Vengeance is not the point: change is.
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.
More Barbara Deming Quotes
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Our task, of course, is to transmute the anger that is affliction into the anger that is determination to bring about change. I think, in fact, that one could give that as a definition of revolution.
BARBARA DEMING -
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 -
Think first of the action that is right to take, think later about coping with one’s fears.
BARBARA DEMING -
The 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 DEMING -
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 -
There should be no censorship of mail.
BARBARA DEMING -
A liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.
BARBARA DEMING -
Gandhi 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?
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Punishment cannot heal spirits, can only break them.
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A great many of us must move from words to acts – from words of dissent to acts of disobedience.
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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 -
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.
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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.
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People 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 DEMING