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 DEMINGNonviolent action does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences.
More Barbara Deming Quotes
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After the revolution, it might very well remain necessary to place people where they could not do harm to others. But the one under restraint should be cut off from the rest of society as little as possible.
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Nonviolent tactics can move into action on our behalf men not naturally inclined to act for us.
BARBARA DEMING -
Punishment cannot heal spirits, can only break them.
BARBARA DEMING -
All prisons that have existed in our society to date put people away as no human being should ever be put away.
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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.
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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 -
A liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.
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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.
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We cannot live without our lives
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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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 -
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.
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 -
After the revolution, let us hope, prisons simply would not exist – if by prisons we mean places that could be experienced by the men and women in them at all as every place that goes by that name now is bound to be experienced.
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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.
BARBARA DEMING