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Nonviolence Quotes

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Nonviolence Quotes

“I’m all for awareness, critical thinking, even healthy doses of skepticism. But in the end, I don’t feel that the “information war” is a battle worth fighting because it simply can’t be won. The Dragon can’t be defeated on its own turf (the Matrix) using its own “operating system” (the installed one we think of as our minds). As powerful as he was, not even Neo could defeat the Architect when he finally “met his maker.” Heck, he couldn’t even overpower his shadow, Agent Smith, until he wised up and simply stopped fighting.”

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Book:Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality
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“Agape is disinterested love. It is a love in which the individual seeks not his own good, but the good of his neighbor (I Cor. 10:24). Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes. It is an entirely "neighbor-regarding concern for others," which discovers the neighbor in every man it meets. Therefore agape makes no distinction between friend and enemy; it is directed toward both.”

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Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“One of the most damaging, longest-lasting consequences of the War on Terror years is an utter obliteration of the obvious moral case for nonviolence. The argument that violence in any form debases us and marks the instant failure of all involved is much more difficult to make when the state regularly engages in or approves of wholesale violence against civilians and combatants alike. Instead, the case for nonviolence becomes, in the ugliest way, pragmatic: the state wants violence, because in that playing field it maintains every advantage, from bigger guns to total immunity to the privilege of perpetual victimhood.”

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Book:One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
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“God said: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” Only peace and love drive out darkness and hate from the lives of humanity. Violence is always inferior to the nonviolent proliferation of peace and love. Incorporate your consciousness of reality uplift fellowshipping and tranquility universally!”

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Author:Joseph S. Spence Sr.
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“In my weekly remarks as president, I stressed that the use of violence in our struggle would be both impractical and immoral. To meet hate with retaliatory hate would do nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love; we must meet physical force with soul force. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding.”

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Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“A fifth point concerning nonviolent resistance is that it avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. The nonviolent resister would contend that in the struggle for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter or indulging in hate campaigns. To retaliate in kind would do nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can only be done by projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives.”

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Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“Christian non-violence does not encourage or excuse hatred of a special class, nation or social group. It is not merely anti-this or that. In other words, the Evangelical hate for realism which is demanded of the Christian should make it impossible for him to generalize about "the wicked" against whom he takes up moral arms in a struggle for righteous-ness. He will not let himself be persuaded that the adversary is totally wicked and can therefore never be reasonable or well-intentioned, and hence need never be listened to. This attitude, which defeats the very purpose of non-violence—openness, communication, dialogue—often accounts for the fact that some acts of civil disobedience merely antagonize the adversary without making him willing to communicate in any way whatever, except with bullets or missiles. Thomas à Becket, in Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral, debated with himself, fearing that he might be seeking Martyrdom merely in order to demonstrate his own righteousness and the King's injustice: "This is the treason, to do the right thing for the wrong reason.”

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Book:Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice
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“But I am also concerned about our moral uprightness and the health of our souls. Therefore I must oppose any attempt to gain our freedom by the methods of malice, hate, and violence that have characterized our oppressors. Hate is just as injurious to the hater as it is to the hated. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Many of our inner conflicts are rooted in hate. This is why psychiatrists say, “Love or perish.” Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

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Book:The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“Among all the methods, non-violence is most successful, and I strongly believe that only non-violence can set the true mood of peace and harmony among the nuclear nations. Our experiments with non-violence should be more wide, more engaging and more humble.”

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Book:Nuclear Weapons Free World - Peace on the Earth
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“We should not be surprised that more and more people feel comfortable about consuming animal products. After all, they are being assured by the “experts” that suffering is being decreased and they can buy “happy” meat, “free-range” eggs, etc.. These products even come with labels approved of by animal organizations. The animal welfare movement is actually encouraging the “compassionate” consumption of animal products. Animal welfare reforms do very little to increase the protection given to animal interests because of the economics involved: animals are property. They are things that have no intrinsic or moral value. This means that welfare standards, whether for animals used as foods, in experiments, or for any other purpose, will be low and linked to the level of welfare needed to exploit the animal in an economically efficient way for the particular purpose. Put simply, we generally protect animal interests only to the extent we get an economic benefit from doing so. The concept of “unnecessary” suffering is understood as that level of suffering that will frustrate the particular use. And that can be a great deal of suffering. Killing Animals and Making Animals Suffer | Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach”

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Author:Gary L. Francione
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“Give me a pen, I'll give you peace (Sonnet) One pen can defeat a thousand guns, that's why books get banned, not guns. There's nothing more dangerous than books that radicalize you against war. When you take away fear from the citizens, you take away their initiative for war. And when citizens no longer conform to war, that's the biggest threat to political power. You cannot ask citizens to pay for the bombs, if they believe more in peace than paranoia. Stupid taxpayers are the biggest sponsors of war, patriotism is genocide, military is massacre. I have zero tolerance for any civilian, politician or scholar who takes pride in the military - go back to the jungle, because that's where you belong, with the rest of your animal society.”

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Book:Azad Earth Army: When The World Cries Blood
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“It is impossible even to begin the act of loving one's enemies without the prior acceptance of the necessity, over and over again, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury upon us. Second, we must recognize that the evil deed of the enemy-neighbor, the thing that hurts, never quite expresses all that he is. An element of goodness may be found even in our worst enemy. Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against ourselves. ... This simply means that there is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. ... The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”

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Author:Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“Daddy said, in 'I Have a Dream', this is a part that most people missed in his speech, 'We must forever conduct ourselves on the high plane of dignity and discipline.' He was talking about how we talk, too. Words are power. [...] Death and life and the power of the tongue. You can murder somebody with your tongue. So when people say 'I'm not violent' because they don't do anything physically, it's not that. For some reason, people think love is some namby-pamby weak kind of thing. It's not. [...] Nonviolence for us is a love-centered way of thinking.”

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Author:Dr. Bernice A. King
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“To practice is not to practice for ourselves alone. We practice for everyone. We should be proud to say, Violence, it may come from somewhere else, but not from me. Hatred, discrimination, it may come from somewhere else, but not from me.”

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Book:The Ultimate Dimension : An Advanced Dharma Retreat on the Avatamsaka and Lotus Sutras
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“Everywhere that there is violence, there are also ordinary yet extraordinary people fighting it.... They are courageous, smart, innovative citizens taking risks for what they believe in. They are people who understand the ins and outs of violence in their village or neighborhood--and find ways to confront it.”

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Book:The Trouble with the Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of International Peacebuilding
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“Dr. King's policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That's very good. He only made one fallacious assumption: In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.”

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Author:Stokely Carmichael
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“Love, for Gandhi, was a potent instrument for social and collective transformation. It was in this Gandhian emphasis on love and nonviolence that I discovered the method for social reform that I had been seeking for so many months. The intellectual and moral satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social-contracts theory of Hobbes, the “back to nature” optimism of Rousseau, the superman philosophy of Nietzsche, I found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi. I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.”

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Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“A second basic fact that characterizes nonviolence is that it does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding. The nonviolent resister must often express his protest through noncoöperation or boycotts, but he realizes that these are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.”

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Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“The answer is found in the realization that unearned suffering is redemptive. Suffering, the nonviolent resister realizes, has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities. "Things of fundamental importance to people are not secured by reason alone, but have to be purchased with their suffering," said Gandhi. He continues: "Suffering is infinitely more powerful than the law of the jungle for converting the opponent and opening his ears which are otherwise shut to the voice of reason.”

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Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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