Violence never settles anything right: apart from injuring your own soul, it injures the best cause. It lingers on long after the object of hate has disappeared from the scene to plague the lives of those who have employed it against their foes.
Interpretation
Violence leads to lasting harm, both to the perpetrator and to their cause, impacting lives beyond the immediate conflict.
This quote emphasizes the destructive nature of violence, suggesting that it does not provide true resolution to conflicts. Instead, it ultimately harms the one who engages in it and the causes they advocate for, leaving a lingering negative impact on both the individual and society long after the initial conflict has ended.
In practice
In a discussion on social justice, one might say, 'As Obafemi Awolowo wisely stated, violence never settles anything right.'
After rain comes sunshine; After darkness comes the glorious dawn. There is no sorrow without its alloy of joy; there is no joy without its admixture of sorrow. Behind the ugly terrible mask of misfortune lies the beautiful soothing countenance of prosperity. So, tear the mask!
Here life itself, life at its best and healthiest, awaits the caprice of the bullet. Let us see the development of the day. All else may stand over, perhaps for ever. Existence is never so sweet as when it is at hazard.
Smell and taste differentiate, whereas language, like sight and hearing, integrates.
Every individual matters and has a role to play in this life on Earth.
Here is a law which is above the King and which even he must not break. This reaffirmation of a supreme law and its expression in a general charter is the great work of Magna Carta; and this alone justifies the respect in which men have held it
If a philosophy is to bring happiness it should be inspired by kindly feelings. Marx pretended that he wanted the happiness of the proletariat; what he really wanted was the unhappiness of the bourgeois.
Experience teaches that for most people there is a limit beyond which their constitution cannot comply with the demands of civilization. All who wish to reach a higher standard than their constitution will allow, fall victims to neurosis. It would have been better for them if they could have remained less "perfect".
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