Peaceful Change Quotes

The bravery of the nonviolent is vastly superior to that of the violent.

When I was growing up, Belfast City Hall was surrounded by security, and we had no access to it. But now, people come in and out of it all the time. On a nice day, office workers and students sit on the lawn outside and have lunch. It's great to see how Northern Ireland has changed. To be part of that is fantastic.

No feats of heroism are needed to achieve the greatest and most important changes in the existence of humanity; neither the armament of millions of soldiers, nor the construction of new roads and machines, nor the arrangement of exhibitions, nor the organization of workmen's unions, nor revolutions, nor barricades, nor explosions, nor the perfection of aerial navigation; but a change in public opinion..

Killing is evil ... All countries are different and progress should be achieved by peaceful means wherever possible.

I see a deep connection between peace and change: peace always starts from within, for communities and people alike. The same is true of change: real change starts from within.

Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create.

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

With violence, as with so many other concerns, human nature is the problem, but human nature is also the solution.

Our peaceful non-co-operation must be constructive, non-destructive. Poison should not emerge from the throes of love.

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

Every time one person becomes peaceful in their own life, it changes the world.

Too frequently we think we have to do spectacular things. Yet if we remember that the sea is actually made up of drops of water and each drop counts, each one of us can do our little bit where we are. Those little bits can come together and almost overwhelm the world. Each one of us can be an oasis of peace.

You don't spread democracy through the barrel of a gun.

We face ... a moral crisis as a country and as a people,” said the president. A great change is at hand, and our task, our obligation, is to make that revolution ... peaceful and constructive for all.

Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light.

What the people of Zimbabwe did in almost impossible conditions was to show that you can defeat the dictator and you can defeat the dictator in peaceful, non violent peaceful change. That five minutes in the ballot box on the 29 th of March 2008 was freedom and our people used pens instead of bombs and they struck a blow at the dictator. So we have been vindicated. The people of Zimbabwe have been vindicated. Everything that we have been saying in the last 15 years that: We have a dictator; that this dictator is unpopular and that we want change - has been vindicated

I think perhaps we manage our revolutions much more quietly in this country.

Hope is the strongest driving force for a people. Hope which brings about change, which produces new realities, is what opens man's road to freedom. Once hope has taken hold, courage must unite with wisdom. That is the only way of avoiding violence, the only way of maintaining the calm one needs to respond peacefully to offenses.

We do not deny the possibility of peaceful [political] transition, but we are still awaiting the first case.

Power to the peaceful.

Procedure is the bone structure of a democratic society. Our scheme of law affords great latitude for dissent and opposition. It compels wide tolerance not only for their expression but also for the organization of people and forces to bring about the acceptance of the dissenter's claim....We have alternatives to violence.

I used to be very revolutionary, but now I think that nothing can be gained by brute force. People must be drawn to good by goodness.

Anybody who walks out peacefully, who protests peacefully, that's what this country was built on.

I don't think anybody who carries a rifle carries the future. Because I don't believe that you can really change the world by killing and shooting. You have the change it by creating and competing.