Bayard Rustin Quotes

There is a vast need for all types of protest today, whether it be civil disobedience, or whether it be on a - more conventional variety.

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

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

The absolute key issue is: how do you create enough political pressure? It's up to us to create that political will and there are tried and tested techniques for doing that. So we're talking about the need for civil disobedience that escalates into a rebellion and uprising.

The purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.

Violent resistance and nonviolent resistance share one very important thing in common: They are both a form of theater seeking an audience to their cause.

Passive resistance is the resistance which does not resist.

Direct action means resort to non-constitutional methods that can take any form which many suit the conditions under which we live. We cannot eliminate any methods.

Change comes when people are willing to commit acts of peaceful civil disobedience.

The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That's all.

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

Nonviolence is the rock on which the whole structure of non-co-operation is built.

There is a more excellent way, of love and nonviolent protest.

Nonviolent non-co-operation, I am convinced, is a sacred duty at times.

Protest is when I say I don't like this. Resistance is when I put an end to what I don't like. Protest is when I say I refuse to go along with this anymore. Resistance is when I make sure everybody else stops going along too.

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

I love the protests. And if you think about it, what better way to send a message to Wall Street than by sitting in a pup tent banging on a drum.

There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.

I have no weapon but nonviolence.

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

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

Resisting is worth doing.

In the very act of my non-co-operation, I am seeking their co-operation in my campaign.

When you hear me say "by any means necessary," I mean exactly that. I believe in anything that is necessary to correct unjust conditions-political, economic, social, physical, anything that is necessary.

Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it. It is a corrective to the sluggishness of "the proper channels," a way of breaking through passages blocked by tradition and prejudice. It is disruptive and troublesome, but it is a necessary disruption, a healthy troublesome.