Julia Bacha Quotes

For mass struggles, nonviolence is essential.

In recent years, many seem to have spent their lives protesting. Perhaps they have felt to do this because they have felt repressed or wished to bring about change or have acted out of selfish reasons, thinking that if they tore the house down they might end up with a shingle.

I don’t believe in eye-for-an-eye. The most incredible, sustainable, beautiful movements have been non-violent movements of civil disobedience.

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.

Nonviolent action, the Negro saw, was the way to supplement, not replace, the progress of change. It was the way to divest himself of passivity without arraying himself in vindictive force.

Non-violence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-cooperation with evil.

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

A boycott is the most peaceful and passive kind of protest there is and can be. We do not say we hate you or even say that you are wrong. We just say that we don’t want to ride your bus.

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

You don't need role models to be part of a social movement as long as you care about the issues.

When I think about protest, I worry so much that people think about it only as standing in the streets. And I say that as someone who has been standing in the streets of cities across the country - but at the root of it is this idea of telling the truth in public.

With Black Lives Matter, we knew from the very beginning that it wasn't just going to live online. We were like, 'We're creating this thing and then it's also going to live with black folks on the street and protests and organizations.' It was very important for us to use the hashtag as a way to have a larger conversation and as an organizing tool.

Non-violence has suffered its biggest defeat in the hands of people who most want to talk about it.

I don't accept armed struggle. Maybe it was the way in the '50s and '60s, but we want a democratic revolution.

I invite even the school of violence to give this peaceful non-co-operation a trial.

Whatever strength the masses have is due entirely to ahimsa, however imperfect or defective its practice might have been.

The great news is that that sort of group of people and that sort of sensibility is beginning to become more active again. And I think partly it just has to do with the time. It has to do with the culture of resistance. The necessity is for us to pull together and to speak up and to make work and be visible.

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

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

[A.J. Muste] never engaged in violence but he believed, as [Mahatma] Gandhi did - and he knew Gandhi slightly - he believed that a pacifist had to be active in the community.

Before civil disobedience can be practised on a vast scale, people must learn the art of civil or voluntary obedience.

Nonviolence is not a cloistered virtue, confined only to the rishi and the cave-dweller.

Disobedience to be civil has to be open and nonviolent.

I have no weapon but nonviolence.

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