Karl Georg Büchner Quotes: Revolution, Courage, and the Fight Against Injustice

"Yes, I have violence within me, but not negative violence. When a tiger tears its trainer apart, people say the tiger is violent and shoot a bullet into its head. My violence is the violence of the free who refuse to submit. Creation is violent. Life is violent. Birth is a violent process. A storm, an earthquake are violent movements of nature. My violence is the violence of life. It is not violence against nature, like the violence of the state that sends your children to the slaughterhouse, stupefies your brains, and drives out your souls!" Klaus Kinski

"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love. In a modern economy it is impossible to seal oneself off from injustice. If we have brains or courage, then we are blessed and called on not to frit these qualities away, standing agape at the ideas of others, winning pissing contests, improving the efficiencies of the neocorporate state, or immersing ourselves in obscuranta, but rather to prove the vigor of our talents against the strongest opponents of love we can find. If we can only live once, then let it be a daring adventure that draws on all our powers. Let it be with similar types whos hearts and heads we may be proud of. Let our grandchildren delight to find the start of our stories in their ears but the endings all around in their wandering eyes. The whole universe or the structure that perceives it is a worthy opponent, but try as I may I can not escape the sound of suffering. Perhaps as an old man I will take great comfort in pottering around in a lab and gently talking to students in the summer evening and will accept suffering with insouciance. But not now; men in their prime, if they have convictions are tasked to act on them." Julian Assange