Nonviolence Sayings of the Week ( list 3)
"As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. Always avoid violence. If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from “The Most Durable Power,” sermon, 6 Nov. 1956, Montgomery, AL
“True peace is not the absence of tension, but the presence of justice.” -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.” -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate...Returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only love can do that." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Some years ago a famous novelist died. Among his papers was found a list of suggested plots for future stories, the most prominently underscored being this one: ‘A widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together.’ This is the great new problem of mankind [sic]. We have inherited a large house, a great ‘world house’ in which we have to live together—black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu—a family unduly separated in ideas, culture, and interests, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.” -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (from “The World House,” final chapter in Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Boston: Beacon Press, 1968)
“… today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant, and to face the challenge of change. The large house in which we live demands that we transform this world-wide neighborhood into a world-wide brotherhood. Together we must learn to live as brothers , or together we will be forced to perish as fools.” -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (“The World House,” 1968)
“We must work passionately and indefatigably to bridge the gulf between our scientific progress and our moral progress. One of the great problems of mankind [sic] is that we suffer from a poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.” -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (“The World House,” 1968)
“When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men [sic]. When we foolishly minimize the internal of our lives and miximize the external, we sign the warrant for our own day of doom.” -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (“The World House,” 1968)
“Our hope for creative living in this world house that we have inherited lies in our ability to re-establish the moral ends of our lives in personal character and social justice. Without this spiritual and moral reawakening we shall destroy ourselves in the misuse of our own instruments.” (“The World House,” 1968)
“Not by hate is hate defeated; hate is quenched by love; this is the eternal law.” -- Gautama Buddha, Dhammapada 5
“You [Westerners] call your thousand material devices ‘labor-saving machinery,’ yet you are forever ‘busy.’ With the multiplying of your machinery you grow increasingly fatigued, anxious, nervous, dissatisfied. Whatever you have, you want more; and wherever you are you want to go somewhere else…your devices are neither time-saving nor soul-saving machinery. They are so many sharp spurs which urge you on to invent more machinery and to do more business.” -- Abraham Mitrie Rihbany, Wise Men from the East and from the West (Houghton Mifflin, 1922)
“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads to lead to Boston or New york [sic]. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate." Henry David Thoreau (1854)
"… one day we must ask the question, 'Why are there forty million poor people in America?' And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. … I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. ... You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, 'Who owns the iron ore?' You begin to ask the question, 'Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?' ... Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problems of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together." -- Martin Luther King, Jr. ["Where do we go from here?” Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) presidential address]
"War is a racket; possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious... Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. Nations acquire additional territory (which is promptly exploited by the few for their own benefit), and the general public shoulders the bill–a bill that renders a horrible accounting of newly placed gravestones, mangled bodies, shattered minds, broken hearts and homes, economic instability, and back-breaking taxation of the many for generations and generations." -- General Smedley Butler
"If it's natural to kill, why do men [sic] have to go into training to learn how to do it?" -- Joan Baez
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people....." -- Howard Zinn , Terrorism over Tripoli
"They came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. And then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up." -- Martin Niemoeller, a Protestant minister in Nazi Germany
"If men [sic] as individuals surrender to the call of their elementary instincts, avoiding pain and seeking satisfaction only for their own selves, the result for them all taken together must be a state of insecurity, of fear, and of promiscuous misery." -- Albert Einstein
“I will say this, at the risk of sounding ridiculous, but a true revolutionary is motivated only by love." -- Ernesto "Che" Guevara
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience…. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running and robbing the country. That's our problem." -- Howard Zinn, Failure to Quit, p. 45
“Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind [sic]. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by [our] ingenuity.” -- Mohandas K. Gandhi
“Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.” -- President John F. Kennedy
Some peace-promoting ideas for individuals from The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation:
“It is the height of patriotism to labor for justice, not the quick-fix catharsis of revenge, as the true path to peace and security. That should be our real call to duty as Americans.” --
Aaron G. Lehmer
“I grew up with the idea that democracy is not something you believe in, or a place to hang your hat, but it’s something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles and falls apart.” -- Abbie Hoffman, explaining in court (1987) his and others’ resistance to recruitment at the University of Massachusetts by the CIA
“… The third reason for my war tax resistance reflects my commitment to nonviolence as a way of life. It is my deeply held conviction that all life is sacred; I believe in the unity of all that lives. To kill another living being, or to pay through my taxes to do so, is to kill a part of myself and to destroy a part of the magic of the universe. I cannot do it…. I decided that … I would … do everything in my power to stop war and military spending. I decided that I would not cooperate…. I would not pay taxes for war.” -- Robert Burrowes, Australian war-tax resister
“In refusing to register, I was trying to prevent crimes that are actually at issue—the waging of interventionary wars and the use of nuclear weapons…. I believe that my resistance to military preparations … is in accordance with the Fifth Commandment (‘Thou shalt not kill’); the First Amendment (free exercise of religion, speech, and conscience or belief); and the Nuremberg Charter (the moral necessity not to participate in crimes against peace or humanity planned or perpetrated by one’s own country)…
. “I believe that war resisters are acting in the spirit of our history as Americans. If Harriet Tubman, a black abolitionist, could risk death guiding fellow humans through the Underground Railroad to freedom in the North and Canada, violating as she did the Fugitive Slave Act, then certainly I can risk a few years’ imprisonment for violating another federal law. If enough of us act today, then perhaps our children will no longer see their children conscripted for war, as today we no longer sell children into slavery….” -- Russell F. Ford, on trial (1983) for resisting draft registration