Best 148 quotes in «nonviolence quotes» category

Everyone is called to live their lives right now in the kingdom of God, to practice now as if they were already in the fullness of the presence of the God of peace. As we do, we will reject every form of violence, from war and executions to racism and sexism to nuclear weapons and corporate greed to destructive behavior to the creatures and Mother Earth.

Fighting fire with fire will burn the whole world to ashes.

God is within you, open your heart and uncover that godliness.

Gandhi, convinced of the power of satyagraha, suggested that it be used by the Jews against the Nazis. In response, Martin Buber – who had earlier (1930) written that much could be learned from Gandhi – said that this method could not be used against the Nazis. It is one thing to use nonviolent methods against those who would deprive you of some material benefit, but if their basic aim is to deprive you of life itself, how can you resist nonviolently?

Evil is the illness that has prevented humanity from reaching its true potential.

Has God called you to speak out for peace in a tense situation? Are there lives on the line God is calling you to stand up for, to declare peace to, and to encourage toward a non-violent solution? If so, do it. You never know what might happen. Maybe the Lord is likewise sending you to save many lives from destruction.

His headstone said FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST But death is a slave's freedom We seek the freedom of free men And the construction of a world Where Martin Luther King could have lived and preached non-violence

I am convinced that even violent temperaments can be channeled through nonviolent discipline, if they can act constructively and express through an effective channel their very legitimate anger.

Her stillness defeated his storm.

I am not well-versed in theory, but in my view, the cow deserves her life. As does the ram. As does the ladybug. As does the elephant. As do the fish, and the dog and the bee; as do other sentient beings. I will always be in favor of veganism as a minimum because I believe that sentient beings have a right not to be used as someone else's property. They ask us to be brave for them, to be clear for them, and I see no other acceptable choice but to advocate veganism. If these statements make me a fundamentalist, then I will sew a scarlet F on my jacket so that all may know I'm fundamentally in favor of nonviolence; may they bury me in it so that all will know where I stood.

I am planting a tree in this bomb crater to remind us that in the midst of death, there is life... and hope.

I argue that even as the war is framed in certain ways to control and heighten affect in relation to the differential grievability of lives, so war has come to frame ways of thinking multiculturalism and debates on sexual freedom, issues largely considered separate from "foreign affairs.

If there is real non-violence in us, there can be no war in the world.

I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action.

In a democracy, when the traffic light is red for freedoms, don’t ever stop, don’t ever wait! Refuse the red light, ignore it, break the rules and move forward! It is always legitimate to challenge fascism for every nation in the world as long as this challenge is nonviolent! Because violence means using the same vulgar, the same evil methods of fascism! Don’t behave like a dog when fighting against a dog!

I reject animal welfare reform and single-issue campaigns because they are not only inconsistent with the claims of justice that we should be making if we really believe that animal exploitation is wrong, but because these approaches cannot work as a practical matter. Animals are property and it costs money to protect their interests; therefore, the level of protection accorded to animal interests will always be low and animals will, under the best of circumstances, still be treated in ways that would constitute torture if applied to humans. By endorsing welfare reforms that supposedly make exploitation more “compassionate” or single-issue campaigns that falsely suggest that there is a coherent moral distinction between meat and dairy or between fur and wool or between steak and foie gras, we betray the principle of justice that says that all sentient beings are equal for purposes of not being used exclusively as human resources. And, on a practical level, we do nothing more than make people feel better about animal exploitation.

I suggested then that the prize was not given merely as recognition of past achievement, but also as recognition, a more profound recognition, that the nonviolent way, the American Negro's way, was the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.

It is not enough for the church to be active in the realm of ideas; it must move out to the arena of social action.

It may be considered folly by common opinion but this refusal to destroy life unnecessarily, this reverence for it, must become a deeply implanted part of his ethical standard.

Love is an energy that is addictive, contagious and free. Earn it, chase it, give it to those in need.

Many white men fear retaliation. The job of the Negro is to show them that they have nothing to fear, that the Negro understands and forgives and is ready to forget the past. He must convince the white man that all he seeks is justice, for both himself and the white man.

More powerful than armies and police, stronger than guns and bombs, words are what change the world, and that is why they’re always a threat to those that rule with corrupt ways

Mrs. (Fanie Lou) Hamer, like her mother, also kept weapons nearby in case she needed them: 'I keep a shotgun in every corner of my bedroom & the first cracker even looks like he wants to throw some dynamite on my porch won't write his mama again.

Non-violence doesn't mean staying silent in the face of evil, rather it means acting out of the sense of responsibility, instead of reacting out of circumstantial impulse.

nonviolence worked not because it melted the heart of the oppressor, but because people seized their social, political, and economic power, and refused to let business-as-usual continue until their demands were met.

Nonviolence cannot be used successfully to protect special privileges that have been won by violence.

Nonviolence is power, but it is the right and good use of power.

Nonviolence aims at doing no harm to living being. Compassion aims at doing good to all being.

Nonviolence is a weapon of the strong.

nonviolent action succeeds twice as often as violent means, in a third of the amount of time, and with a fraction of the casualties.

On either side of a potentially violent conflict, an opportunity exists to exercise compassion and diminish fear based on recognition of each other's humanity. Without such recognition, fear fueled by uninformed assumptions, cultural prejudice, desperation to meet basic human needs, or the panicked uncertainty of the moment explodes into violence.

