Barbara Deming Quotes

The power of nonviolent resistance can only come from honest working of the constructive programme.

Passive resistance is the resistance which does not resist.

The power of unarmed nonviolence is any day far superior to that of armed force.

Through Gandhi and my own life experience, I have learned about nonviolence. I believe that human life is a very special gift from God, and that no one has a right to take that away in any cause, however just. I am convinced that nonviolence is more powerful than violence.

Disobedience to be civil has to be open and nonviolent.

However much I may sympathise with and admire worthy motives, I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes.

The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.

It's soul force that removed the English from India. It's soul force that brought down the Berlin Wall. It's soul force that gave life to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s struggle for civil rights.

History has no record of a nation having adopted nonviolent resistance.

The law of violence is not a law, but a simple fact which can only be a law when it does not meet with protest and opposition. It is like the cold, darkness and weight, which people had to put up with until recently when warmth, illumination and leverage were discovered.

I have been practicing, with scientific precision, nonviolence and its possibilities for an unbroken period of over fifty years.

Satyagraha is a force that has come to stay. No force in the world can kill it.

Power to the peaceful!

Our aim is not to do things by violence to opponents.

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

For a satyagrahi brigade only those are eligible who believe in ahimsa and satya.

It is claimed for satyagraha that it is a complete substitute for violence or war.

Nonviolence is the rock on which the whole structure of non-co-operation is built.

We're not really pacifists, we're nonviolent soldiers.

I knew A.J. Muste very well. I tried for a while to be like he was, and that is a total pacifist. But then Margot [my wife] hit me hard in the stomach one day to prove to me that I wasn't as perfect a pacifist as I thought I was.

Our nonviolence in respect of the Government is a result of our incapacity for effective violence.

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

Passive resistance is a sport for gentleman (and ladies)-just like the pursuit of war, a heroic enterprise for the ruling classes but a grievous burden on the rest.

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.