“We cannot live without our lives”

I learned always to trust my own deep sense of what I should do, and not just obediently trust the judgment of others – even others better than I am.

The longer we listen to one another – with real attention – the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories and not simply opinions.

A liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.

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

Nonviolent tactics can move into action on our behalf men not naturally inclined to act for us.

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

To resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek.

Surely all of us are nerved by one another, catch courage from one another.

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

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.

There should be no censorship of mail.

The injunction that we should love our neighbors as ourselves means to us equally that we should love ourselves as we love our neighbors.

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.

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.

Let me be really here, here in this place and this time where I am.

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.

It is ever thus that the things which we do wrong – although they may seem little at the time, and though from the hardness of our hearts we pass them lightly by – come back to us with bitterness.

Our nature is the mind. And the mind is our nature.

Never lose that honesty, Bobby – always be honest with yourself, know your own motives for what they are, good or bad, make your own decisions firmly and justly – and you will be a fine, strong character, of some real use in this muddled world of ours!

The ‘working poor,’ as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society.

Part of our society kills what it loves, despises what it’s created. It really hates success.

Many say our world is at a tipping point. If we do not act together, if we do not act responsibly, if we do not act now, we risk slipping into a cycle of poverty, degradation, and despair.

Loneliness will sit over our roofs with brooding wings.

Our nannas are losers.