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Nonviolent action does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences.

Barbara Deming

The free man must be born before freedom can be won, and the brotherly man must be born before full brotherhood can be won. It will come into being only if we build it out of our very muscle and bone – by trying to act it out.
BARBARA DEMING

Being Brotherhood Free Men
People may find it more comfortable to listen to us if we equivocate, but in the long run only words that discomfort them are going to change our situation.
BARBARA DEMING

Change Long Running
A liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.
BARBARA DEMING

Liberation Movement Strength
Surely all of us are nerved by one another, catch courage from one another.
BARBARA DEMING

Another Courage Nerve Surely
Of course it can be said of jails, too, that they try – by punishing the troublesome – to deter others. No doubt, in certain instances this deterrence actually works. But generally speaking it fails conspicuously.
BARBARA DEMING

Doubt Jail Trying
Think first of the action that is right to take, think later about coping with one’s fears.
BARBARA DEMING

Fear First Thinking
Let me be really here, here in this place and this time where I am.
BARBARA DEMING

Happen Live Moment Place Time
The point is to change one’s life. The point is not to give some vent to the emotions that have been destroying one; the point is so to act that one can master them now.
BARBARA DEMING

Destroying Emotion Giving
What is the revolution that we need? We need to dissolve the lie that some people have a right to think of other people as their property. And we need at last to form a circle that includes us all, in which all of us are seen as equal… We do not belong to the other, but our lives are linked; we belong in a circle of others.
BARBARA DEMING

Lying Peace Thinking
After the revolution, let us hope, prisons simply would not exist – if by prisons we mean places that could be experienced by the men and women in them at all as every place that goes by that name now is bound to be experienced.
BARBARA DEMING

Experience Mean Men Name Simply
Vengeance is not the point; change is. But the trouble is that in most people’s minds the thought of victory and the thought of punishing the enemy coincide.
BARBARA DEMING

Change Mind People
We learn best to listen to our own voices if we are listening at the same time to other women-whose stories, for all our differences, turn out, if we listen well, to be our stories also.
BARBARA DEMING

Differences Justice Voice
People who attack others need rationalizations for doing so. We undermine those rationalizations.
BARBARA DEMING

Attack Need People Rationalization
The injunction that we should love our neighbors as ourselves means to us equally that we should love ourselves as we love our neighbors.
BARBARA DEMING

Injunction Mean Neighbor Ourselves
After the revolution, it might very well remain necessary to place people where they could not do harm to others. But the one under restraint should be cut off from the rest of society as little as possible.
BARBARA DEMING

Cutting Harm Little People Revolution
All prisons that have existed in our society to date put people away as no human being should ever be put away.
BARBARA DEMING

Our People Prison Society

Nonviolent action does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences.

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Nonviolent action does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences.

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Popular Authors

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