Daniel Berrigan Quotes

Nonviolence to be worth anything has to work in the face of hostile forces.

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

Nonviolent action, born of the awareness of suffering and nurtured by love, is the most effective way to confront adversity.

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.

We are constantly being astonished these days at the amazing discoveries in the field of violence. But I maintain that far more undreamt of and seemingly impossible discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence.

Nonviolence is an intensely active force when properly understood and used.

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

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

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.

I cannot make myself believe that God wanted me to hate. I'm tired of violence, I've seen too much of it. I've seen such hate on the faces of too many sheriffs in the South. And I'm not going to let my oppressor dictate to me what method I must use. Our oppressors have used violence. Our oppressors have used hatred. Our oppressors have used rifles and guns. I'm not going to stoop down to their level. I want to rise to a higher level. We have a power that can't be found in Molotov cocktails.

Sometimes when we're incensed by the rancid tide of injustice, the impulse is to attack. We must avoid this. We have learned that violence as a means is always unsuccessful.

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

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.

Nonviolence is the most potent technique for oppressed people. Unearned suffering is redemptive.

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

Nonviolence with Dr. [Martin Luther ]King is only a method. That's not his objective.

The principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites-Acquiescence and violence -while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both.

Nonviolence is a universal law acting under all circumstances.

Nonviolence in politics is a new weapon in the process of evolution; its vast possibilities are yet unexplored.

The essence of nonviolence is love. Out of love and the willingness to act selflessly, strategies, tactics, and techniques for a nonviolent struggle arise naturally. Nonviolence is not a dogma; it is a process.

Nonviolence, applied to very large masses of mankind, is a new experiment in the history of the world.

Non violence means people in action. People have to understand that with non-violence goes a hell of a lot of organization.

Civil disobedience does not admit of any violence or countenancing of violence directly or indirectly.

Nonviolence is a universal principle and its operation is not limited by a hostile environment.

The nation cannot be kept on the nonviolent path by violence.