Lena Headey Quotes

From the viewpoint of political power, culture is absolutely vital. So vital, indeed, that power cannot operate without it. It is culture, in the sense of the everyday habits and beliefs of a people, which beds power down, makes it appear natural and inevitable, turns it into spontaneous reflex and response.

I love to deal with doctrines and events. The contests of men about men I greatly dislike.

Civilisation is partly about restraining the male of the species from engaging in the violence of the hunter-gatherer period. But it doesn't take an awful lot to unleash it.

I grew up in an environment where being polite was taken as a weakness. So I just fought everybody.

A theme I'm obsessed with is the tension between human nature and the frameworks designed to curb the worst and promote the best of it.

The consequence is that every man comes to know himself solely in terms of his power for defence and attack.

Fighting is not a man's thing, it is a human thing.

You don't have to be Sigmund Freud to surmise that war has a perverse appeal for the human race, nor is the attraction limited to religious fanatics committing mass murder and suicide for the greater glory of God.

What goes for sex goes double for politics.

It may be a mistake, that man, in a state of nature, is more disposed to cruelty than courtesy.

Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which becomes more or less pronounced according to the play of circumstances.

All war presupposes human weakness and seeks to exploit it.

You are giving them a sword if you say you will use a sword yourself.

Man is a predatory animal, and this aspect of his nature is nowhere better suited by environment than in the world of politics.

A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind.

[On appeasement:] If you let a bully come into your front yard, he'll be on your porch the next day and the day after that he'll rape your wife in your own bed.

People are violent by nature. That’s why we rule the earth; we beat the crap out of everyone else.

The distrust and suspicion which men everywhere evidence toward their adversaries, at all states of historical development, may be regarded as the immediate precursor to the notion of ideology.

War and unrest appeal to me more than good bourgeois order. Brutality is respected, the people need wholesome fear. They want to fear someone. They want someone to frighten them and make them shudderingly submissive.

The esthete stands in the same relation to beauty as the pornographer stands to love, and the politician stands to life.

If the oppressor uses peaceful means, the oppressed will never resort to violence. But if the oppressor uses violence, then the oppressed have no other alternative than violence—to retaliate with similar forms.

Mankind has conceived history as a series of battles; hitherto it has considered fighting as the main thing in life.

This is a perfect illustration of reverse causality. Hamas threatens and harasses Israel, but it is only Israel’s response that warrants close attention and scrutiny.

How often it consoles me to think of barbarism once more flooding the world, and real feelings and passions, however rudimentary, taking the place of our wretched hypocrisies.