Sample sentences for COERCE - verbalworkout.com

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Definition

force to do — possibly by physical, moral or intellectual means

It is better to convince than to coerce.

coerce = force someone to do something

The legislative bodies debated about what techniques could be used by the CIA to coerce a suspect into talking.
..what distinguishes the government from the private sector is the power of coercion. In some ways the most insignificant government bureaucrat — the parking attendant, the IRS examiner, the guy at the Department of Motor Vehicles, the immigration official — has more power over me than the CEO of General Motors or General Electric.
Dinesh D'Souza -- Letters to a Young Conservative
To have positive liberty, he explained, is to take control of one's own mind; to be liberated from irrational fears and beliefs, from addictions, superstitions and all other forms of self-coercion.
Tara Westover -- Educated

coercion = the process of forcing someone to do something

That you didn't kidnap her, for instance, or that the relatives weren't coerced.
Barbara Kingsolver -- The Bean Trees

coerced = forced

I thought of positive liberty, and of what it might mean to self-coerce, until my head thrummed with a dull ache.
Tara Westover -- Educated

coerce = force someone to do something

I had no idea what it meant to self-coerce.
Tara Westover -- Educated

coerce = force someone to do something

...virtue cannot be coerced into people because, unless freely chosen, virtue is meaningless.
Jonah Goldberg -- Liberty, Freedom, & the French Maid -- http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg122000.shtml (retrieved 06/29/06)
The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated – a system of checks and balances.
Milton Friedman -- Capitalism and Freedom
If someone puts a gun to your head to get you to give up your bus seat to an old lady, you are not being virtuous, you are being coerced.
Jonah Goldberg -- Liberty, Freedom, & the French Maid -- http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg122000.shtml (retrieved 06/29/06)
Most important, the net benefit standard does not provide a rationale for a coercive transfer from some people to other people.
Cato Handbook for Congress: Regulatory Reform: No Silver Bullet -- http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb105-30.html (retrieved 06/28/06)

(editor's note: The suffix "-ive" converts a word into an adjective; though over time, what was originally an adjective often comes to be used as a noun. The adjective pattern means tending to and is seen in words like attractive, impressive, and supportive. Examples of the noun include narrative, alternative, and detective.)

We also endorse efforts to protect children and their parents from being coerced into administering a controlled substance in order to attend school.
2004 Republican Party Platform -- http://www.gop.com/media/2004platform.pdf (retrieved 06/28/06)
Moreover, the high costs of litigation were a powerful weapon with which to coerce companies to settle claims.
Adam C. Pritchard -- Should Congress Repeal Securities Class Action Reform? -- http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-471es.html (retrieved 06/29/06)
...before we, as the state, start to coerce those individuals who we think will prove dangerous to us, we have to be damn sure that they pose an imminent peril to our own safety...
Richard A. Epstein -- Skepticism and Freedom (speech based on book) -- http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.16651,filter.all/pub_detail.asp (retrieved 06/29/06)
There is no evidence of mental illness, or of coercion on any part.
Jojo Moyes -- Me Before You
And now dear lady, let me remove this unpleasant coercion, which has been placed before your pretty mouth.
Baroness Orczy -- The Scarlet Pimpernel
Their alternative — there was an alternative, of course, since Milo detested coercion and was a vocal champion of freedom of choice — was to starve.
Joseph Heller -- Catch-22
They could coerce some of us into fighting with misinformation, or by appealing to greed—any number of ways.
Veronica Roth -- Divergent
For there was then no government by Coercion, but only by Doctrine, and Perswading.
Thomas Hobbes -- Leviathan
Growing rice is too complicated and intricate for a system that requires farmers to be coerced and bullied into going out into the fields each morning.
Malcolm Gladwell -- Outliers

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