Nelson Mandela Quotes

First, the urban guerrilla must use ... violence ... to win a popular base. Then the government has no alternative except to intensify repression. The police roundups, house searches, arrests of innocent people make life ... unbearable. The general sentiment is that the government is unjust, incapable of solving problems and resorts ... to the physical liquidation of its opponents ...

Unless something drastic is done very soon, then bloodshed and violence are going to happen…almost inevitably… A people made desperate by despair and injustice and oppression will use desperate means.

If the oppressor uses peaceful means, the oppressed will never resort to violence. But if the oppressor uses violence, then the oppressed have no other alternative than violence—to retaliate with similar forms.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It's not if, it's when.

History dictates that unresponsive governments force ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

If officials are too forceful, people will revolt.

The use of violence as an instrument of persuasion is therefore inviting and seems to the discontented to be the only effective protest

Rebellion is the necessary result of injustice. It may not always achieve its purpose, or be intended to do so, but a conviction of injustice endured must precede articulate rebellion. Nor is it always certain that injustice will be followed by rebellion – it would be very much better for the world if this was the case. But where the victims of aggression or custom are ignorant and disunited, the opportunities for reasoned and effective revolt are practically reduced to nothing…

At the end of the day, violence was the only weapon that would destroy apartheid.

Violence is the only language understood by Mr. Lloyd George and his ministers.

I've never really subscribed to the theory that repression breeds rebellion. I don't think that's really true.

The world is in such a place of social unrest and there's so much violence.

Listen, 'The Purge' actually exists in some form or another in many places around the world when you think about it.

In the relations of a weak Government and a rebellious people there comes a time when every act of the authorities exasperates the masses, and every refusal to act excites their contempt.

Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down.

I have busted more hippies' noses than all the narcs in the free world.

The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone.

Do you think that revolutions are made with rose water?

I'm still very aware of the violence in our culture, more so than other people. I know where it comes from when someone is trying to suppress someone else, sometimes they fight back.

My view is when you use violence on your people, that never ends well.

When anarchy is declared, the first thing we do, let's kill all the anarchists.

So, these political activities will create friction in and of themselves, and in this environment of friction there'll be additional violence.

Revolution is born as a social entity within the oppressor society.

a government which goes counter to the will of the nation must be overthrown at once... It is dangerous to drive the people to despair and force them to demand by violence that which they as yet seek only by constitutional means.