“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 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.

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.

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.

I enjoy the challenge of being a father… I try to do my best to be there for my children.

I have made it a rule of my life to trust a man long after other people gave him up, but I don’t see how I can ever trust any human being again.

The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

My dad being not the greatest dad in the world has made me a better parent.

I understand aggressiveness in only one way: being prepared to hurt yourself, not someone else.

To many forms of life of our northern lands, winter means a long sleep; to others, it means what it means to many fortunate human beings – travels in warm climes.

We are really proud of our culture and, really, just being a minority.

Only man seems to be endowed with this faculty; he alone develops disinterested intelligence, intelligence that is not primarily concerned with his own safety and well-being but that looks abroad upon things.