Physical Force Quotes - Page 3

• Necessity is the most powerful divinity the world knows – it is the result of physical forces set in operation by ethical forces.

  Jose Rizal

  Powerful, World, Divinity

  "The Philippines: a Century Hence". Book by José Rizal, archive.org. 1912.

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• We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you....Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Love, Children, Home

  "Loving Your Enemies". Sermon by Martin Luther King, Jr. at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, www.skeptictank.org. November 17, 1957.

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• Non-violence is backed by the theory of soul-force in which suffering is courted in the hope of ultimately winning over the opponent. But what happens when such an attempt fail to achieve the object? It is here that soul-force has to be combined with physical force so as not to remain at the mercy of tyrannical and ruthless enemy.

  Bhagat Singh

  Winning, Soul, Enemy

  The Sikh Review, Volume 55, p. 173, 2007.

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• A government resting on the minority is an aristocracy, not a Republic, and could not be safe with a numerical and physical force against it, without a standing army, an enslaved press and a disarmed populace.

  James Madison

  Army, Gun, Government

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• No individual or private group or private organization has the legal power to initiate the use of physical force against other individuals or groups and to compel them to act against their own voluntary choice. Only a government holds that power. The nature of governmental action is: coercive action. The nature of political power is: the power to force obedience under threat of physical injury-the threat of property expropriation, imprisonment, or death.

  Ayn Rand

  Government, Organization, Choices

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.43, Penguin

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• Public Opinion... an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.

  Oscar Wilde

  Ignorance, Community, Public Opinion

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.118, Courier Corporation

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• Man has become a superman ... because he not only disposes oinnate, physical forces, but because he is in command ... olatent forces in nature and because he can put them to his service.... But the essential fact we must surely all feel in our hearts ... is that we are becoming inhuman in proportion as we become supermen.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Nature, Heart, Men

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• Despotic governments can stand 'moral force' till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.

  George Orwell

  Home, Government, Cows

  George Orwell (1998). “The complete works of George Orwell”

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• My heart stopped. It just stopped beating. And for the first time in my life, I had that feeling. You know, like the world is moving all around you, all beneath you, all inside you, and you're floating. Floating in midair. And the only thing keeping you from drifting away is the other person's eyes. They're connected to yours by some invisible physical force, and they hold you fast while the rest of the world swirls and twirls and falls completely away.

  Wendelin Van Draanen

  Moving, Fall, Heart

  Wendelin Van Draanen (2008). “Flipped”, p.14, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• We should distinguish at this point between "government" and "state" ... A government is the consensual organization by which we adjudicate disputes, defend our rights, and provide for certain common needs ... A state on the other hand, is a coercive organization asserting or enjoying a monopoly over the use of physical force in some geographic area and exercising power over its subjects.

  David Boaz

  Exercise, Rights, Government

  David Boaz (1997). “Libertarianism: A Primer”, p.208, Simon and Schuster

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• The necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative. If some "pacifist" society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it.

  Ayn Rand

  Thug, Men, Self

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• [The disarming of citizens] has a double effect, it palsies the hand and brutalizes the mind: a habitual disuse of physical forces totally destroys the moral [force]; and men lose at once the power of protecting themselves, and of discerning the cause of their oppression.

  Joel Barlow

  Gun, Men, Hands

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• The moment a man claims a right to control the will of a fellow being by physical force, he is at heart a slaveholder.

  Henry Clarke Wright

  Heart, Men, Tyrants

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• Power invariably elects to go into the hands of the strong. That strength may be physical or of the heart or, if we do not fight shy of the word, of the spirit. Strength of the heart connotes soul-force. Let it be remembered that physical force is transitory, even as the body is transitory. But the power of spirit is permanent even as the spirit is everlasting.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Strong, Heart, Fighting

  Mahatma Gandhi (1965). “Glorious Thoughts of Gandhi: Being a Treasury of about Ten Thousand Valuable and Inspiring Thougths of Mahatma Gandhi, Classified Under Four Hundred Subjects”

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• We must meet hate with love. We must meet physical force with soul force.

  Martin Luther

  Hate, Soul, Grace

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• So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. . . . When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him by force. It is only as retaliation that force may be used and only against the man who starts its use. No, I do not share his evil or sink to his concept of morality: I merely grant him his choice, destruction, the only destruction he had the right to choose: his own.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Long, Evil

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• It is my hope that as the Negro plunges deeper into the quest for freedom and justice he will plunge even deeper into the philosophy of non-violence. The Negro all over the South must come to the point that he can say to his white brother: "We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we will not obey your evil laws. We will soon wear you down by pure capacity to suffer".

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Brother, Hate, Philosophy

  Martin Luther King (Jr.), Alex Ayres (1993). “The Wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr”, Plume

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• Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?

  Ayn Rand

  Freedom, Animal, Men

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.141, Penguin

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• Physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Men, Fire

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2282, Delphi Classics

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