Evo Morales Quotes

Civil disobedience is the only nonviolent escape from the soul-destroying heat of violence.

In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist.

Resisting is worth doing.

We are on the threshold of a significant breakthrough, and the greatest weapon is the mass demonstration.

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

Mass civil disobedience can use rage as a constructive and creative force.

Opposition doesn't mean to take arms and kill people and destroy everything.

If the government or the parties won't address our needs, we will. It's about direct action, even civil disobedience.

Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. And then he wins the world peace prize and becomes president of South Africa. That's how change happens. It's very important not to differentiate protest from the democratic process.

The lyrics stand today (1980). They're still my feeling about politics. I want to see the plan. I want to know what you're going to do after you've knocked it all down. I mean, can't we use some of it? What's the point of bombing Wall Street? If you want to change the system, change the system. It's no good shooting people.

I witnessed a lot of violence, and I found myself asking the question: Do you ever use violence to try to bring about political change?

For mass struggles, nonviolence is essential.

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

When that devil's bullet lodged itself inside the body of Martin Luther King, he had already begun an astonishing mobilization of poor, Black, white, latino Americans who had nothing to lose. They would challenge our government to eliminate exploitative, merciless, and war-mongering policies, nationwide, or else "tie up the country" through "means of civil disobedience." Dr. King intended to organize those legions into "coercive direct actions" that would make of Babylon a dysfunctional behemoth begging for relief. Is it any wonder he was killed?

The revolution starts now.

I myself am a very, very peaceful person. Throughout our history, from our own American revolution to the resistance against apartheid in South Africa, to labor strikes in the US, people have resorted to violence to achieve a more progressive society, from time to time.

I think, you're not blagging me on this ridiculous journey, with this bit of paper. I think if you want to change things, it's not with an X on a piece of paper, it's with an X on someone's forehead.

At the meeting I argued that the state had given us no alternative to violence. I said it was wrong and immoral to subject our people to armed attacks by the state without offering them some kind of alternative. I mentioned again that people on their own had taken up arms. Violence would begin whether we initiated it or not. Would it not be better to guide this violence ourselves, according to principles where we saved lives by attacking symbols of oppression, and not people? If we did not take the lead now, I said, we would soon be latecomers and followers to a movement we did not control.

I favor massive civil disobedience, among other things. It is not the only thing that is used to protest any grievance in society. But it is one of the most effective under certain conditions.

I think direct political action, civil disobedience, in particular, is something to be taken very seriously.

Every revolution by force only puts more violent means of enslavement into the hands of the persons in power.

Occupy Wall Street is a real movement.

The revolutions of the Arab Spring happened because people realized they were the power.

You can't change the system through violence.

If a thousand [citizens] were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.