Bernardine Dohrn Quotes

The use of violence is justified only under a tyranny which makes reforms without violence impossible, and should have only one aim, that is, to bring about a state of affairs which makes reforms without violence possible.

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

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.

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

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

Anyone who makes plans for after the revolution is a reactionary.

Without a revolutionary theory there cannot be a revolutionary movement.

Whoever thinks of stopping the uprising before it achieves its goals, I will give him ten bullets in the chest.

Passive fatalism can never be the role of a revolutionary party, like the Social Democracy.

We must continually stimulate the living politics of the street...it will be our task to try and break it (elections for the National Assembly) up by force.

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.

Of all the things we have done, the most important - the one that history will record as the principal contribution of our generation - is that we understand how to turn the armed struggle into a Revolution; that we realized that it was essential to create a new mentality to build a new society.

Satyagraha is a law for universal application. Beginning with the family, its use can be extended to every other circle.

Each of us should choose which course of action we must take; education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes, but let it not be said that we did nothing.

I didn't really know that much about the Maoists, but I just knew that they seemed to be so few and yet they painted themselves green and stood in front of the police waiting to get picked off.

Truth and non-violence are not cloistered virtues but applicable as much in the forum and the legislatures as in the market place.

The primary object of non-co-operation is nowhere stated to be paralysis of the Government. The primary object is self-purification.

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

I and others may be revolutionaries but we are disciples of Mahatma Gandhi, directly or indirectly, nothing more nothing less.

Agitation prevents rebellion, keeps the peace, and secures progress. Every step she gains is gained forever. Muskets are the weapons of animals. Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.

We must stop being polite and behaved and find new inventive tactics to shift the paradigm. We are the majority.

I and some colleagues came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable, it would be wrong and unrealistic for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the government met our peaceful demands with force. It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle.

I think we brought to the world, the United States anyway, the whole idea of boycotting as a nonviolent tactic. I think we showed the world that nonviolence can work to make social change.

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

They have the guns and therefore we are for peace and for reformation through the ballot. When we have the guns then it will be through the bullet.