Barbara Deming Quotes

Nonviolent tactics can move into action on our behalf men not naturally inclined to act for us.

If the law is a bad law, there is always the contingent right to take action that you would not otherwise take.

Non-co-operation means nothing less than training in self-sacrifice.

My first civil disobedience arrest for social justice was in 1986 for protesting the SDI.

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

Nonviolence is fine as long as it works.

You don't have a peaceful revolution. You don't have a turn-the-cheek revolution. There's no such thing as a nonviolent revolution.

I believe boycotts are wrong.

King consciously steered away from legal claims and instead relied on civil disobedience.

When you do something in a nonviolent way, people will die and there will be casualties. But you're taking a different point of view that has a power.

Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play.

The people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to the cops just isn't going to work. This thinking is fostered by the establishment; they like nothing better than love and nonviolence.

Nothing is left for us except the boycott .... this is not merely counsel, but a positive command binding all in conscience under the pain of sin.

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

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

Movements that hector and punish rather than educate and reform have a way of inviting derision and reaction.

There is a need for a movement of non-violent direct action.

If an injustice requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the government machine.

I think of protest as confrontation and disruption, as the end of silence.

Civil disobedience is a viable political tactic, and a non-violent tactic.

Time and time again we forget all too easily that nonviolent action embraces a wide and imaginative range of behavior which can always be stepped up.

Non-violence is a piece of theatre. You need an audience. What can you do when you have no audience?

The inability of those in power to still the voices of their own consciences is the great force leading to change.

In some cases non-violence requires more militancy than violence.

Rebellion cannot exist without the feeling that somewhere, in some way, you are justified.