quotes about Nonviolence

A. J. Muste:
The survival of democracy depends on the renunciation of violence and the development of nonviolent means to combat evil and advance the good.
Abdul Ghaffar Khan:
The Holy Prophet Mohammed came into this world and taught us: ‘That man is a Muslim who never hurts anyone by word or deed, but who works for the benefit and happiness of God’s creatures. Belief in God is to love one’s fellow men.’
Andre Trocme:
All who affirm the use of violence admit it is only a means to achieve justice and peace. But peace and justice are nonviolence…the final end of history. Those who abandon nonviolence have no sense of history. Rather they are bypassing history, freezing history, betraying history.
Bishop Desmond Tutu:
We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose.
Carla Gordon:
If someone in your life talked to you the way you talk to yourself, you would have left them long ago.
Cesar Chavez:
Non-violence is not inaction. It is not discussion. It is not for the timid or weak.
Cesar Chavez:
Non-violence is hard work. It is the willingness to sacrifice. It is the patience to win.
Cesar Chavez:
Our opponents in the agricultural industry are very powerful and farm workers are still weak in money and influence. But we have another kind of power that comes from the justice of our cause. So long as we are willing to sacrifice for that cause, so long as we persist in non-violence and work to spread the message of our struggle, then millions of people around the world will respond from their heart, will support our efforts … and in the end we will overcome.
Cesar Chavez:
The first principal of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating.
Colman McCarthy:
Everyone’s a pacifist between wars. It’s like being a vegetarian between meals.
Dag Hammarskjold:
Never, “for the sake of peace and quiet,” deny your own experience or convictions.
David W. Brooks:
If we are going to stop wars on this earth, we are going to have to make war on hunger our number one priority.
Hildegard Goos-Mayr:
Generally speaking, the first nonviolent act is not fasting, but dialogue. The other side, the adversary, is recognized as a person, he is taken out of his anonymity and exists in his own right, for what he really is, a person. To engage someone in dialogue is to recognize him, have faith in him. At every step in the nonviolent struggle, at every level we try tirelessly to establish a dialogue, or reestablish it if it has broken down. When I say ‘the other side,’ that could be a group of persons or a government.
Isaac Asimov:
Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.
Jean Goss:
All ideologies end up killing people. If you separate love from nonviolence you turn nonviolence into an ideology, a gimmick. Structures that are not inhabited by justice and love have no liberating or reconciling force, and are never sources of life.
Joan Baez:
I would say that I’m a nonviolent soldier. In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you…because no one has the right to take the life of another human being.
Martin Luther King, Jr.:
At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love.
Martin Luther King, Jr.:
An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
Mohandas K. Gandhi:
Truth is my God. Nonviolence is my way of realizing Him.
Mohandas K. Gandhi:
The Roots of Violence:
Wealth without work,
Pleasure without conscience,
Knowledge without character,
Commerce without morality,
Science without humanity,
Worship without sacrifice,
Politics without principles.
Mohandas K. Gandhi:
I first learned the concepts of non-violence in my marriage.
Mohandas K. Gandhi:
Non-cooperation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views.
Mohandas K. Gandhi:
An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.
Mohandas K. Gandhi:
I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.
Walter Wink:
South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu walked by a construction site on a temporary sidewalk the width of one person. A white man appeared at the other end, recognized Tutu, and said, “I don’t make way for gorillas.” At which Tutu stepped aside, made a deep sweeping gesture, and said, “Ah, yes, but I do.”