If reforms do not come when people are at peace, of course, they have to come through violent upheavals, so as I looked out I thought: "Thank God, that this nation has had the courage to face the need of changes before we reached the point where bloodshed was the only way to achieve a change.
We must not expect a full-scale peaceful revolution every time a Labour Government is elected.
Only by a process of peaceful evolution can China accomplish its own goals of being a free, prosperous, and strong country.
There is a land problem in Zimbabwe, there is a need land for redistribution but it must be handled different, without violence, without conflict, within the context of the law, bearing in mind the interests of all Zimbabweans both black and white. It's necessary that the Zimbabwean government to respond positively to those sorts of messages.
I want incremental improvements. There's the record of all the revolutionary and violent change and extremism in general - it's dreadful.
The rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people.
We can surely boast of having set the world a beautiful example of a government reformed by reason alone, without bloodshed.
Of the Constitution of 1787:
The example of changing a constitution by assembling the wise men of the State instead of assembling armies will be worth as much to the world as the former examples we had given them
Support for peaceful reform by the people themselves is the right way to promote democracy, not the use of force.
The day for progress by force has passed. From now on it will be progress by ideas or not at all.
This formidable censor of the public functionaries [the press], by arraigning them at the tribunal of public opinion, produces reform peaceably, which must otherwise be done by revolution. It is also the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man and improving him as a rational, moral, and social being.
When the panchayat raj is established, public opinion will do what violence can never do.
The principle of my political life …. is, that all ameliorations and improvements in political institutions can be obtained by persevering in a perfectly peaceable and legal course, and cannot be obtained by forcible means, or if they could be got by forcible means, such means create more evils than they cure, and leave the country worse than they found it
My opposition to the socialist and the other consists in attacking violence as a means of effecting any lasting reform.
[There] is an easy and peaceable way of amending any parts of the Constitution which may be found inconvenient in practice.
America is exceptional, it is asserted, because, with the exception of the abolition of slavery, it has been able to extend the promise of liberal reform mostly peacefully, through its democratic institutions.
Many original occupiers believe the political system has become so corrupt that even participating in it, engaging with it, corrupts the movement. I understand what they are saying. But often, change does come more quickly from the inside rather than the outside. My advice: try both. But don't try violence.
