David T. Dellinger > Quotes

“There is a heady sense of manhood that comes from advancing from apathy to commitment, from timidity to courage, from passivity to aggressiveness. There is an intoxication that comes from standing up to the police at last.”
― David T. Dellinger, From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter

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

“This is a diseased world in which it is impossible for anyone to be fully human. One way or another, everyone who lives in the modern world is sick or maladjusted.”
― David Dellinger, Revolutionary Nonviolence: Essays

“Our experience of the governments of the world, our knowledge of the weapons at their disposal, and our awareness of our own limitations justify pessimism. But some mysterious factor deep in the human psyche has produced a countervailing conviction that educating, organizing, uniting, and acting will make a difference. ”
― David Dellinger

“Hiroshima and Nagasaki were atomized at a time when the Japanese were suing desperately for peace. ”
― David Dellinger, Revolutionary Nonviolence: Essays

“Arms control is by definition a rejection of disarmament.”
― David Dellinger

“After Spain, World War II was simple. I wasn't even tempted to pick up a gun to fight for General Motors, U.S. Steel, or the Chase Manhattan Bank, even if Hitler was running the other side.”
― David Dellinger, From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter

“Nonviolence cannot be used successfully to protect special privileges that have been won by violence.”
― David T. Dellinger

“Nonviolence simply cannot defend property rights over human rights.”
― David T. Dellinger

“Nonviolence is supremely the weapon of the dispossessed, the underprivileged, and the egalitarian, not those who are still addicted to private profit, commercial values, and great wealth.”
― David T. Dellinger

“Commitment to nonviolence must not be based on patient acquiescence in intolerable conditions. Rather, it stems from a deeper knowledge of the self-defeating, self-corrupting effect of lapses into violence.”
― David T. Dellinger