states far exceeds anything that can imaginably can be done by groups that are called terrorists and subnational groups.

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.

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

Even today we raise our hand against our brother… We have perfected our weapons, our conscience has fallen asleep, and we have sharpened our ideas to justify ourselves as if it were normal we continue to sow destruction, pain, death. Violence and war lead only to death.

All the screen cowboys behaved like real gentlemen. They didn’t drink, they didn’t smoke. When they knocked the bad guy down, they always stood with their fists up, waiting for the heavy to get back on his feet. I decided I was going to drag the bad guy to his feet and keep hitting him.

There is so much that must be done in a civilized barbarism like war.

The U.S. and its allies will do anything they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world.

The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

Over the years, there have been a series of concepts developed to justify the use of force in international affairs for a long period. It was possible to justify it on the pretext, which usually turned out to have very little substance, that the U.S. was defending itself against the communist menace. By the 1980s, that was wearing pretty thin.

The United States is a violent military state. It’s been involved in military action all over the place.

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

I want the troops from Great Britain and the U.S. to be successful, but by the same token, Afghanistan has always been a screw-up.

Deliberate violence is more to be quenched than a fire.

Social Security is based on a principle. It’s based on the principle that you care about other people. You care whether the widow across town, a disabled widow, is going to be able to have food to eat.

I’m a writer. I don’t support any war. That’s my principle.

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

If I hit a man, his head is gonna go into the bleachers.

An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

Democracy don’t rule the world, You’d better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that’s better left unsaid.

In 1949, China declared independence – an event known in Western discourse as ‚the loss of China‘ in the U.S. – with bitter recriminations and conflict over who was responsible for that loss.

If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilisations, and I mean strange in a bad way. And it could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilisations.

I don’t know why they gave me a knighthood – though it’s very nice of them – but I only ever use the title in the U.S. The Americans insist on it and get offended if I don’t.

We should work with the principle that a work that can be done at a lower level should never be escalated to a higher level.

You will kill 10 of our men, and we will kill 1 of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it.

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

Judge Afiuni has suffered enough. She has been subject to acts of violence and humiliations to undermine her human dignity. I am convinced that she must be set free.

Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

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.

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

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

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

Of course, violence will not end with our combat mission. Extremists will continue to set off bombs, attack Iraqi civilians and try to spark sectarian strife. But ultimately, these terrorists will fail to achieve their goals.

Violence is both unavoidable and unjustifiable.

2018 is an incredibly important election year, not just with the important midterms here in the U.S., but you just had the Mexican elections. You have Brazil. You have India coming up at the beginning of next year. There’s an assortment of elections around the EU. We’re very serious about this. We know that we need to get this right.

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

Stability is when the U.K. and U.S. invade a country and impose the regime of their choice.