Quotes by Krishnamurti
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Violence

The thing you fight, you become
The thing you fight, you become.
—KRISHNAMURTI
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We have created the enemy, the bandit, and becoming ourselves the enemy in no way brings about an end to enmity. We have to understand the cause of enmity and cease to feed it by our thought, feeling, and action. This is an arduous task demanding constant self-awareness and intelligent pliability, for what we are the society, the state is. The enemy and the friend are the outcome of our thought and action. We are responsible for creating enmity and so it is more important to be aware of our own thought and action than to be concerned with the foe and the friend, for right thinking puts an end to division. Love transcends the friend and the enemy.

A different response to anger
In the presence of a person who is angry, see what takes place if one is aware of it and does not respond. The moment one is aware of the other person’s anger and one does not react oneself, there is quite a different response.
—KRISHNAMURTI
Krishnamurti in Ojai, California 1980, Q&A Meeting 2
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In the presence of a person who is angry, see what takes place if one is aware of it and does not respond. The moment one is aware of the other person’s anger and one does not react oneself, there is quite a different response. One’s instinct is to respond to hate by hate, to anger by anger; there is the welling up chemically which creates in the system the nervous reactions. But quieten all this in the presence of anger, and a different action takes place.

Hatred furthers hatred
Action born of hatred can only create further hatred.
—KRISHNAMURTI
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You say you are angry when you hear of injustice. Is it because you love humanity, because you are compassionate? Do compassion and anger dwell together? Can there be justice when there is anger, hatred? You are perhaps angry at the thought of general injustice, cruelty, but your anger does not alter injustice or cruelty; it can only do harm. To bring about order, you yourself have to be thoughtful, compassionate. Action born of hatred can only create further hatred. There can be no righteousness where there is anger. Righteousness and anger cannot dwell together.

When you separate yourself, it breeds violence
When you separate yourself by belief, nationality or tradition, it breeds violence. So one who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, religion or political party, but is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.
—KRISHNAMURTI
From the book Freedom from the Known
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Now there are two primary schools of thought with regard to violence, one which says, `Violence is innate in man’ and the other which says, `Violence is the result of the social and cultural heritage in which man lives.’ We are not concerned with which school we belong to – it is of no importance. What is important is the fact that we are violent, not the reason for it.

Can we go beyond violence?
If we know how to look at violence, not only outwardly in society – the wars, riots, national antagonisms and class conflicts – but also in ourselves, perhaps we shall be able to go beyond it.
—KRISHNAMURTI
From the book Freedom from the Known
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