Barbara Deming Quotes
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.
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.
This is the heart of my argument: We can put more pressure on the antagonist for whom we show human concern.
A liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.
Vengeance is not the point; change is. But the trouble is that in most people's minds the thought of victory and the thought of punishing the enemy coincide.
Think first of the action that is right to take, think later about coping with one's fears.
A great many of us must move from words to acts - from words of dissent to acts of disobedience.
Nonviolent tactics can move into action on our behalf men not naturally inclined to act for us.
The injunction that we should love our neighbors as ourselves means to us equally that we should love ourselves as we love our neighbors.
All prisons that have existed in our society to date put people away as no human being should ever be put away.
To resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek.
It is one thing to be able to state the price the antagonist paid, another to be able to count you own real gains.
People who attack others need rationalizations for doing so. We undermine those rationalizations.
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.
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.
Nonviolent action does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences.
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 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.
Vengeance is not the point change is. But the trouble is that in most people's minds the thought of victory and the thought of punishing the enemy coincide.
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.