To resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek.
BARBARA DEMINGTo resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek.
BARBARA DEMINGThink first of the action that is right to take, think later about coping with one’s fears.
BARBARA DEMINGIt is one thing to be able to state the price the antagonist paid, another to be able to count you own real gains.
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 great many of us must move from words to acts – from words of dissent to acts of disobedience.
BARBARA DEMINGVengeance is not the point; change is. But the trouble is that in most people’s minds the thought of victory and the thought of punishing the enemy coincide.
BARBARA DEMINGI 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 DEMINGSurely all of us are nerved by one another, catch courage from one another.
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 DEMINGOur own pulse beats in every stranger’s throat.
BARBARA DEMINGThe point is to change one’s life. The point is not to give some vent to the emotions that have been destroying one; the point is so to act that one can master them now.
BARBARA DEMINGLet me be really here, here in this place and this time where I am.
BARBARA DEMINGThere should be no censorship of mail.
BARBARA DEMINGNonviolent action does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences.
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 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 DEMING