Top 100 Quotes About Nonviolence
#1. People try nonviolence for a week, and when it 'doesn't work,' they go back to violence, which hasn't worked for centuries.
Zak Ebrahim
#2. The weapon of nonviolence does not need supermen or superwomen to wield it; even beings of common clay can use it and have used it before this with success.
Mahatma Gandhi
#3. I would not look upon anger as something foreign to me that I have to fight ... I have to deal with my anger with care, with love, with tenderness, with nonviolence.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#4. Nonviolence succeeds only when we have a real living faith in God.
Mahatma Gandhi
#5. The point of nonviolence is to build a floor, a strong new floor, beneath which we can no longer sink. A platform which stands a few feet above napalm, torture, exploitation, poison gas, A and H bombs, the works. Give man a decent place to stand.
Joan Baez
#6. we Stoners must be peaceful, unarmed, and open to nonviolence. It's up to us to be the example of how peace is possible. Work for peace, evolve.
Withered Tree
#8. Truth and nonviolence demand that no human being may debar himself from serving any other human being, no matter how sinful he may be.
Mahatma Gandhi
#9. For me the only certain means of knowing God is nonviolence, ahimsa, love.
Mahatma Gandhi
#10. During the past few years I have avoided tiring myself and losing my breath. I must take care of my body, treat it with respect as a musician does his instrument. I apply nonviolence to my body, for it is not merely a tool to accomplish something. It itself is the end.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#11. Nonviolence which to me is the glory of Hinduism, has been sought to be explained away by our people as being meant for the sanyasis only.
Mahatma Gandhi
#12. The power of unarmed nonviolence is any day far superior to that of armed force.
Mahatma Gandhi
#13. A person who believes in nonviolence believes in a living God. He cannot accept defeat.
Mahatma Gandhi
#14. Palestinian militancy has accomplished nothing but increasing the misery of the Palestinian people. If Palestinians instead turned more to huge Gandhi-style nonviolence resistance campaigns, the resulting videos would reverberate around the world and Palestine would achieve statehood and freedom.
Nicholas D. Kristof
#15. My modesty has prevented me from declaring from the house top that the message of non-co-operation, nonviolence and swadeshi is a message to the world.
Mahatma Gandhi
#16. Nonviolence is an intensely active force when properly understood and used.
Mahatma Gandhi
#17. When you want to find Truth as God, the only inevitable means is love, that is nonviolence.
Mahatma Gandhi
#18. Nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#19. Nonviolence to be worth anything has to work in the face of hostile forces.
Mahatma Gandhi
#20. Veganism is about nonviolence:
nonviolence to other sentient beings;
nonviolence to yourself;
nonviolence to the earth.
Gary L. Francione
#21. So, at the age of nine, I became a monk, and from then on I was there practicing that kind of nonviolence.
Satish Kumar
#22. Nonviolence is the most potent technique for oppressed people. Unearned suffering is redemptive.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#23. Ours has not been unadulterated nonviolence in thought, word and deed.
Mahatma Gandhi
#25. The path of nonviolence is the path of respect. It is respect towards every being. It is the path of awakening the consciousness of every being.
Amit Ray
#26. We must, I believe, start teaching our children the sanity of nonviolence much earlier.
Alice Walker
#27. Simply put: because nonviolence worked so well as a tactic for effecting change and was demonstrably improving their lives, some black people chose to use weapons to defend the nonviolent Freedom Movement.
Charles E. Cobb
#28. The point on nonviolence is to build a floor, a strong new floor, beneath which we can no longer sink.
Joan Baez
#29. If what passed as nonviolence does not enable people to protect the honour of women, or if it does not enable women to protect their own honour, it is not nonviolence.
Mahatma Gandhi
#30. This is the unusual thing about nonviolence
nobody is defeated, everybody shares in the victory.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#31. Nonviolence, applied to very large masses of mankind, is a new experiment in the history of the world.
Mahatma Gandhi
#32. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#33. Wars aren't stopped by fighting wars, any more than you can fight fire with fire. You fight fire with water. You fight violence with nonviolence.
Colman McCarthy
#34. The thing about nonviolence is that it spreads. When you get people to participate in nonviolent action - whether it's a fast, a march, a boycott, or a picket line - people hear you, people see you, people are learning from that action.
Dolores Huerta
#35. Nonviolence is more effective than violence, that violence does not work.
Mark Kurlansky
#36. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream was a manifestation of hope that humanity might one day get out of its own way by finding the courage to realize that love and nonviolence are not indicators of weakness but gifts of significant strength.
