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Nonviolence Quotes

Browse 747 quotes about Nonviolence.

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Nonviolence Quotes

“When these incidents started, I took them in stride, feeling that they were the work of a few hotheads who would soon be discouraged when they discovered that we would not fight back. But as the weeks passed, I began to see that many of the threats were in earnest. Soon I felt myself faltering and growing in fear. One day, a white friend told me that he had heard from reliable sources that plans were being made to take my life. For the first time I realized that something could happen to me. One night at a mass meeting, I found myself saying: 'If one day you find me sprawled out dead, I do not want you to retaliate with a single act of violence. I urge you to continue protesting with the same dignity and discipline you have shown so far.' A strange silence came over the audience.”

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Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“A mass movement of a militant quality that is not at the same time committed to nonviolence tends to generate conflict, which in turn breeds anarchy. The support of the participants and the sympathy of the uncommitted are both inhibited by the threat that bloodshed will engulf the community. This reaction in turn encourages the opposition to threaten and resort to force. When, however, the mass movement repudiates violence while moving resolutely toward its goal, its opponents are revealed as the instigators and practitioners of violence if it occurs. Then public support is magnetically attracted to the advocates of nonviolence while those who employ violence are literally disarmed by overwhelming sentiment against their stand.”

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Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“This method of nonviolence will not work miracles overnight. Men are not easily moved from their mental ruts, their prejudiced and irrational feelings. When the underprivileged demand freedom, the privileged first react with bitterness and resistance. Even when the demands are couched in nonviolent terms, the initial response is the same.”

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Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“The nonviolent approach provides an answer to the long debated question of gradualism versus immediacy. On the one hand it prevents one from falling into the sort of patience which is an excuse for do-nothingism and escapism, ending up in standstillism. On the other hand it saves one from the irresponsible words which estrange without reconciling and the hasty judgment which is blind to the necessities of social progress. It recognizes the need for moving toward the goal of justice with wise restraint and calm reasonableness. But it also recognizes the immorality of slowing up in the move toward justice and capitulating to the guardians of an unjust status quo. It recognizes that social change cannot come overnight. But it causes one to work as if it were a possibility the next morning.”

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Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“There is nothing wrong with a traffic law which says you have to stop for a red light. But when a fire is raging, the fire truck goes right through that red light, and normal traffic had better get out of its way. Or, when a man is bleeding to death, the ambulance goes through those red lights at top speed. There is a fire raging now for the Negroes and the poor of this society. They are living in tragic conditions because of the terrible economic injustices that keep them locked in as an "under-class," as the sociologists are now calling it. Disinherited people all over the world are bleeding to death from deep social and economic wounds. They need brigades of ambulance drivers who will have to ignore the red lights of the present system until the emergency is solved.”

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Book:The Trumpet of Conscience
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“Revolution never happens because it is acceptable, it happens because everything else turns unacceptable. World War 3 has already begun, but unlike the previous times, it is not a war amongst nations, rather it's a war within nations between the forces of inclusion and reason, and the forces of separatism and superstition. And this World War will continue much longer than the previous two times, for this time, it's a war against the elements of inhumanity within our society, within ourselves, which unlike the previous times, cannot be treated by simply shooting down. Guns kill segregationists, not segregation. So this time, and now on, the revolution and all the future revolutions must continue without resorting to violence. I am not talking about simply nonviolence, I am talking about having an actual and utter repulsiveness towards violence. This is the fundamental requirement of a civilized revolution. Show strength through your resolve, not through the eagerness for violence. If a terrorist has a gun to your head, don't fight, stare down at them till they drop the gun (metaphorically speaking).”

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Book:Heart Force One: Need No Gun to Defend Society
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“The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides—and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist.”

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Book:Why We Can't Wait
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“Perhaps the greatest contribution that those of us who come from a Christian tradition can make is to throw out the old just-war theory, embrace the nonviolence of Jesus, refuse to kill one another, and truly follow his commandment to "love our enemies.”

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Book:The Vision of Peace: Faith and Hope in Northern Ireland
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“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”

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Book:Gandhi: Selected Writings
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“Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.”

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Book:Young India
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“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”

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Book:Gandhi: Selected Political Writings
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“I learnt the lesson on nonviolence from my wife, when I tried to bend her to my will. Her determined resistance to my will on the one hand, and her quiet submission to the suffering my stupidity involved on the other, ultimately made me ashamed of myself and cured me of my stupidity in thinking that I was born to rule over her.”

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Book:The Gandhi Reader: A Sourcebook of His Life and Writings
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“Nonviolence is a powerful as well as a just weapon. If you confront a man who has long been cruelly misusing you, and say, "Punish me, if you will; I do not deserve it, but I will accept it, so that the world will know I am right and you are wrong," then you wield a powerful and a just weapon. This man, your oppressor, is automatically morally defeated, and if he has any conscience, he is ashamed.”

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Author:Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“Be the change you want to see in your networks”

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Author:James H. Fowler
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“I myself would go for nonviolence if it was consistent, if everybody was going to be nonviolent all the time. I'd say, okay, let's get with it, we'll all be nonviolent. But I don't go along with any kind of nonviolence unless everybody's going to be nonviolent. If they make the Ku Klux Klan nonviolent, I'll be nonviolent. If they make the White Citizens Council nonviolent, I'll be nonviolent. But as long as you've got somebody else not being nonviolent, I don't want anybody coming to me talking any nonviolent talk.”

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Author:Malcolm X
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“I thought I was going to die a few times. On the Freedom Ride in the year 1961, when I was beaten at the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery, I thought I was going to die. On March 7th, 1965, when I was hit in the head with a night stick by a State Trooper at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, I thought I was going to die. I thought I saw death, but nothing can make me question the philosophy of nonviolence.”

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Author:John Lewis
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