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 DEMINGVengeance is not the point: change is.
More Barbara Deming Quotes
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We believe, in fact, that the one act of respect has little force unless matched by the other – in balance with it… The acting out of that dual respect I would name as precisely the source of our power.
BARBARA DEMING -
Think first of the action that is right to take, think later about coping with one’s fears.
BARBARA DEMING -
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 -
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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Surely all of us are nerved by one another, catch courage from one another.
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This is the heart of my argument: We can put more pressure on the antagonist for whom we show human concern.
BARBARA DEMING -
People who attack others need rationalizations for doing so. We undermine those rationalizations.
BARBARA DEMING -
Nonviolent tactics can move into action on our behalf men not naturally inclined to act for us.
BARBARA DEMING -
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 -
A liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.
BARBARA DEMING -
All prisons that have existed in our society to date put people away as no human being should ever be put away.
BARBARA DEMING -
To resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek.
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Our task, of course, is to transmute the anger that is affliction into the anger that is determination to bring about change. I think, in fact, that one could give that as a definition of revolution.
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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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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