Aberjhani
#37. The spinning wheel is a symbol of nonviolence for me.
Mahatma Gandhi
#38. Nonviolence of the strong cannot be a mere policy. It must be a creed, or a passion, if 'creed' is objected to.
Mahatma Gandhi
#39. When a man vowed to nonviolence as the law governing human beings dares to refer to war, he can only do it so as to strain every nerve to avoid it.
Mahatma Gandhi
#40. Unless we learn the lesson of nonviolence fully, we shall never do away with the deadly feuds which have been the curse of the Frontier people.
Mahatma Gandhi
#41. Nonviolence is the way to listen to the inner voice.
Amit Ray
#42. But nonviolence was never for the oppressor; it was for the oppressed.
Nikki Giovanni
#44. To one who reads the spirit of the Gita, it teaches the secret of nonviolence, the secret of realizing self through the physical body.
Mahatma Gandhi
#45. God has blessed me with the mission to place nonviolence before the nation for adoption.
Mahatma Gandhi
#46. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#47. We are constantly being astonished these days at the amazing discoveries in the field of violence. But I maintain that far more undreamt of and seemingly impossible discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence.
Mahatma Gandhi
#48. The principle of always seeking an alternative applies to nonviolence as well. It is this: If nonviolence is to be credible, it must answer the questions that violence purports to answer, but in a better way.
Jim Wallis
#49. If you give yourself totally to the nonviolence struggle for peace and justice you also find that people give you their hearts and you will never go hungry and never be alone.
Cesar Chavez
#50. Nonviolence has come among men and it will live. It is the harbinger of the peace of the world.
Mahatma Gandhi
#51. A country facing an aggressive enemy must decide either to be prepared to fight effectively or to follow the path of nonviolence to the end. In either case, the decision must be wholehearted and the consequences must be accepted.
Freeman Dyson
#52. I think nonviolence and the mediation of conflict by means of respecting civility must be promoted. But being the kind of beings we [peoplep] are - wrestling with greed, and wrestling with fears and security, anxieties, wrestling with hatred that's shot through all of us - wars are here to stay.
Cornel West
#53. Too much of anything creates an imbalance in life. This is true even of virtues such as nonviolence. You never know when the winds of change strike; when violence may be required to protect your society, or to even survive.' There
Amish Tripathi
#54. The real reason that nonviolence is considered to be a virtue in Negroes - I am not speaking now of its racial value, another matter altogether - is that white men do not want their lives, their self-image, or their property threatened.
James Baldwin
#55. We dare not enter the kingdom of liberty with mere life-homage to truth and nonviolence.
Mahatma Gandhi
#56. Nonviolence is an unchangeable creed. It has to be pursued even in face of violence raging around you.
Mahatma Gandhi
#57. The most efficient action, the most significant testimony to nonviolence, is living a life in which there is no violence-showing that such a life is possible, and even not more difficult than a life of gain, nor more unpleasant than a life of pleasure, nor less natural than an 'ordinary' life.
Lanza Del Vasto
#58. Unless nonviolence of the strong is really developed among us, there should be no thought of civil disobedience for Swaraj, whether within the states or in British India.
Mahatma Gandhi
#59. If people knew the working of the law of truth and nonviolence, then they would themselves regulate the matter of its shortage.
Mahatma Gandhi
#60. One of the principles of nonviolence is that you leave your opponents whole and better off than you found them.
Andrew Young
#61. The more we practice nonviolence in our words, thoughts and actions the more peaceful will be our inner state.
Amit Ray
#63. All my adult life I have deplored violence and war as instruments for achieving solutions to mankind's problems. I am firmly committed to the creative power of nonviolence as the force which is capable of winning lasting and meaningful brotherhood and peace.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#64. Nonviolence means an ocean of compassion. It means shedding from us every trace of ill will for others. It does not mean abjectness or timidity, or fleeing in fear. It means, on the contrary, firmness of mind and courage, a resolute spirit.
Mahatma Gandhi
#65. My optimism rests on my belief in the infinite possibilities of the individual to develop nonviolence. The more you develop it in your own being, the more it overwhelms your surroundings and by and by might oversweep the world.
M K Gandhi
#66. To me nonviolence has come to represent a panacea for all the evils that surround my people. Therefore I am devoting all my energies toward the establishment of a society that would be based on its principles of truth and peace.
