Quotes about force

The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood.

— Otto Von Bismarck

Force is not a remedy.

— John Bright

The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.

— Edmund Burke

Force is legitimate where gentleness avails not.

— Pierre Corneille

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

— David Friedman

Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort.

— Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Why slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer.

— Katharine Hepburn

Coercion may prevent many transgressions; but it robs even actions which are legal of a part of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form.

— Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Force works on servile natures, not the free.

— Ben Johnson

Be careful: they have arms, and no alternatives.

— Ryszard Kapuscinski

Some people draw a comforting distinction between force and violence. I refuse to cloud the issue by such word-play. The power which establishes a state is violence; the power which maintains it is violence; the power which eventually overthrows it is violence. Call an elephant a rabbit only if it gives you comfort to feel that you are about to be trampled to death by a rabbit.

— Kenneth Kaunda

Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.

— Henry Miller

Force without forecast is to little avail.

— Proverb

Force is that which rules the actions without regulating the will.

— Saying

Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with a maneuver, a blow with an agreement.

— Leon Trotsky

Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravitation.

— Leon Trotsky

A man convinced against his will; is of the same opinion still.

— Source Unknown

Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it.

— Simone Weil

Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing is easier. And once they are dead they are no more than corpses.

— Simone Weil