Top 75 Nonviolent Quotes

Civil disobedience has almost always been about expression. Generally, it’s nonviolent, as defined by Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi, and King.

I still believe in the nonviolent Jesus and the basic human goodness present in all of us.

Research confirms that both Republican and Democratic women are more likely than their male counterparts to initiate and fight for bills that champion social justice, protect the environment, advocate for families, and promote nonviolent conflict resolution.

We can prevent fighting by limiting weapons or finding nonviolent ways to end disputes.

When you do something in a nonviolent way, people will die and there will be casualties. But you’re taking a different point of view that has a power.

Power doesn’t back up in the face of a smile, or in the face of a threat of some kind of nonviolent loving action. It’s not the nature of power to back up in the face of anything but some more power.

Nonviolent, visual protests have a long history of forming images that can quickly go viral and set a powerful tone for a moment.

Nonviolent action does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences.

If people are being upstanding citizens of the Republic, then you have to widen the net to incarcerate them. This explains why America’s prisons are full of nonviolent offenders – a perfect example of American exceptionalism.

Nelson Mandela sat in a South African prison for 27 years. He was nonviolent. He negotiated his way out of jail. His honor and suffering of 27 years in a South African prison is really ultimately what brought about the freedom of South Africa. That is nonviolence.

On some campuses, change is effected through nonviolent or even violent means.

I think art is inherently nonviolent and it actually occupies your mind with creation rather than destruction.

Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity.

Christians are nonviolent not, therefore, because we believe that nonviolence is a strategy to rid the world of war, but because nonviolence is constitutive of what it means to be a disciple to Jesus.

Oh, Diane Nash deserves her own film. Diane Nash is a freedom fighter who is still alive and kicking. She was one of the leaders of the desegregation of Nashville, basically. She was a student at Fisk University who was one of the founding members of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

It’s hard for anyone intelligent to be nonviolent. Everything in the universe does something when you start playing with his life, except the American Negro. He lays down and says, ‘Beat me, daddy.’

Occupy has to continue as a bold, in-your-face movement – occupying banks, corporate headquarters, board meetings, campuses and Wall Street itself. We need weekly – if not daily – nonviolent assaults right on Wall Street.

I’ve been arrested three times. I don’t like getting arrested, but it’s not so bad when it’s an organized form of nonviolent disobedience. It’s something appealing to a higher law.

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.

I became a vegetarian out of compassion for animals and to live as healthy as possible. I realized soon after that I was truly concerned with nonviolent consumption and my own health, a vegan diet was the best decision.

Jesus is the politics of the new age; He is about the establishment of a kingdom; He is the one who has created a new time that gives us the time not only to care for the poor but to be poor. Jesus is the one who makes it possible to be nonviolent in a violent world.

The vote is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have.

Research confirms that both Republican and Democratic women are more likely than their male counterparts to initiate and fight for bills that champion social justice, protect the environment, advocate for families, and promote nonviolent conflict resolution.

We are fighting to pass clean-slate legislation in Pennsylvania to seal nonviolent misdemeanor records automatically after 10 years. We must provide opportunities for employment, housing, education, loans, and voting. We should not disenfranchise a third of the population.

You have troubles with violent indigenous movement around the continent. Here, we are putting more power in their hands and creating a nonviolent indigenous society.

It’s never a good thing to see a government agency talk in secret about the need to ‘control protestors’ – especially when that agency is charged with protecting the homeland against terrorists, not nonviolent demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights to peaceable dissent.

I welcome nonviolent protests as an exercise of our great democracy.

My own hope is that, as a human species, we are on a long journey of evolution toward increasingly more tolerant and nonviolent behavior.

The whole point of the kingdom of God is Jesus has come to bear witness to the true truth, which is nonviolent. When God wants to take charge of the world, he doesn’t send in the tanks. He sends in the poor and the meek.

You don’t have a peaceful revolution. You don’t have a turn-the-cheek revolution. There’s no such thing as a nonviolent revolution.

Nonviolent tactics can move into action on our behalf men not naturally inclined to act for us.

As a civil rights leader, Mrs. King’s vision of racial peace and nonviolent social change was a fortifying staple in advancing the civil rights movement.

We are fighting to pass clean-slate legislation in Pennsylvania to seal nonviolent misdemeanor records automatically after 10 years. We must provide opportunities for employment, housing, education, loans, and voting. We should not disenfranchise a third of the population.

The United States was seriously defeated in Iraq by Iraqi nationalism – mostly by nonviolent resistance. The United States could kill the insurgents, but they couldn’t deal with half a million people demonstrating in the streets.

In elementary school, we should teach nonviolent conflict resolution and healthy communication skills, which will help children cope with issues like rejection and sexuality later in life.

The broad consensus is that our system should be better structured to deter crimes without giving up on everyone who commits them, and should better balance resources to hold violent criminals fully accountable without imposing unnecessarily harsh sentences on nonviolent offenders.

Back in 2014, my fellow Hong Kongers and I hoped to use nonviolent means to fight for our territory’s democratic system – a simple right, promised by Beijing, to choose our own leader.

My parents were very active in the Civil Rights Movement. My father was a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) worker; my mother was a secretary with the Panthers.

I’ve been arrested three times. I don’t like getting arrested, but it’s not so bad when it’s an organized form of nonviolent disobedience. It’s something appealing to a higher law.

My own hope is that, as a human species, we are on a long journey of evolution toward increasingly more tolerant and nonviolent behavior.

Christians are nonviolent not, therefore, because we believe that nonviolence is a strategy to rid the world of war, but because nonviolence is constitutive of what it means to be a disciple to Jesus.

I cannot think of a tactical alliance with the Left because I represent the idea that there is a peaceful, nonviolent way to dislodge a dictatorship… A tactical Left alliance damages my argument. If I succeed with them, we will never know if peace can really produce freedom.

Yisrael Beiteinu has no objection to the nonviolent expression of opinion. It is violent speech that forms a clear and present danger that we refuse to tolerate.

As a civil rights leader, Mrs. King’s vision of racial peace and nonviolent social change was a fortifying staple in advancing the civil rights movement.

The U.S. is supposed to be a nation of second chances, but for the 70 million Americans with a criminal record, we’re not doing such a great job. Even among those whose crimes were nonviolent and committed long ago, too many still bear a scarlet letter.

One can imagine nonviolent or minimally violent ways to reduce or eliminate hatred, but there’s no mollifying evil.

The principal factors which influenced my life are 1) nonviolent tactics; 2) constitutional means; 3) democratic procedures; 4) respect for human personality; 5) a belief that all people are one.

My position has always been, along with many other people, that any differences be resolved in a nonviolent way.

That is someone who follows the teachings of the nonviolent Jesus and takes the gospel personally, and then pays the price. I fall into that category.

We need to look at the totality of the things that we’re labeling as violent and really examine whether we need to have some more proportionality in terms of the punishment fitting the crime that’s done. The bright line that we have right now, between violent and nonviolent, does not account for shades of gray.