Barbara Deming Quotes

But nonviolence was never for the oppressor; it was for the oppressed.

My interest in India's freedom will cease if she adopts violent means, for their fruit will not be freedom but slavery in disguise.

There is nothing but nonviolence to fall back upon for retaining our freedom, even as we had to do for gaining it.

Nonviolence is the means, the end for everyone is complete independence.

The spinning wheel is a symbol of nonviolence for me.

Nonviolence is not a weapon of the weak. It is a weapon of the strongest and bravest.

… true emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in the courts. It begins in woman's soul. History tells us that every oppressed class gained true liberation from its masters through its own efforts.

Civil disobedience has almost always been about expression. Generally, it's nonviolent, as defined by Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi, and King.

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

It is my hope that as the Negro plunges deeper into the quest for freedom and justice he will plunge even deeper into the philosophy of non-violence.

With God as witness, I want to proclaim this truth, that the way of violence cannot bring Swaraj, it can only lead to disaster.

Transformation is only valid if it is carried out with the people, not for them. Liberation is like a childbirth, and a painful one. The person who emerges is a new person: no longer either oppressor or oppressed, but a person in the process of achieving freedom. It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors.

The force generated by nonviolence is infinitely greater than the force of all the arms created by man's ingenuity.

There is a more excellent way, of love and nonviolent protest.

Do not resist the evil-doer and take no part in doing so, either in the violent deeds of the administration, in the law courts, the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, and no one in the world will be able to enslave you.

I think we brought to the world, the United States anyway, the whole idea of boycotting as a nonviolent tactic. I think we showed the world that nonviolence can work to make social change.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.

It will be hard to find a parallel in history in which unarmed people have represented the urge for freedom, turning their armlessness into the central means for deliverance.

We have learned that change cannot come through war. War is not a feasible tool to use in fighting against the oppression we face. War has caused more problems. We cannot embrace that path.

Nonviolence to be worth anything has to work in the face of hostile forces.

Disobedience to be civil has to be open and nonviolent.

Nonviolence is a plant of slow growth, it grows imperceptibly but surely.

Nonviolent non-co-operation is the only alternative to anarchy and worse.

No power on earth can resist the lovers of liberty who are ready not to kill opponents, but be killed by them.

Nonviolence of the strong is infinitely braver than their violence.