[Politics] is always a means of conquering others and exercising power over them.

Simply put: because nonviolence worked so well as a tactic for effecting change and was demonstrably improving their lives, some black people chose to use weapons to defend the nonviolent Freedom Movement.

Suffering, though, can be nothing more than a sad and sorry thing without the presence on the part of the sufferer of a graceful heart, an accepting and open heart, a heart that holds no malice toward the inflictors of his or suffering This is a difficult concept to understand, and it is even more difficult to internalize, but it has everything to do with the way of nonviolence. We are talking about love here....This is a broader, deeper, more all-encompassing love. It is a love that acepts and embraces the hateful and the hurtful. It is a love that recognizes the spark of the divine in each of us, even in those who would raise their hand against us, those we might call our enemy.

The Christian response to evil—to aggression—is resistance, of course, but nonviolent resistance, the resistance of love, prayer, and accepted suffering. When Christians do anything else, they have parted company with Jesus. Nonviolence is the expression of a faith that the greatest power in human history is the forward movement of love. Nonviolence is as realistic as Jesus himself, and it is one with the cross of Christ's victory over evil. The question of whether or not nonviolent resistance 'works' should be referred not so much to the gain of an immediate victory as to the transformation of history from within by the converging forces of love.

The female warrior knows how to fight without violence. She knows when not to raise her sword, but instead hold up her heart. Her shield is not a defense against others but a shelter for all.

The goals of true education are to teach acceptance, tolerance, and nonviolence.

The more I allow myself to face that truth about my participation in a violent world, the more my faith and my intellect call me to humility and compassion rather than to doctrinaire ethics. I cannot hope for a clear conscience. I can only hope that my ethical choices are motivated by love rather than fear.

The objective of nonviolence is to create a beloved world community.

The real challenge of compassion, nonviolence and mindfulness is to love in adverse situation.

There is no Situation in which Arms can get an Answer. Arms only ensure, that there would Never be an Answer.

There is nothing sane, merciful, heroic, devout, redemptive, wise, holy, loving, peaceful, joyous, righteous, gracious, remotely spiritual, or worthy of praise where mass murder is concerned. We have been in this world long enough to know that by now and to understand that nonviolent conflict resolution informed by mutual compassion is the far better option.

The rights paradigm, which, as I interpret it, morally requires the abolition of animal exploitation and requires veganism as a matter of fundamental justice, is radically different from the welfarist paradigm, which, in theory focuses on reducing suffering, and, in reality, focuses on tidying up animal exploitation at its economically inefficient edges. In science, those who subscribe to one paradigm are often unable to understand and engage those who subscribe to another paradigm precisely because the theoretical language that they use is not compatible. I think that the situation is similar in the context of the debate between animal rights and animal welfare. And that is why welfarists simply cannot understand or accept the slavery analogy.

I am opposed to animal welfare campaigns for two reasons. First, if animal use cannot be morally justified, then we ought to be clear about that, and advocate for no use. Although rape and child molestation are ubiquitous, we do not have campaigns for “humane” rape or “humane” child molestation. We condemn it all. We should do the same with respect to animal exploitation. Second, animal welfare reform does not provide significant protection for animal interests. Animals are chattel property; they are economic commodities. Given this status and the reality of markets, the level of protection provided by animal welfare will generally be limited to what promotes efficient exploitation. That is, we will protect animal interests to the extent that it provides an economic benefit.

If we are ever going to see a paradigm shift, we have to be clear about how we want the present paradigm to shift. We must be clear that veganism is the unequivocal baseline of anything that deserves to be called an “animal rights” movement. If “animal rights” means anything, it means that we cannot morally justify any animal exploitation; we cannot justify creating animals as human resources, however “humane” that treatment may be. We must stop thinking that people will find veganism “daunting” and that we have to promote something less than veganism. If we explain the moral ideas and the arguments in favor of veganism clearly, people will understand. They may not all go vegan immediately; in fact, most won’t. But we should always be clear about the moral baseline. If someone wants to do less as an incremental matter, let that be her/his decision, and not something that we advise to do. The baseline should always be clear. We should never be promoting “happy” or “humane” exploitation as morally acceptable.

If we take the position that an assessment that veganism is morally preferable to vegetarianism is not possible because we are all “on our own journey,” then moral assessment becomes completely impossible or is speciesist. It is impossible because if we are all “on our own journey,” then there is nothing to say to the racist, sexist, anti-semite, homophobe, etc. If we say that those forms of discrimination are morally bad, but, with respect to animals, we are all “on our own journey” and we cannot make moral assessments about, for instance, dairy consumption, then we are simply being speciesist and not applying the same moral analysis to nonhumans that we apply to the human context.

If you remembered somebody was as real as yourself, how could you kill anybody?

I might be ready to embrace a snake, but, if one comes to bite you, I should kill it and protect you.

In the village, a sage should go about Like a bee, which, not harming Flower, colour or scent, Flies off with the nectar.

In Yosemite, we see how everyone can inherit the earth. But that gift requires a change of heart, a new intention, a deliberate turning. From now on, we must go forward, back into the world of violence and war, to do our part to end the killing, the suffering, and the ongoing destruction of Mother Earth. Yosemite, along with all of creation, calls us to wake up, stand up, and stop the insane destruction of the earth before it's too late.