Nonviolent Quotes

We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it.

Addiction should never be treated as a crime. It has to be treated as a health problem. We do not send alcoholics to jail in this country. Over 500,000 people are in our jails who are nonviolent drug users.

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.

So that the failures to pass a civil rights bill isn't because of Black Power, isn't because of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; it's not because of the rebellions that are occurring in the major cities.

The roster of Nobel Peace Prize winners, though it has some strange people on it from time to time, tends to feature folks who fought for social justice in a nonviolent and constructive way somehow.

I rejected the armed struggle because, as a Christian, I am committed to a nonviolent and peaceful struggle. But people take their own initiatives, because it is a Lebanon type of situation here.

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.

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

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

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

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

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

I hold her, and her nonviolent struggle for democracy, in high regard, ... It is people like her who should be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, as opposed to presidents and other statesmen whose job it is, after all, to uphold peace, freedom and order.

Nonviolence is not a thing that comes easily. You have to learn how to be nonviolent.

If you have three nonviolent crimes, you could still get the same sentence as someone who has committed three violent crimes.

He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.

I had assumed that all Tibetan lamas were just like the Dalai Lama, teaching that they were nonviolent people living simple lives, and they did not engage in politics. But I was wrong.

We just wanted people ... to come together so we could work it out in a nonviolent way.

There's a kind of robotic logic at work in his memorandum that runs roughshod over important distinctions between nonviolent and violent felons.

My cousin is nonviolent. If you want proof, look at his other arrest photos. There are no marks on him.

[Nonviolent people] really have so few tools to face a capitalist system, ... All we really have are ourselves and our ideas. Our ideas have not done the job.

I ask the Haitian people ... to be mature, to be responsible, to be nonviolent.