| 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
-- 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
resorting to physical strength.
-- Barbara
Deming A liberation
movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.
-- Barbara Deming
|  |
 |
Nonviolent Peaceforce ...is
building a large-scale professional force of well-trained unarmed peacekeepers
... This nonviolent peacekeeping provides an alternative to which we may say YES
when we say NO to war.
-- Mel
Duncan |
"We demand a
non-violent world where human security is the basis of our common global security.
People have the right to live in a world where the basic needs of all peoples
are addressed. No more military attacks. No more war.”
-- Shirin
Ebadi |  |
"Non-violence
leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop
harming ALL other living beings, we are still savages."
-- Thomas Edison
*
"Violence sometimes may have cleared away obstructions quickly, but it never has
proved itself creative."
-- Albert
Einstein | 
|
 |
If the Gandhian moment is to
be realized, then it must encompass both concerns with the violence of weapons
and the violence of inequitable structures of domination and exploitation. Perhaps,
unwittingly, the visibility of this violence due to the globalization of media
coverage, especially TV, will hasten the process by which the peoples of the world
sick from violence and the suffering entailed, will hasten the awakening of conscience
and commitment needed to carry forward the struggle for a nonviolent world order.
This is as much as we can hope for at present, but such a hope will certainly
prove vain if we do not also act to the fullness of our individual and collective
capacities to rid the world of war and violence.
-- Richard
Falk |
|
*
Nonviolence is something very powerful, and the power behind it is not weapons,
but the support of the people.
-- Arun
Gandhi
|  |
So
many people around the world have used nonviolence as a way to resolve a conflict
that they faced in their lives. And they continue to use it everywhere all over
the world there. And I think, in a way, nonviolence is our nature. Violence is
not really our nature. If violence was our nature, we wouldn’t need military academies
and martial arts institutes to teach us how to kill and destroy people. We ought
to have been born with those instincts. But the fact that we have to learn the
art of killing means that it’s a learned experience. And we can always unlearn
it.
-- Arun Gandhi
Nonviolence,
therefore, can be described as an honest and diligent pursuit of truth. It could
also mean the search for the meaning of life or the purpose of life, questions
that have tormented humankind for centuries. The fact that we have not been able
to find satisfactory answers to these questions does not mean there is no answer.
It only means we have not searched with any degree of honesty. The search has
to be both external and internal. We seek to ignore this crucial search because
the sacrifices it demands are revolutionary. It means moving away from greed,
selfishness, possessiveness, and dominance to love, compassion, understanding,
and respect.
-- Arun
Gandhi
 |
*
"There is no hope for the aching world except through the narrow and straight
path of nonviolence."
-- Mohandas
K. Gandhi "I
object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary;
the evil it does is permanent."
-- Mohandas
K. Gandhi [He]
alone is truly nonviolent who remains nonviolent even though he has the ability
to strike.
-- Mohandas
K. Gandhi |
"Nonviolence
is not to be used ever as the shield of the coward. It is the weapon of the brave."
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi
-- Mohandas
K. Gandhi
"Things
undreamt of are daily being seen, the impossible is ever becoming possible. We
are constantly being astonished these days at the amazing discoveries in the field
of violence. But I maintain that far more undreamt of and seemingly impossible
discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence."
-- Mohandas
K. Gandhi
In
the application of the method of non-violence, one must believe in the possibility
of every person, however depraved, being reformed under humane and skilled treatment.
-- Mohandas
K. Gandhi
"Nonviolence
is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest
weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man."
-- Mohandas
K. Gandhi
Courtesy
towards opponents and eagerness to understand their view-point is the ABC of non-violence.
-- Mohandas
K. Gandhi
"Generally
speaking, the first nonviolent act is not fasting, but dialogue. The other side,
the adversary, is recognized as a person, he is taken out of his anonymity and
exists in his own right, for what he really is, a person. To engage someone in
dialogue is to recognize him, have faith in him. At every step in the nonviolent
struggle, at every level we try tirelessly to establish a dialogue, or reestablish
it if it has broken down. When I say 'the other side,' that could be a group of
persons or a government."
-- Hildegard Goos-Mayr
"All
ideologies end up killing people. If you separate love from nonviolence you turn
nonviolence into an ideology, a gimmick. Structures that are not inhabited by
justice and love have no liberating or reconciling force, and are never sources
of life."
-- Jean Goss
