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 DEMINGNonviolent tactics can move into action on our behalf men not naturally inclined to act for us.
More Barbara Deming Quotes
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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.
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Let me be really here, here in this place and this time where I am.
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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.
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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.
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We cannot live without our lives
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It is one thing to be able to state the price the antagonist paid, another to be able to count you own real gains.
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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.
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A great many of us must move from words to acts – from words of dissent to acts of disobedience.
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Surely all of us are nerved by one another, catch courage from one another.
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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.
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A liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.
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Our own pulse beats in every stranger’s throat.
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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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Nonviolent tactics can move into action on our behalf men not naturally inclined to act for us.
BARBARA DEMING -
To resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek.
BARBARA DEMING






