Brute Force Quotes - Page 4

• When imperialism feels weak, it resorts to brute force.

  Hugo Chavez

  Weakness, Imperialism, Resorts

  "Venezuela’s Chavez Closes World Social Forum with Call to Transcend Capitalism". Hugo Chavez's closing speech at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, venezuelanalysis.com. January 31, 2005.

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• In his recent book, When Brute Force Fails, UCLA's Kleiman argues that new strategies for targeting repeat offenders--including reforms to make probation an effective sanction rather than a feckless joke--could cut crime and reduce prison populations simultaneously. Safer communities, in turn, might produce more hopeful and well-disciplined kids.

  David Von Drehle

  Book, Kids, Cutting

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• The central event of the twentieth century is the overthrow of matter. ...The powers of the mind are everywhere ascendant over the brute force of things.

  George Gilder

  Mind, Events, Matter

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• The most powerful demonstration of leadership is not a clenched fist of brute force but an open hand of humble assistance.

  Mike Huckabee

  Powerful, Humble, Hands

  Mike Huckabee (2008). “From Hope to Higher Ground: My Vision for Restoring America's Greatness”, Center st

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• I am not talking about rebelliousness, but giving people time for constructive internal reflection and even daydreaming. A lot of research is suggesting that the more that you demand people's external attention, the less chance you are allowing them to dip into the default mode where daydreams and reflection happen - and lot of great ideas are not going to come from the brute force of work but from personal life experience. Mind-wandering seems to be essential to the creative process, and I don't think a lot of businesses are aware of that fact.

  Scott Barry Kaufman

  Reflection, Thinking, Talking

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• Blue is for cruel bargains; green is for daring what you oughtn’t; violet is for brute force. I will say to you: Coral coaxes; pink insists; red compels. I will say to you: You are dear to me as attar of roses. Please do not get eaten.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Blue, Rose, Green

  Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “Deathless”, p.144, Macmillan

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• When authority is backed up by an immediate physical compulsion, what we are dealing with is not authority proper (i.e. symbolic authority), but simply an agency of brute force.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Agency, Authority, Compulsion

  Slavoj Žižek (2001). “Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out”, p.94, Psychology Press

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• Successful trout fishing isn't a matter of brute force or even persistence, but something more like infiltration.

  John Gierach

  Successful, Persistence, Lakes

  John Gierach (2010). “Even Brook Trout Get The Blues”, p.51, Simon and Schuster

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• I myself am not comfortable with the notion of secularists congregating in groups, except perhaps for defensive purposes: the last thing a secularist should wish to do is to act like a religion, with its rigid hierarchies, its suppression of divergent opinion, and, above all, its ruthless attempts (now mercifully inhibited by laws) to outlaw "heresy" by brute force. Opinions must be changed, one at a time if necessary, but if there are those who wish to persist in religious belief, they should certainly be allowed to do so.

  S. T. Joshi

  Religious, Law, Wish

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• Economic planning is nothing more than the forcible superseding of other people's plans by the powerful elite backed up by the brute force of government.

  Walter E. Williams

  Powerful, Government, People

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• Sarcasm is not the rapier of wit its wielders seem to believe it to be, but merely a club: it may, by dint of brute force, occasionally raise bruises, but it never cuts or pierces.

  Rex Stout

  Believe, Cutting, Sarcasm

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• A chaplain is the minister of the Prince of Peace serving the host of the God of War--Mars. As such, he is as incongruous as a musket would be on the altar at Christmas. Why, then, is he there? Because he indirectly subserves the purpose attested by the cannon; because too he lends the sanction of the religion of the meek to that which practically is the abrogation of everything but brute Force.

  Herman Melville

  War, Would Be, Purpose

  Herman Melville (2006). “Billy Budd, Sailor, and Other Stories”, p.75, Bantam Classics

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• Extended families have never been the norm in America; the highest figure for extended-family households ever recorded in Americanhistory is 20 percent. Contrary to the popular myth that industrialization destroyed "traditional" extended families, this high point occurred between 1850 and 1885, during the most intensive period of early industrialization. Many of these extended families, and most "producing" families of the time, depended on the labor of children; they were held together by dire necessity and sometimes by brute force.

  Stephanie Coontz

  Children, America, Together

  Stephanie Coontz (2016). “The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap”, p.25, Basic Books

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• In the code of the satyagrahi, there is no such thing as surrender to brute force.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Surrender, Satyagraha, Force

  Mahatma Gandhi (1958). “Satyagraha (non-violent Resistance)”

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• Do not be proud just because you have brute force, because an animal has brute force too! Either you be proud with your intellect and with your thoughts or be silent and sit down!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Animal, Proud, Silent

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• If the world is an aggregate of relatively independent regions, then any assumption of universal laws is false and a demand for universal norms tyrannical: only brute force (or seductive deception) can then bend the different moralities so that they fit the prescriptions of a single ethical system. And indeed, the idea of universal laws of nature and society arose in connection with a life-and-death battle: the battle that gave Zeus the power over the Titans and all other gods and thus turned his laws into the laws of the universe.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Independent, Ideas, Law

  "Farewell to Reason". Book by Paul Feyerabend, 1987.

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• When somebody says the best thing you can do is be tough, the best thing you can do is use your brute force, then we're selling ourselves short.

  Benjamin Jealous

  Use, Tough, Selling

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

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• Power is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit. Power is in your soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you. Power is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the earth.

  Winona LaDuke

  Inspirational, Power, People

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• The civil magistrate cannot function without some ethical guidance, without some standard of good and evil. If that standard is not to be the revealed law of God (which, we must note, was addressed specifically to perennial problems in political morality), then what will it be? In some form or expression it will have to be the law of man (or men) — the standard of self-law or autonomy.

  Greg L. Bahnsen

  Men, Self, Expression

  "By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today".

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• Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group (to "society," to the tribe, the state, the nation) and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force - and statism has always been the poltical corollary of collectivism.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Sacrifice, Rights

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.122, Penguin

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• The more relaxed the muscles are, the more energy can flow through the body. Using muscular tensions to try to 'do' the punch or attempting to use brute force to knock someone over will only work to opposite effect.

  Bruce Lee

  Opposites, Trying, Energy

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• [N]o one's ever been able to show me any difference between democracy and brute force. It's just a majority ganging up on a minority with the minority giving in to avoid getting massacred.

  L. Neil Smith

  Differences, Giving, Democracy

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