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NONVIOLENCE QUOTES

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* I think the only choice that will enable us to hold to our vision. . . is one that abandons the concept of naming enemies and adopts a concept familiar to the nonviolent tradition: naming behavior that is oppressive
-- Barbara Deming

Gandhi once declared that it was his wife who unwittingly taught him the effectiveness of nonviolence. Who better than women should know that battles can be won without resorting to physical strength.
-- Barbara Deming

A liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.
-- Barbara Deming

* Nonviolent Peaceforce ...is building a large-scale professional force of well-trained unarmed peacekeepers ... This nonviolent peacekeeping provides an alternative to which we may say YES when we say NO to war.
-- Mel Duncan

* "We demand a non-violent world where human security is the basis of our common global security. People have the right to live in a world where the basic needs of all peoples are addressed. No more military attacks. No more war.”
-- Shirin Ebadi

"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming ALL other living beings, we are still savages."
-- Thomas Edison

* "Violence sometimes may have cleared away obstructions quickly, but it never has proved itself creative."
-- Albert Einstein

* If the Gandhian moment is to be realized, then it must encompass both concerns with the violence of weapons and the violence of inequitable structures of domination and exploitation. Perhaps, unwittingly, the visibility of this violence due to the globalization of media coverage, especially TV, will hasten the process by which the peoples of the world sick from violence and the suffering entailed, will hasten the awakening of conscience and commitment needed to carry forward the struggle for a nonviolent world order. This is as much as we can hope for at present, but such a hope will certainly prove vain if we do not also act to the fullness of our individual and collective capacities to rid the world of war and violence.
-- Richard Falk

* Nonviolence is something very powerful, and the power behind it is not weapons, but the support of the people.
-- Arun Gandhi

So many people around the world have used nonviolence as a way to resolve a conflict that they faced in their lives. And they continue to use it everywhere all over the world there. And I think, in a way, nonviolence is our nature. Violence is not really our nature. If violence was our nature, we wouldn’t need military academies and martial arts institutes to teach us how to kill and destroy people. We ought to have been born with those instincts. But the fact that we have to learn the art of killing means that it’s a learned experience. And we can always unlearn it.
-- Arun Gandhi

Nonviolence, therefore, can be described as an honest and diligent pursuit of truth. It could also mean the search for the meaning of life or the purpose of life, questions that have tormented humankind for centuries. The fact that we have not been able to find satisfactory answers to these questions does not mean there is no answer. It only means we have not searched with any degree of honesty. The search has to be both external and internal. We seek to ignore this crucial search because the sacrifices it demands are revolutionary. It means moving away from greed, selfishness, possessiveness, and dominance to love, compassion, understanding, and respect.
-- Arun Gandhi

* "There is no hope for the aching world except through the narrow and straight path of nonviolence."
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi

"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi

[He] alone is truly nonviolent who remains nonviolent even though he has the ability to strike.
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi

"Victory attained by violence is tantamount to defeat for it is only momentary."
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi

"Nonviolence is not to be used ever as the shield of the coward. It is the weapon of the brave." -- Mohandas K. Gandhi
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi

"Things undreamt of are daily being seen, the impossible is ever becoming possible. We are constantly being astonished these days at the amazing discoveries in the field of violence. But I maintain that far more undreamt of and seemingly impossible discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence."
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi

In the application of the method of non-violence, one must believe in the possibility of every person, however depraved, being reformed under humane and skilled treatment.
--
Mohandas K. Gandhi

"Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man."
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi

Courtesy towards opponents and eagerness to understand their view-point is the ABC of non-violence.
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi

"Generally speaking, the first nonviolent act is not fasting, but dialogue. The other side, the adversary, is recognized as a person, he is taken out of his anonymity and exists in his own right, for what he really is, a person. To engage someone in dialogue is to recognize him, have faith in him. At every step in the nonviolent struggle, at every level we try tirelessly to establish a dialogue, or reestablish it if it has broken down. When I say 'the other side,' that could be a group of persons or a government."
-- Hildegard Goos-Mayr

"All ideologies end up killing people. If you separate love from nonviolence you turn nonviolence into an ideology, a gimmick. Structures that are not inhabited by justice and love have no liberating or reconciling force, and are never sources of life."
-- Jean Goss

Quotes for Nonviolence

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Season For Nonviolence - January 30-April 4

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