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Violence is not to be undertaken by private persons. If a state or administration acts without due and visible attention to agreed international process, it acts in a way analogous to a private person. It purports to be judge of its own interest.

The power to prevent violence is a power that no police force seems to have anywhere in the United States.

We need to make clear the federal government does not have authority to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens without due process or, for that matter, to use lethal force on U.S. citizens on U.S. soil if they don't pose imminent threats.

In some cases non-violence requires more militancy than violence.

Any decision to use lethal force against a United States citizen - even one intent on murdering Americans and who has become an operational leader of al-Qaida in a foreign land - is among the gravest that government leaders can face.

The United States is a violent military state. It's been involved in military action all over the place.

Legitimate use of violence can only be that which is required in self-defense.

The world is ruled by violence, or at least the imminent threat of violence. It always has been.

Our first responsibility in the midst of violence is to prevent it from destroying us.

As a tactic, violence is absurd. No one can compete with the Government in violence, and the resort to violence, which will surely fail, will simply frighten and alienate some who can be reached, and will further encourage the ideologists and administrators of forceful repression.