violence desensitization Quotes

War, we have come to believe, is a spectator sport. The military and the press have turned war into a vast video arcade game. Its very essence-death-is hidden from public view.

I hate those movies where hundreds of people get blown up and there are jokes afterward. They poison the soul.

Why are sex and violence always linked? I'm afraid they'll blur together in people's minds - sexandviolence - until we can't tell them apart. I expect to hear a newscaster say, "The mob became unruly and the police were forced to resort to sex."

The people that live in these districts, they don't want to watch it. They don't want to see their children die or killing other people. The only people that it is entertainment to are the people in the capital that have been brainwashed and are misguided and living in a completely unrealistic kind of world.

They do the same thing [with cigarette] that they do in the kind of action picture where you know 200 people are killed and then there's no pain.

I believe the entertainment industry cannot portray on film people gunned down in cold blood, in living color, and not have it affect the attitudes and thoughts of some of the people who see it... I believe that the desensitizing effect of such media abuses on the hearts and souls of those who are exposed to them results in a partial fulfillment of the Savior's statement that 'because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold'.

The more children see of violence, the more numb they are to the deadly consequences of violence. Now, video games like 'Mortal Kombat,' 'Killer Instinct,' and 'Doom,' the very game played obsessively by the two young men who ended so many lives in Littleton, make our children more active participants in simulated violence.

America has become numb to violence because it just drowns in it, day in and day out.

The worst thing about this modern world is that people think you get killed on television with zero pain and zero blood. It must enter into kids' heads that it's not very messy to kill somebody, and it doesn't hurt that much. That's a real sickness to me. That's a real sick thing.

What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another? What broke when he could bring himself to thrust down the knife into the warm flesh, to bring down the axe on the living head, to cleave down between the seeing eyes, to shoot the gun that would drive death into the beating heart?

Our readiness to allow arms to be purchased at will and fired at whim; by allowing our movie and television screens to teach our children that the hero is one who masters the art of shooting and the technique of killing […] we have created an atmosphere in which violence and hatred have become popular pastimes.

Why are people so afraid of giving their kids necessary information that might prevent an unwanted pregnancy or disease? But they're not worried about the violent nature of video games or movies or books.

Boys and girls, And women, that would groan to see a child Pull off an insect's leg, all read of war, The best amusement for our morning meal.

Violence is not completely fatal until it ceases to disturb us.

Parents' tolerance of violence is so different to their tolerance of sexuality. If violence is involved in the sexuality it's somehow perceived as entertainment, but if love is involved with sexuality it's seen as pornographic and is not acceptable.

You literally can shoot someone in the face on television and a 7-year-old can watch it. But you can't show the slight of a man's hip, because dear God, someone might think of sex. And while we all hope our kids grow up to have sex, we do not hope they grow up to shoot someone in the face.

The only way I can protect him now is to make sure he never understands how easy killing can become.

People are sort of numb to watching violence, but sexual activity is still as strong as it ever was in terms of generating response.

Regardless of how often the appetite for entertainment violence becomes addictive, increased exposure does risk further desensitizing viewers. And the element of pleasure that they derive may lead them to regard violence as a more acceptable way of dealing with problems, and victimization as more tolerable so long as it befalls others, not themselves.