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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.

Barbara Deming

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

Fear First Thinking
We cannot live without our lives
BARBARA DEMING

Happen Life Live Our Surrounding
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
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
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

Always Deep Judgment Obiient Sense
All prisons that have existed in our society to date put people away as no human being should ever be put away.
BARBARA DEMING

Our People Prison Society
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
Punishment cannot heal spirits, can only break them.
BARBARA DEMING

Break Punishment Spirit
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

Differences Justice Voice
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.
BARBARA DEMING

Change Point Vengeanc
A liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.
BARBARA DEMING

Liberation Movement Strength
There should be no censorship of mail.
BARBARA DEMING

Censorship Mail Regulation Strict
Our own pulse beats in every stranger’s throat.
BARBARA DEMING

Pulse Spiritual Stranger
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

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Deming Quotes