Thoughts on Nonviolence

These quotes are provided to spark discussion or provide a touchpoint for exploring the philosophy of nonviolence on a deeper level.

They are organized into categories that highlight nonviolent themes and characteristics.

ACTIVISTS

“We need in every bay and community a group of angelic troublemakers.”

— Bayard Rustin

“I train the people to do their own talking.”

— Septima Clark

“Chaos is a good thing. Change is what comes of it. I have a great belief in the fact that whenever there is chaos, it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift.”

— Septima Clark

“The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people.”

— Cesar Chavez

“Oppressed people, whatever their level of formal education, have the ability to understand and interpret the world around them, to see the world for what it is, and move to transform it.”

— Ella Baker

“Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person is a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.”

— Dolores Huerta

“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”

— Albert Einstein

“If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”

— Shirley Chisholm

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

— Audre Lorde

“Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seems to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.”

— Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

“The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.”

— Audre Lorde

BELOVED COMMUNITY

“Each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself. Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process is key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.”

— John Lewis

“To me, the Beloved Community is a realistic vision of an achievable society, one in which problems and conflicts exist, but are resolved peacefully and without bitterness. In the Beloved Community, caring and compassion drive political policies that support the worldwide elimination of poverty and hunger and all forms of bigotry and violence. The Beloved Community is a state of heart and mind, a spirit of hope and goodwill that transcends all boundaries and barriers and embraces all creation. At its core, the Beloved Community is an engine of reconciliation. This way of living seems a long way from the kind of world we have now, but I do believe it is a goal that can be accomplished through courage and determination, and through education and training, if enough people are willing to make the necessary commitment.”

— Coretta Scott King, My Life, My Love, My Legacy

“This was not only a protest; this was a community of collective resistance and cooperation pitched against the forces of greed and exploitation. ‘Indigenous generosity—so often exploited as a weakness—that held the camp together.’"

— Nick Estes, interview by Nicholas Cannariato about Standing Rock

DIRECT ACTION

We decided, with great fear and anticipation, we would desegregate downtown Nashville. No group of Black people or other people anywhere in the United States in the 20th century, against the rapaciousness of a segregated system, ever thought about desegregating downtown, tearing down the signs, renovating the waiting rooms, taking the immoral signs off of drinking fountains. But it was Black women who made that decision for us in Nashville. I was scared to death when we made that decision. I knew nothing about how we were going to do this. I had never done it before. But we planned the strategy. John Lewis did not stumble in on that campaign. Kelly Miller Smith, his teacher at ABC (American Baptist College), invited John to join the workshops in the fall of 1959 as we prepared ourselves to face violence and to do direct action and to put on the map the issue that the racism and the segregation of the nation had to end”

— Rev. James Lawson, eulogy at John Lewis’ funeral

"I know you are trying, but just not hard enough. Sorry, save your praise. Don't invite us here to just tell us how inspiring we are without actually doing anything about it."

— Greta Thunberg

“It is bigger than black and white, we gotta start somewhere”

— Lil Baby, The Bigger Picture

"This mobilization concentrates several specific complaints, which are the point of it. Meaning that it does have to do with femicide, but these are cases (of violence against women) that have been around for one or two weeks making a lot of noise (meaning getting a lot of attention) in Mexico City,"

— Miguel Barrera, Founder of the Marabunta Brigade

“When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.”

― Bayard Rustin

LOVE

“Man must evolve for all human conflict a methods which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I came to the realization as I internalized this concept of love: I actually could look at a policeman in Birmingham or St. Augustine, Florida, and feel compassion instead of hostility or fear, even as I was being beaten . . . . I eventually came to see the policeman as being damaged by the racist programming, structures, and institutions in and around which we all lived our lives. Just as important, I realized I was opening myself to seeing how this understanding of love was so deeply changing me that I related to people differently in every place where I interacted, including business, personal, and family relationships, with friends, and even with strangers in public places.”

— Dorothy Cotton, If Your Back’s Not Bent

“It is important to work unceasingly to try to heal our own interior violence. The best healing has always been to love and be loved.”

— Hildegard Goss-Mayer

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

— Nelson Mandela

“The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us.”

— Dorothy Day

NONVIOLENCE

“An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.”

— Mairead Corrigan Maguire

“Noncooperation is not a passive state, it is an intensely active state, more active than physical resistance or violence. Passive resistance is a misnomer. Noncooperation in the sense used by me must be nonviolent and therefore, neither punitive nor based on malice, ill-will or hatred.

— Mahatma Gandhi

“One of the principles of nonviolence is that you leave your opponents whole and better off than you found them.”

— Andrew Young

THE SEVEN SINS IN THE WORLD

Wealth without work

Pleasure without conscience

Knowledge without character

Commerce with morality

Science without humanity

Worship without sacrifice

Politics without principle.

— Mahatma Gandhi

“Nonviolence does not mean that we remain indifferent to a problem. On the contrary, it is important to be fully engaged. However, we must behave in a way that does not benefit us alone. We must not harm the interests of others. Nonviolence therefore is not merely the absence of violence. It involves a sense of compassion and caring. It is almost a manifestation of compassion. I strongly believe that we must promote such a concept of nonviolence at the level of the family as well as at the national and international levels. Each individual has the ability to contribute to such compassionate nonviolence.”

— Dalai Lama, Central Park Address, August 1999

“Noncooperation is a protest against an unwitting and unwilling participation in evil. …Noncooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

JUSTICE

”Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.”

― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

— Archbishop Desmond Tutu

“With each instance of police terror, Black people have a question. Will this be the instance when the state finally acts to protect our lives and our interests? Yet our fraught relationships with law enforcement and the judicial system casts doubt on the possibility of justice. Each time an officer commits an act of violence, and walks away unpunished, a part of the Black community dies. A part of our hope dies.”

— Killer Mike

PEACE

“This is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited a large house, a great ‘world house’ in which we have to live together—black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu—a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.”

— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

“Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks of the very essence of being human. When we want to give high praise to someone we say, ‘Yu, u nobunto’; ‘Hey so-and-so has ubuntu.’ Then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, ‘My humanity is inextricably bound up in yours.’ We belong in a bundle of life.”

— Archbishop Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness

“Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.”

— Cesar Chavez

“I used to think that the Talib would come, and he would just kill me. But then I said, 'If he comes, what would you do Malala?' then I would reply to myself, 'Malala, just take a shoe and hit him.' But then I said, 'If you hit a Talib with your shoe, then there would be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others with cruelty and that much harshly, you must fight others but through peace and through dialogue and through education.' Then I said I will tell him how important education is and that 'I even want education for your children as well.' And I will tell him, 'That's what I want to tell you, now do what you want."

— Malala Yousafzai

“Compassion brings inner strength, and compassion also brings truth. With truth, you have nothing to hide, and you are not dependent on the opinions of others. That brings a self-confidence, with which you can deal with any problem without losing hope or determination….What is compassion? Compassion involves a feeling of closeness to others, a respect and affection that is not based on others’ attitude toward us. We tend to feel affection for people who are important to us. That kind of close feeling does not extend to our enemies—those who think ill of us. Genuine compassion on the other hand, sees that others, just like us, want a happy and successful life and do not want to suffer. That kind of feeling and concern can be extended to friend and enemy alike, regardless of their feelings toward us.”

— Dalai Lama, The Middle Way