Vengeance is not the point: change is.
BARBARA DEMINGVengeance is not the point: change is.
BARBARA DEMINGThe 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 DEMINGI 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 DEMINGLet me be really here, here in this place and this time where I am.
BARBARA DEMINGPeople 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 DEMINGNonviolent tactics can move into action on our behalf men not naturally inclined to act for us.
BARBARA DEMINGOf 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 DEMINGThink first of the action that is right to take, think later about coping with one’s fears.
BARBARA DEMINGThere should be no censorship of mail.
BARBARA DEMINGThe injunction that we should love our neighbors as ourselves means to us equally that we should love ourselves as we love our neighbors.
BARBARA DEMINGGandhi 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?
BARBARA DEMINGThe 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.
BARBARA DEMINGA liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.
BARBARA DEMINGPeople who attack others need rationalizations for doing so. We undermine those rationalizations.
BARBARA DEMINGWhat 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 DEMINGWe 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