Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.
Aki Ra is a Cambodian guy who goes out into the jungle and disarms landmines with a pocketknife and a really sharp stick.
Martin Luther King: Nigga, we got more beef than one of your sacred cows./ But I'm about to forgive you so hard right now.
Gandhi: I am passively resisting the fact that you suck./ I am celibate because I don't give a fuck.
Gandhi: I am passively resisting the fact that you suck./ I am celibate because I don't give a fuck.
That said, it may come as a surprise to hear that amassing towering piles of limbless corpses while riding on the back of a nuclear-powered buzzsaw-rocket isn't necessarily a prerequisite for badassitude. In fact, in the case of Paul Rusesabagina, the exact opposite is true; this fearless hardass actually risked his life to prevent machete-wielding maniacs from going Voorhees on everything with a pulse by standing up to heavily-armed thugs time and time again, even when the situation seemed insanely hopeless – an act of bravery that requires a gigantic, planet-sized nutsack and an incredible display of testicular fortitude that makes this man a total badass in his own right.
Despite being gifted with the body of an explosive predator, I refuse to take a life. This characteristic, which should earn me praise among humanitarian social circles has somehow been mistaken for cowardice when I'm faced with an insect. I don't avoid killing out of a love for all creatures, because, suffice it to say, some animals just suck. I avoid it because the fight wouldn't be fair and I am nothing if not honor-bound.
— Soren Bowie
I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.
Meet Hawa Abdi. A woman who has never raised her fist in anger against another human being, but also one who could perform three C-sections on dirt-poor women, wash her hands, then go straight outside, stare down an army of gun-toting hardcore fanatical Somali militiamen, and with four words send them running for their lives on a light-speed rainbow of shame and self-loathing without even fucking blinking. A woman once appropriately described once as "one part Mother Teresa, one part Rambo."
"It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived."
— Scout, To Kill a Mockingbird
"To our most bitter opponents we say: 'We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you.'"
Captain Picard: One other thing: Maxwell was right. Those ships were not carrying scientific equipment, were they? A "research station" within arm's reach of three Federation sectors? "Cargo ships" running with high-energy subspace fields that jam sensors?
Gul Macet: If you believed that the transport ship was carrying weapons, Captain...why didn't you board it as Maxwell requested?
Captain Picard: I was here to protect the peace. A peace that I firmly believe is in the interest of both of our peoples. If I had attempted to board that ship, I'm quite certain that you and I would not be having this pleasant conversation—and that ships on both sides would now be arming for war.
Gul Macet: Captain, I assure you...
Captain Picard: Take this message to your leaders, Gul Macet: "We'll be watching."
Gul Macet: If you believed that the transport ship was carrying weapons, Captain...why didn't you board it as Maxwell requested?
Captain Picard: I was here to protect the peace. A peace that I firmly believe is in the interest of both of our peoples. If I had attempted to board that ship, I'm quite certain that you and I would not be having this pleasant conversation—and that ships on both sides would now be arming for war.
Gul Macet: Captain, I assure you...
Captain Picard: Take this message to your leaders, Gul Macet: "We'll be watching."
She does not bend or break or run away
She does not brave the war, but she saves the day
She does not brave the war, but she saves the day
— "She Does Not Brave The War", by My Brightest Diamond
"For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill."
— Sun Tzu
Bulk: I want you...to tell us...how to beat people up!
Skull: WAAAH!
(he strikes a dramatic karate pose while Jason stares blankly)
Jason: Martial arts...was not developed to hurt others.
Skull: WAAAH!
(he strikes a dramatic karate pose while Jason stares blankly)
Jason: Martial arts...was not developed to hurt others.
—Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, "Day of the Dumpster"
Manco: It ends here and now, Django. You can threaten me with weapons all you like. I'm unarmed. I'm not a warrior...I'm the Wordslinger. My only weapon is a word, and that word is "No."
—Doctor Who New Adventures novel "Night of the Humans."
Jackie: You want a player who doesn't have the guts to fight back?
Rickey: No. I want a player who's got the guts not to fight back.
— 42
Being the guy who almost single-handedly ensured that the Germans were completely unprepared for the Allied invasion of Normandy is pretty damn impressive. Doing it without so much as lifting a rifle is so badass that I think I just crapped.
"The strength of a civilization is not measured by its ability to fight wars, but rather by its ability to prevent them."
Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
"PACIFIST CRUSH! KINDNESS TO ALL MANKIND KICK!"
— Prince Philionel El Di Seyruun, Slayers
HUMAN CASUALTIES: 0.0
— T-800 after unloading a gatling gun on an army of cops, Terminator 2: Judgment Day
"The most convenient thing for the government would be to kill the non-resistant by flogging him to death or some other means, as was done in former days. But to put a man openly to death because he believes in the creed we all confess is impossible. To let a man alone who has refused obedience is also impossible. And so the government tries either to compel the man by ill-treatment to renounce Christ, or in some way or other to get rid of him unobserved, without openly putting him to death, and to hide somehow both the action and the man himself from other people. And so all kinds of shifts and wiles and cruelties are set on foot against him. They either send him to the frontier or provoke him to insubordination, and then try him for breach of discipline and shut him up in the prison of the disciplinary battalion, where they can ill treat him freely unseen by anyone, or they declare him mad, and lock him up in a lunatic asylum. They sent one man in this way to Tashkend—that is, they pretended to transfer to the Tashkend army; another to Omsk; a third him they convicted of insubordination and shut up in prison; a fourth they sent to a lunatic asylum."
— Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You
