Top 58 Quotes & Sayings by David Dellinger

All I have to do is look at a child's smile to keep going.

I think that anybody gradually learns the things that go deeper than his own heart.

The first time I ever came to Washington was to visit Calvin Coolidge in the White House with my father.

We need to think about the future, not the past.

Because I helped organize non-violent protest in Chicago, New York and Washington, I am denied the fundamental freedom to travel to London, even for the purpose of visiting my daughter.

I'm against military methods.

A man is just as dead if he dies of malnutrition as of bullets.

Very few people choose war. They choose selfishness and the result was war.

Prison is what really radicalized me most deeply. I remember thinking, my God, these people did things that were no worse than what other people do. They're just as nice.

Violence makes people commit atrocious evil without even realizing it.

Let the Third World get some self-determination. Let the Nicaraguans make their own mistakes.

When people asked me what I thought when Jerry Rubin went to Wall Street, I would say, 'I still feel palpitations of love, even if I've gone in one direction and he's gone in another.'

It's one thing to be prejudiced. It's another to be a liar.

I think it's false to believe that anything good is going to start from the top.

Out of the warmth and loving nature of my home, I got an impulse of a politics that was very different from my father's.

I'm just a feeble old man but I represent the spirit of speaking out.

I enjoy life this way, I enjoy life being in solidarity with the people who are fighting for a better world.

It's my perception that more people are actively committed to human familyhood today, and to a holistic relationship with the natural universe, than at any other time in my 71 years.

We have become used to the missiles being among us. We don't think about what they can do.

Bernie Sanders is our Jesse Jackson only more so.

Hemingway was a big influence - 'A Farewell to Arms,' though I disapproved of the later Hemingway.

My position has always been to avoid violence to avoid provocation.

This court is in contempt of human life, dignity and justice.

We can vote our hearts and our heads for someone who can win, Bernie Sanders.

Americans get fooled because we think we're trying to help the peasants down there in El Salvador, even though we're propping up that oppressive government, among the most brutal and militaristic in the world.

In prison, the gloves were off, the comforting rhetoric and rationalization were absent. To use a phrase from Plato, I saw the laws of our society 'writ large' - its flagrant inequalities of opportunity and disastrous results, its contempt for vast categories of our fellow human beings, its reliance on institutional violence.

Charlie Parker said, 'Jazz comes from who you are, where you've been, what you've done. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn.' It's the same with the revolution.

The arrogance of power must be undermined.

I do a little of several things like writing, teaching and political organizing, but none of them as well as I would like.

I believe that the United States has no possible ability to pacify the Vietnamese people, win support for Thieu, win a political victory or a military victory in the air, on the ground, in the North or the South.

The conflict is not between the people and the antiwar movement, but between the people and the government.

Dostoyevsky was an influence - what's his name, the saintly priest in 'The Brothers Karamazov,' Father Zossima... 'Kiss the earth,' he'd say. Love everything.

I think the myth about the 'silent generation' is just that, a myth.

Each of us, individually and nationally, must choose: total love or total war.

There will be no solution in Lebanon until there is a general solution of Israel and the Palestinian people. There will be no solution until the Palestinian people have their own state.

No matter how superficially fair the judge is, he is still the complete autocrat in the courtroom, and he still comes from the ruling class.

I believe in equality.

You want us to be like good Germans, supporting the evils of our decade and then when we refused to be good Germans and came to Chicago and demonstrated, now you want us to be like good Jews, going quietly and politely to the concentration camps while you and this court suppress freedom and the truth. And the fact is I am not prepared to do that.

The Yippies, their lifestyle is different from mine. But I consider Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman inspired critics of the kind of society that we have.

If the U.S. has its Vietnam... the Soviet Union has its Czechoslovakia. If the U.S. has its blacks and chicanos, then the Soviets have their Jews.

We have to face up to the fact that five administrations have lied to us about Vietnam.

I always emphasize that in the long run one can't satisfactorily say no to war, violence and injustice unless one is simultaneously saying yes to life and love and laughter.

It is time to stop talking about non-violence and to begin talking about force without violence.

Whatever happens to us, however unjustified, will be slight compared to what has happened already to the Vietnamese people, to the Black people in this country, to the criminals with whom we are now spending our days in the Cook County jail.

Political democracy has failed in the U.S. because there hasn't been economic democracy.

I received more genuine religious stimulation in prison than in the seminary.

When I see you looking to me, I have to say, 'Build your own lives.'

I went from Yale to jail, and got a good education in both places.

Living among society's outcasts and experiencing the brutality of America's prison system did more to set (or confirm) the direction of my adult life than living at Yale.

We are no longer demonstrators. We are not actors, we are now people committed to the proposition that if the government won't stop the war, we will stop the government.

I have great hope, great faith in the coming generation.

It doesn't pay to pretend that Vietnam was not a criminal war.

The worst thing that can happen to the New Left in this country is to turn the struggle into a military struggle against the establishment.

Arms control is by definition a rejection of disarmament.

This is my wish for you: peace of mind, prosperity through the year, happiness that multiplies, health for you and yours, fun around every corner, energy to chase your dreams, joy to fill your holidays!

The changes that take place when liberal Democrats replace not so liberal or compassionate Republicans (or Democrats) are merely cosmetic.

Very few people chose war. They chose selfishness and the result was war. Each of us, individually and nationally, must choose: total love or total war.

Every act we perform today must reflect the kind of relationships we are fighting to establish tomorrow.