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People who attack others need rationalizations for doing so. We undermine those rationalizations.

Barbara Deming

Gandhi once declared that it was his wife who unwittingly taught him the effectiveness of nonviolence. Who better than women should know that battles can be won without resort to physical strength? Who better than we should know all the power that resides in noncooperation?
BARBARA DEMING

Effectiveness Peace Wife
To resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek.
BARBARA DEMING

Need Speak Violent
there is clearly a kind of anger that is healthy. It is the concentration of one’s whole being in the determination: this must change.
BARBARA DEMING

Anger Determination Healthy
Let me be really here, here in this place and this time where I am.
BARBARA DEMING

Happen Live Moment Place Time
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
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
Surely all of us are nerved by one another, catch courage from one another.
BARBARA DEMING

Another Courage Nerve Surely
I think the only choice that will enable us to hold to our vision. . . is one that abandons the concept of naming enemies and adopts a concept familiar to the nonviolent tradition: naming behavior that is oppressive.
BARBARA DEMING

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

Action Doe Nice
Nonviolent tactics can move into action on our behalf men not naturally inclined to act for us.
BARBARA DEMING

Men Moving Tactic
Vengeance is not the point: change is.
BARBARA DEMING

Change Point Vengeanc
A great many of us must move from words to acts – from words of dissent to acts of disobedience.
BARBARA DEMING

Great Men Moving Obedience
Punishment cannot heal spirits, can only break them.
BARBARA DEMING

Break Punishment Spirit
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
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
This is the heart of my argument: We can put more pressure on the antagonist for whom we show human concern.
BARBARA DEMING

Argument Heart Pressure

People who attack others need rationalizations for doing so. We undermine those rationalizations.

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People who attack others need rationalizations for doing so. We undermine those rationalizations.

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Popular Authors

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