Non Violent Quotes

• When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us, so it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are. It is my deepest belief that only by giving life do we find life, that the truest act courage, the strongest act of manliness is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally non-violent struggle for justice. To be a man is to suffer for others, God help us to be men.

  Cesar Chavez

  Struggle, Sacrifice, Men

  Cesar Chavez, Richard Jay Jensen, John C. Hammerback (2002). “The Words of César Chávez”, p.167, Texas A&M University Press

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• There's no reason to be non-violent. There's no challenge unless you are living for people.

  Cesar Chavez

  People, Challenges, Reason

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• I contend that non-violent acts exert pressure far more effective than violent acts, for the pressure comes from goodwill and gentleness.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Peace, War, Violent Acts

  Mahatma Gandhi (1967). “Collected Works”

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• The non-violent technique does not depend for its success on the goodwill of the oppressor, but rather on the unfailing assistance of God.

  Cesar Chavez

  Peace, Humanity, Doe

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• It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Wise, Fake People, Peace

  Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (2007). “Gandhi on Non-Violence”, p.51, New Directions Publishing

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• Non-violence requires a double faith, faith in God and also faith in man.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Faith, Peace, Men

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• We may never be strong enough to be entirely non-violent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep non-violence as our goal and make steady progress towards it.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Inspirational, Being Strong, Peace

  "Gandhi on Non-Violence".

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• The first principle of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating.

  Cesar Chavez

  Peace, Humanity, Principles

  Cesar Chavez (2008). “An Organizer's Tale: Speeches”, p.352, Penguin

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• At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Love, Thought Provoking, Principles

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “"In a Single Garment of Destiny": A Global Vision of Justice”, p.100, Beacon Press

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

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Love, Peace, Kings

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" and Other Great Writings”, p.115, Beacon Press

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• If love or non-violence be not the law of our being, the whole of my argument falls to pieces.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Fall, Law, Pieces

  Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (1965). “Gandhi on Non-violence”, p.11, New Directions Publishing

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• The ideally non-violent state will be an ordered anarchy.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Anarchy, Violence, Violent

  Mahatma Gandhi (2007). “Gandhi on Non-Violence”, p.69, New Directions Publishing

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• Non-violent resistance implies the very opposite of weakness. Defiance combined with non-retaliatory acceptance of repression from one's opponents is active, not passive. It requires strength, and there is nothing automatic or intuitive about the resoluteness required for using non-violent methods in political struggle and the quest for Truth.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Struggle, Acceptance, Opposites

  "Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr: The Power of Nonviolent Action". Book by Mary King, p. 231, 1999.

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• Who wouldn't want to vote for a guy who was a peaceful, radical, non-violent revolutionary; who hung around with lepers, hookers, and crooks; who never spoke English; was not an American citizen; anti-capitalism; totally anti-death penalty; anti-public prayer (Matthew 6:5); but never once anti-gay; didn't mention abortion; and was a long-haired, brown-skinned, homeless, middle-eastern, Jew?

  John Fugelsang

  Prayer, Gay, Long

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• The kind of values for which I was supposed to kill, such as democracy and national independence, were better served, I thought, through non-violent action.

  Torbjorn Tannsjo

  Independence, Democracy, Action

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored... I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, and there is a type of constructive tension that is necessary for growth.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Direct Action, Issues, Creative

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" and Other Great Writings”, p.88, Beacon Press

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• No form of theocracy, whether it's manifested in a violent or non-violent form, is ever good for civilisation, and we have to challenge it in civil society as well as we would challenge Christian-based theocracy, or any other form of bigotry.

  Maajid Nawaz

  Christian, Challenges, Violent

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• Things need to be properly named. Political confusion starts with terminology confusion. Islamism implies some sort of political and social plan for Muslim people. In that classification, we find different categories. Legalist ones, traditional ones and revolutionary ones. Some of them are revolutionary but are non-violent, others are extremely violent. There are also the ones we call the literalists, like the Egyptian party Hizb al-Nour that used to be against democracy and now is getting into the political game.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Party, Games, Confusion

  Source: themuslimtimes.info

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• I don't know if I want White America to remember or fortoget that Jesus Christ was the first non-violent revolutionary.

  Neil Young

  Jesus, White, America

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• I don't think we should take the emotional reactions of a few people as more representative than those of the millions of people who took to the street in a non-violent way against dictators.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Emotional, Thinking, People

  "'You Want My Reaction? You Get My Silence'". Interview with Lars Mensel and Clemens Lukitsch, www.theeuropean-magazine.com. November 19, 2012.

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• If we are demoralized, sad and only complain, we’ll not solve our problems. If we only pray for a solution, we’ll not solve our problems. We need to face them, to deal with them without violence, but with confidence - and never give up. If you adopt a non-violent approach, but are also hesitant within, you’ll not succeed. You have to have confidence and keep up your efforts - in other words, never give up.

  Dalai Lama

  Giving Up, Effort, Faces

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• Photography is the most direct communication in non-violent contacts.

  Robert Rauschenberg

  Photography, Communication, Violent

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• Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Heart, Men, Victory

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• The achievements of past struggles and the aspirations of an entire nation are [being] undone and erased.... No Agent Orange or steel pellet bombs, no napalm, no toxic chemicals: a new phase of economic and social (rather than' physical) destruction has unfolded. The seemingly neutral and scientific tools of macro-economic policy constitute a non-violent instrument of recolonization and impoverishment.

  Michel Chossudovsky

  Struggle, Past, Orange

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• Pacifism, to me, is primarily a way of actively struggling against injustice and inhumanity; My kind of pacifism may be called "non-violent resistance".

  Dwight Macdonald

  Struggle, May, Way

  "Radical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Nonviolence in America, 1915-1963" by Scott H. Bennett, Syracuse University Press, 2003.

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