Leo Tolstoy Quotes About Violence

We have collected for you the TOP of Leo Tolstoy's best quotes about Violence! Here are collected all the quotes about Violence starting from the birthday of the Writer – September 9, 1828! We hope you will be inspired to new achievements with our constantly updated collection of quotes. At the moment, this page contains 24 sayings of Leo Tolstoy about Violence. We will be happy if you share our collection of quotes with your friends on social networks!
  • Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

    Men  
  • All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.

    "The Law of Love and the Law of Violence". Treatise by Leo Tolstoy, 1908.
  • Physical violence is the basis of authority.

    Leo Tolstoy (2015). “What is Art?: "The Kingdom of God is Within You"”, p.185, eKitap Projesi
  • To us, it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg was wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have the with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.

    Men  
    Leo Tolstoy (2016). “The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Memoirs, Letters & Essays on Art, Religion and Politics: Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Resurrection, The Death of Ivan Ilych, A Confession, The Cossacks, Correspondences with Gandhi, The Kreutzer Sonata, Fables and Stories for Childrenand Many More”, p.2591, e-artnow
  • I am obliged to renounce violence, and abstain from it altogether.

  • Understand then all of you, especially the young, that to want to impose an imaginary state of government on others by violence is not only a vulgar superstition, but even a criminal work. Understand that this work, far from assuring the well-being of humanity is only a lie, a more or less unconscious hypocrisy, camouflaging the lowest passions we posses.

    Passage written in 1908 for for 'The Law of Love and the Law of Violence'. "Equality in Liberty and Justice". Book by Antony Flew, p. 89, 2001.
  • In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs and other heads of states.

    Leo Tolstoy, M. K. Gandhi (2016). “A LETTER TO A HINDU (A Fascinating View on Love and Non-Violence): Including Correspondences with Gandhi & Letter to Ernest Howard Crosby”, p.31, e-artnow
  • As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence - as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual.

    Men  
    Leo Tolstoy, J. M. Packham (2015). “Leo Tolstoy: Letters and Papers”, p.99, Lulu Press, Inc
  • It is horrible! It is not the suffering and the death of the animals that is horrible, but the fact that the man without any need for so doing crushes his lofty feeling of sympathy and mercy for living creatures and does violence to himself that he may be cruel. The first element of moral life is abstinence.

    Men  
  • People continued regardless of all that leads man forward to try to unite the incompatibles:;: the virtue of love, and what is opposed to love, namely, the restraining of evil by violence. And such a teaching, despite its inner contradiction, was so firmly established that the very people who recognize love as a virtue accept as lawful at the same time an order of life based on violence and allowing men not merely to torture but even to kill one another.

    Men  
  • Why does man have reason if he can only be influenced by violence?

    Men  
  • The Christian churches and Christianity have nothing in common save in name: they are utterly hostile opposites. The churches are arrogance, violence, usurpation, rigidity, death; Christianity is humility, penitence, submissiveness, progress, life.

  • The law of violence is not a law, but a simple fact which can only be a law when it does not meet with protest and opposition. It is like the cold, darkness and weight, which people had to put up with until recently when warmth, illumination and leverage were discovered.

    Leo Tolstoy (1987). “A Confession and Other Religious Writings”, p.248, Penguin UK
  • I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure human sympathy is more valuable than ideology.

  • The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without authority, there could not be worse violence than that of authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. "To establish Anarchy." "Anarchy will be instituted." But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require protection from governmental power, and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power.

    graf Leo Tolstoy (1915). “Social Evils and Their Remedy”
  • Men are so accustomed to maintaining external order by violence that they cannot conceive of life being possible without violence.

    Men  
  • Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the state, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment, its wars

  • Government is violence, Christianity is meekness, non-resistance, love. And, therefore, government cannot be Christian, and a man who wishes to be a Christian must not serve government.

    Men  
    Leo Tolstoy (2016). “The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Memoirs, Letters & Essays on Art, Religion and Politics: Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Resurrection, The Death of Ivan Ilych, A Confession, The Cossacks, Correspondences with Gandhi, The Kreutzer Sonata, Fables and Stories for Childrenand Many More”, p.7186, e-artnow
  • The struggle with evil by means of violence is the same as an attempt to stop a cloud, in order that there may be no rain.

    Leo Tolstoy (graf) (1905). “The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy: Walk in the light while ye have light; Thoughts and aphorisims; Letters; Miscellanies”
  • Every reform by violence is to be deprecated, because it does little to correct the evil while men remain as they are, and because wisdom has no need of violence.

    Men  
    Leo Tolstoy (2012). “War and Peace”, p.491, Modern Library
  • The improvement of life was only accomplished to the extent to which it was based on a change of consciousness, that is, to the extent to which the law of violence was replaced in men's consciousness by the law of love.

    Men  
    Leo Tolstoy (graf) (1951). “The kingdom of God: and peace essays”
  • Violence produces only something resembling justice, but it distances people from the possibility of living justly, without violence.

  • To destroy governmental violence, only one thing is needed: It is that people should understand that the feeling of patriotism, which alone supports that instrument of violence, is a rude, harmful, disgraceful, and bad feeling, and, above all, is immoral.

    graf Leo Tolstoy (1989). “I Cannot be Silent: Writings on Politics, Art and Religion by Leo Tolstoy”
  • Art should cause violence to be set aside and it is only art that can accomplish this.

    Leo Tolstoy (2016). “What is Art? (English Version, Abridged)”, p.222, BIG BYTE BOOKS
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