* When we hear the other person's feelings and needs, we recognize our common humanity. -- Marshall Rosenberg

* What shall we choose? Violence or non violence? …We have to choose knowing that when we are violent to our enemies, we do violence to ourselves. When we brutalize others, we brutalize ourselves. And eventually we run the risk of becoming our oppressors. -- Arundhati Roy

The Season For Nonviolence has grown into an important educational and media opportunity to bring communities together, empowering them to envision and help create a nonviolent world, one heart and one day at a time. Throughout the 64-day campaign, events and activities for peace and nonviolence take place all around the world, highlighting existing peacebuilding initiatives and inspiring new year-round activities for a more peaceful, nonviolent, just and sustainable world. -- Robert Alan Silverstein

"The tradition of nonviolence, optimism, concern for the individual, and unconditional compassion that developed in Tibet is the culmination of a slow inner revolution, a cool one, hard to see, that began 2,500 years ago with the Buddha's insight about the end of suffering. What I have learned from these people has forever changed my life, and I believe their culture contains an inner science particularly relevant to the difficult time in which we live." -- Robert Thurman

"All who affirm the use of violence admit it is only a means to achieve justice and peace. But peace and justice are nonviolence...the final end of history. Those who abandon nonviolence have no sense of history. Rathy they are bypassing history, freezing history, betraying history."
-- André Trocmé

 

* "Nonviolence is the answer for the questions of our time. Love will conquer evil every time." -- James Twyman

Nonviolent revolution does not seek the liberation simply of a class or race or nation. It seeks the liberation of mankind…
-- Council of the War Resisters' International

 

We desire peace - and that is why we have never resorted to physical force. We crave for justice - and that is why we are so persistent in the struggle for our rights. We seek freedom of convictions - and that is why we have never attempted to enslave man's conscience, nor shall we ever attempt to do so. We are fighting for the right of the working people to association and for the dignity of human labor. We respect the dignity and the rights of every man and every nation. The path to a brighter future of the world leads through honest reconciliation of the conflicting interests and not through hatred and bloodshed. To follow that path means to enhance the moral power of the all-embracing idea of human solidarity. -- Lech Walesa

* "The power of nonviolence is not circumstance-specific. It is as applicable to the problems that confront us now, as to problems that confronted generations in the past. It is not a medicine or a solution so much as a healing process. It is the active spiritual immune system of humanity." -- Marianne Williamson The Department of Peace would take a more human approach to healing our society, looking not merely for ways we can destroy an enemy, but for more powerful ways to create new friends. While the State Department engages in international diplomacy, there is no domestic parallel. There is no department seeking to harness the power of a nonviolent heart. -- Marianne Williamson

* "In a world where change is inevitable and continuous, the need to achieve that change without violence is essential for survival." -- Andrew Young

* Our planet is dying - both spiritually and physically. Fear, aggression and greed, narrow-minded national interests and immature dominance and control over others is a common theme in most countries. However, there are more and more people who define themselves as global citizens, who know that life is intimately interconnected, and that we can never be fully human whilst others continue to suffer, and who know that love, justice and nonviolence is the very essence of life. And what gives me hope is the very many different ways in which ordinary people are taking responsibility. They are creating the changes needed to pass beyond war and injustice, control and dominance and towards a free, just, loving, and diverse world. -- Angie Zelter

* The strike, the boycott, the refusal to serve, the ability to paralyze the functioning of a complex social structure-these remain potent weapons against the most fearsome state or corporate power. -- Howard Zinn

Quotes for Nonviolence

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