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan
#67. Perhaps the greatest contribution that those of us who come from a Christian tradition can make is to throw out the old just-war theory, embrace the nonviolence of Jesus, refuse to kill one another, and truly follow his commandment to love our enemies.
Mairead Corrigan
#68. I have been practicing, with scientific precision, nonviolence and its possibilities for an unbroken period of over fifty years.
Mahatma Gandhi
#69. Nonviolence is the answer for the questions of our time. Love will conquer evil every time.
James F. Twyman
#70. The tragedy is not that nonviolence did not work against the Nazis, but that it was so seldom utilized ... The churches as a whole were too docile or anti-semitic, and too ignorant of the nonviolent message of the Gospel, to act effectively to resist the Nazis or act in solidarity with the Jews.
Walter Wink
#71. I am a seasoned soldier of nonviolence, and I have evidence enough to sustain my faith.
Mahatma Gandhi
#72. Nonviolence does not require any outside or outward training.
Mahatma Gandhi
#73. The very first step in nonviolence is that we cultivate in our daily life, as between ourselves, truthfulness, humility, tolerance, loving kindness.
Mahatma Gandhi
#74. The real test of nonviolence lies in its being brought in contact with those who have contempt for it.
Mahatma Gandhi
#75. Nonviolence is not a weapon of the weak. It is a weapon of the strongest and bravest.
Mahatma Gandhi
#76. My nonviolence does recognize different species of violence, defensive and offensive.
Mahatma Gandhi
#77. Nonviolence requires more courage than the soldier of war.
Mahatma Gandhi
#78. The science of nonviolence can alone lead one to pure democracy.
Mahatma Gandhi
#79. If a house is burning, and bucket of water is thrown on the blaze and doesn't extinguish the fire, this doesn't mean that water won't put out fire. It means we need more water. And so with nonviolence.
Dorothy Cotton
#80. When nonviolence is accepted as the law of life, it must pervade the whole being and not be applied to isolated acts.
Mahatma Gandhi
#81. Nonviolence is a good policy when the conditions permit.
Nelson Mandela
#82. Nonviolence is the law of the human race and is infinitely greater than, and superior to, brute force.
Mahatma Gandhi
#83. Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer and anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth and hammered with nonviolence, reject it.
Mahatma Gandhi
#84. For a nation to be known as warrior is a shame! For a nation to be known as peaceful is an honour! Violence brings shame, killing brings disgrace; peacefulness brings honour, nonviolence brings esteem!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#85. Nonviolence is kindling light of love into the dark places and budding trust from the threshold of hopelessness.
Amit Ray
#86. If my nonviolence is to be contagious and infectious, I must acquire greater control over my thoughts.
Mahatma Gandhi
#87. As we have seen, the first public expression of disenchantment with nonviolence arose around the question of 'self-defense.' In a sense this is a false issue, for the right to defend one's home and one's person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#88. The Charkha is the symbol of nonviolence on which all life, if it is to be real life, must be based.
Mahatma Gandhi
#89. Gandhi once declared that it was his wife who unwittingly taught him the effectiveness of nonviolence. Who better than women should know that battles can be won without resort to physical strength? Who better than we should know all the power that resides in noncooperation?
Barbara Deming
#90. The force generated by nonviolence is infinitely greater than the force of all the arms created by man's ingenuity.
Mahatma Gandhi
#91. The ultimate way to solve human problems is with nonviolence.
Dalai Lama
#92. We Christians forget (if we ever learned) that attempts to redress real or imagined injustice by violent means are merely another exercise in denial - denial of God and her nonviolence towards us, denial of love of neighbor, denial of laws essential to our being.
Philip Berrigan
#93. CORE was committed to nonviolence, but I was not.
June Jordan
#94. What can be richer and more fruitful than a greater fulfillment of the vow of nonviolence in thought, word and deed or the spread of that spirit?
Mahatma Gandhi
#95. Violence requires few ideas, but nonviolence requires imagination.
Mark Kurlansky
#96. It is much more difficult to live for nonviolence than to die for it.
Mahatma Gandhi
#97. I hold that without truth and nonviolence there can be nothing but destruction of humanity.
Mahatma Gandhi
#98. In a society based on nonviolence, the smallest nation will feel as tall as the tallest.
Mahatma Gandhi
#99. Nonviolence is not an easy thing to understand, still less to practice, weak as we are.
Mahatma Gandhi
#100. I will not have the power of nonviolence to be underestimated in order to cover my limitations or weaknesses.
Mahatma Gandhi
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