“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.”

The 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.

A liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.

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

Nonviolent tactics can move into action on our behalf men not naturally inclined to act for us.

We cannot live without our lives

People who attack others need rationalizations for doing so. We undermine those rationalizations.

To resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek.

Surely all of us are nerved by one another, catch courage from one another.

Nonviolent action does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences.

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.

There should be no censorship of mail.

The injunction that we should love our neighbors as ourselves means to us equally that we should love ourselves as we love our neighbors.

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.

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.

Let me be really here, here in this place and this time where I am.

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.

Don’t give up! It’s not over. The universe is balanced. Every set-back bears with it the seeds of a come-back.

I know what it takes to balance budgets. I have done it my entire life.

I was in the world of business for 25 years. If you didn’t balance your budget, you went out of business.

April’s air stirs in Willow-leaves, a butterfly Floats and balances.

I had no balance in my life. I was this one person onstage and this person offstage, who really didn’t know much about living.

A knowledge of the true age of the Earth and of the fossil record makes it impossible for any balanced intellect to believe in the literal truth of every part of the Bible in the way that fundamentalists do.

If you can meet success and failure and treat them both as impostors, then you are a balanced man, my son.

For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.