Top 279 Nonviolent Quotes & Sayings

History has no record of a nation having adopted nonviolent resistance.

Nonviolent non-co-operation is the only alternative to anarchy and worse.

In 1989, thirteen nations comprising 1,695,000 people experienced nonviolent revolutions that succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations . . . If we add all the countries touched by major nonviolent actions in our century (the Philippines, South Africa . . . the independence movement in India . . .) the figure reaches 3,337,400,000, a staggering 65% of humanity! All this in the teeth of the assertion, endlessly repeated, that nonviolence doesn't work in the 'real' world.

There is a more excellent way, of love and nonviolent protest.

Palestine has a very strong nonviolent movement.

I don't mean go out and get violent; but at the same time you should never be nonviolent unless you run into some nonviolence. I'm nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me. But when you drop that violence on me, then you've made me go insane, and I'm not responsible for what I do.

Nonviolent nationalism is a necessary condition of corporate or civilized life.

The world censures those who take up arms to defend their causes and calls on them to use nonviolent means in voicing their grievances. But when a people chooses the nonviolent path, it is all too often the case that hardly anyone pays attention. It is tragic that people have to suffer and die and the television cameras have to deliver the pictures to people's homes every day before the world at large admits there is a problem.

Politics is not perfect but it's the best available nonviolent means of changing how we live.

I have known many meat eaters to be far more nonviolent than vegetarians.

Nothing scares the army more than nonviolent opposition.

As far as nonviolence and Spiritual Activism, Marshall Rosenberg is it! Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, is essential reading for anyone who wants to improve their communication skills. Applying the concepts within the book will help guide the reader towards a more loving, compassionate, and nonviolent way of understanding and functioning with others, and foster more compassion in the world. I highly recommend this book.

If we remain nonviolent, hatred will die as everything does from disuse.

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

Civil disobedience is the only nonviolent escape from the soul-destroying heat of violence.

A nonviolent man cannot desire embarrassment.

A nonviolent person's life is always at the disposal of him who would take it.

I myself am a very nonviolent person and only resort to violence when I absolutely have to.

Nonviolent action without the co-operation of the heart and the head cannot produce the intended result.

God is the shield of the nonviolent.

Nonviolent defence presupposes recklessness about one's life and property.

It's the people who are doing the nonviolent organizing at the grassroots that make me think there's still hope.

[I]t must be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist. If one uses this method because he is afraid or merely because he lacks the instruments of violence, he is not truly nonviolent. This is why Gandhi often said that if cowardice is the only alternative to violence, it is better to fight.

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.

The Indian government has managed to turn the concept of nonviolence on its head. Nonviolent resistance and nonviolent governance. Unlike, say, China or Turkey or Indonesia, India doesn't mow down its people. It doesn't kill people who are refusing to move. It just waits it out. It continues to do what it has to do and ignores the consequences.

Be nonviolent only with those who are nonviolent to you. And when you can bring me a nonviolent racist, bring me a nonviolent segregationist, then I'll get nonviolent. But don't teach me to be nonviolent until you teach some of those crackers to be nonviolent.

Nonviolent non-co-operation, I am convinced, is a sacred duty at times.

Disobedience to be civil has to be open and nonviolent.

I'm really bad at being nonviolent.

Only when we have become nonviolent towards all life will we have learned to live well with others.

The bravery of the nonviolent is vastly superior to that of the violent.

I believe in a nonviolent movement of boycott, divestment, sanctions.

Nonviolent action means mobilization of world opinion in our favour.

Economic equality is the master-key to nonviolent independence.

The nation cannot be kept on the nonviolent path by violence.

Those who have their hands dyed deep in blood cannot build a nonviolent order for the world.

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

A liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.

Himsa does not need to be taught, Man as animal is violent, but as spirit is nonviolent.

Those who are truthful, nonviolent and brave do not cease to be so because of the stupidity of their leader.

The argument that resistance to the war should remain strictly nonviolent seems to me overwhelming.

Nonviolent non-co-operators can only succeed when they have succeeded in attaining control over the hooligans of India.

No man could be actively nonviolent and not rise against social injustice, no matter where it occurred.

[He] alone is truly nonviolent who remains nonviolent even though he has the ability to strike.

We are nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with us.

Nobody was born nonviolent. No one was born charitable. None of us comes to these things by nature but only by conversion. The first duty of the nonviolent community is helping its members work upon themselves and come to conversion.

There is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth

Nonviolent struggle is the most powerful means available to those struggling for freedom.

Total nonviolent non-cooperation has no place in popular Raj, whatever its level may be.

We're not really pacifists, we're nonviolent soldiers.

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

I believe in the capacity of India to offer nonviolent battle to the English rulers.

The first essential characteristics of nonviolent action is that it is creative.

The nonviolent man automatically becomes a servant of God.

The power of nonviolent resistance can only come from honest working of the constructive programme.

I myself would go for nonviolence if it was consistent, if everybody was going to be nonviolent all the time. I'd say, okay, let's get with it, we'll all be nonviolent. But I don't go along with any kind of nonviolence unless everybody's going to be nonviolent. If they make the Ku Klux Klan nonviolent, I'll be nonviolent. If they make the White Citizens Council nonviolent, I'll be nonviolent. But as long as you've got somebody else not being nonviolent, I don't want anybody coming to me talking any nonviolent talk.

I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government.... There is something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that would praise you when you say, 'Be nonviolent toward Jim Clark,' but will curse and damn you when you say, 'Be nonviolent toward little brown Vietnamese children!' There is something wrong with that press.

The movement of nonviolent non-co-operation has nothing in common with the historical struggles for freedom in the West.

The vote is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have.

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