Joan Baez Quotes

If I do not respond to some situation, my conscience kills me. I believe in permissible violence, not necessarily non-violence.

Violence is not more efficient than non-violence.

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

The only thing that's been a worse flop than the organization of non-violence has been the organization of violence.

I used to get some flack from my agents because I wouldn't even audition for parts where the hero uses violent force to be a hero.

I think violence can never be justified.

Non-violence is not glamorous, and you don't see the effects right away.

I don't believe in anarchy, because it will ultimately amount to the power of the bully, with weapons. Gandhi is my life's inspiration: passive resistance. I don't want to live in the Thunderdome with Mad Max.

Violence and nonviolence are, after all, two different forms of theater. They both depend and thrive on the response of an audience.

If it's radical to want an end to war and an end to violence, so that we can devote ourselves to the challenges of peace, then I'm pleased to call myself a radical.

Every ideology and mode of belief can, if true, implement itself by using the resources of technology and above all those of the media without having to resort to violence. In other words, violence has become unnecessary. In fact things have got to the point where violence cannot be afforded.

…against the simple act of violence, words, moral indignation and world opinion are not enough.

In order for non-violence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.

I can say this very clearly: I have come into this Congress with an antiwar bias.

What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet. No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled or uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.

I feel that non-violence is really the only way that we can follow because violence is just so self-defeating. A riot ends up creating many more problems for the negro community than it solved. We can through violence burn down a building, but you can't establish justice. You can murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder through violence. You can murder a hater, but you can't murder hate. And what we're trying to get rid of is hate, injustice, and all of these other things that continue the long night of man's inhumanity to man.

I am totally against the war but violence is part of mankind and it's going to happen, but as musicians I think we've got to step up and say 'come on'.

I do have an intense respect for pacifists, because I believe that ultimately, if we are to have a truly humanistic as well as libertarian society, violence will have to be banished on this planet.

I am peaceful but I am not a pacifist in the philosophical sense.

I do not like violence, but ours is a violent time, and there are some men who understand nothing else.

I wouldn't take up arms. I think that might be a little extreme.

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

Weapons are the tools of violence;all decent men detest them.Weapons are the tools of fear;a decent man will avoid themexcept in the direst necessityand, if compelled, will use themonly with the utmost restraint.Peace is his highest value.If the peace has been shattered,how can he be content?His enemies are not demons,but human beings like himself.He doesn't wish them personal harm.Nor does he rejoice in victory.How could he rejoice in victoryand delight in the slaughter of men?He enters a battle gravely,with sorrow and with great compassion,as if he were attending a funeral

I think that Nehru probably was a good man, although I didn't go for it. I don't go for anybody who is passive. I don't go for anybody who advocates passivism or peaceful suffering in any form whatsoever. I don't go for it.

My temperament and habit had always kept me rather in the middle of the road; in politics as well as in social reform I had been for "the best possible." But now I was pushed far toward the left on the subject of the war and I became gradually convinced that in order to make the position of the pacifist clear it was perhaps necessary that at least a small number of us should be forced into an unequivocal position.