To resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek.
BARBARA DEMINGVengeance is not the point: change is.
More Barbara Deming Quotes
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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 -
A great many of us must move from words to acts – from words of dissent to acts of disobedience.
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A liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.
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Think first of the action that is right to take, think later about coping with one’s fears.
BARBARA DEMING -
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.
BARBARA DEMING -
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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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?
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We cannot live without our lives
BARBARA DEMING -
Vengeance is not the point: change is.
BARBARA DEMING -
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.
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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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There should be no censorship of mail.
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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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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.
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Surely all of us are nerved by one another, catch courage from one another.
BARBARA DEMING