Non Violence Quotes

“Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.”
― Thomas A. Edison

“Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe. ”
― Arundhati Roy, Public Power in the Age of Empire

“Concerning non-violence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.”
― Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements

“Compassion is the signature of Higher Consciousness. Non-violence is the tool to evolve into the Higher Consciousness.”
― Amit Ray, Nonviolence: The Transforming Power

“We do not need guns and bombs to bring peace, we need love and compassion.”
― Mother Teresa, The Joy in Loving: A Guide to Daily Living

“I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more.”
― Chief Joseph

“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence. This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Non-violence in Peace and War 1942-49

“I first learned the concepts of non-violence in my marriage.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“When I say that we must establish values with originate in sisterhood, I mean to say that we must not accept, even for a moment, male notions of what non-violence is. These notions have never condemned the systematic violence against us. The men who hold these notions have never renounced the male behaviours, privileges, values and conceits which are in and of themselves acts of violence against us.”
― Andrea Dworkin

“Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in the smoke of confabulation. There can be no peace on earth without the kind of inner change that brings man back to his "right mind." p. 31”
― Thomas Merton, Gandhi on Non-Violence

“Your blessings are very important to melt down the stony hearts.”
― Amit Ray, Nonviolence: The Transforming Power

“Islam teaches tolerance, not hatred; universal brotherhood, not enmity; peace, and not violence.”
― Parwez Musharraf

“The first principal of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi on Non-Violence

“Among all the methods, non-violence is most successful, and I strongly believe that only non-violence can set the true mood of peace and harmony among the nuclear nations. Our experiments with non-violence should be more wide, more engaging and more humble.”
― Amit Ray, Nuclear Weapons Free World - Peace on the Earth

“When I feel angry, I want to say something mean, or yell, or hit. But feeling like I want to is not the same as doing it. Feeling can't hurt anyone or get me into trouble, but doing can." (Bunny from picture book)”
― Cornelia Maude Spelman, When I Feel Angry

“COVID-19 is not just a medical challenge, but a spiritual challenge too. To defeat covid humanity need to follow the path of self-purification, compassion, nonviolence, God and the Nature.”
― Amit Ray, Peace Bliss Beauty and Truth: Living with Positivity

“In the use of force, one simplifies the situation by assuming that the evil to be overcome is clear-cut, definite, and irreversible. Hence there remains but one thing: to eliminate it. Any dialogue with the sinner, any question of the irreversibility of his act, only means faltering and failure. Failure to eliminate evil is itself a defeat. Anything that even remotely risks such defeat is in itself capitulation to evil. The irreversibility of evil then reaches out to contaminate even the tolerant thought of the hesitant crusader who, momentarily, doubts the total evil of the enemy he is about to eliminate. p. 21”
― Thomas Merton, Gandhi on Non-Violence

“The most awful tyranny is that of the proximate Utopia where the last sins are currently being eliminated and where, tomorrow, there will be no more sins because all the sinners will have been wiped out. p. 22”
― Thomas Merton, Gandhi on Non-Violence

“Unnecessary bureaucracy hinders creativity, growth, justice and the attainment of peace.”
― Widad Akrawi

“To achieve peace, it is crucial to eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy that prevents peace processes from advancing.”
― Widad Akrawi

“Live simply so others may simply live”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Peace: The Words and Inspiration of Mahatma Gandhi

“Violence is the first impulse of the wounded and the uninspired, and we... Dracul... are neither.”
― Marjorie M. Liu, Monstress, Volume 4: The Chosen

“Hindus should not harbour anger against Muslims even if the latter wants to destroy and kill us all. We should face death bravely. If Muslims established their rule after killing all Hindus we would be ushering in a new India.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“If we can learn tolerance with understanding, our responses will be through non-violence.”
― Debasish Mridha

“A victory is a victory only if it is achieved peacefully, without any use of violence! If you have defeated your enemy not with ideas or with love, but with fists and weapons, the name of that victory is not victory, it is just becoming a scorpion against a scorpion, becoming a devil against the devil!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Non-violence wasn't a simply rejection of force. It was more a matter of opposing physical force with the force of the soul alone. Gandhi did not say: make no resistance when the blows rain down, when the brutality redoubles. He said almost the opposite: resist with your entire soul by standing up for as long as possible, never surrendering any of your dignity, and without showing the slightest aggression or doing anything at all that might restore, between the whipper and the whipped, any reciprocity or equivalence in a community of violence and hate. On the contrary, show immense compassion for the one who is beating you. The relation should remain asymmetric in every respect: on one side a blind, physical, hate-filled rage, on the other a spiritual force of love. If you hold firm, then the relationship is reversed; physical force degrades the one who uses it, who becomes a furious beast, while all human qualities are reflected in his prone victim, raised to a state of pure humanity by the attempt to lay him low. Non-violence puts violence to shame. To continue beating someone who opposes physical brutality with pure humanity, simply dignity, is to lose your honour and your soul there and then.”
― Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking

“Toute planète qui confond armes à feu et bravoure est une planète de singes.”
― Abhijit Naskar, L'humain Impossible: Cent Sonnets pour Ma Famille Mondiale

“L'armée n'est qu'un terrorisme légal.”
― Abhijit Naskar, L'humain Impossible: Cent Sonnets pour Ma Famille Mondiale

“Je pense bien évidemment que le terrorisme est inacceptable, mais il faut reconnaître que lorsque l'on est occupé avec des moyens militaires infiniment supérieurs aux vôtres, la réaction populaire ne peut pas être que non-violente.
Est-ce que ça sert le Hamas d'envoyer des rockets sur la ville de Sdérot ? La réponse est non. Ça ne sert pas sa cause, mais on peut expliquer ce geste par l'exaspération des Gazaouis. Dans la notion d'exaspération, il faut comprendre la violence comme une regrettable conclusion de situations inacceptables pour ceux qui les subissent. Alors, on peut se dire que le terrorisme est une forme d'exaspération. Et que cette exaspération est un terme négatif. Il ne faudrait pas exaspérer, il faudrait espérer.”
― Stéphane Hessel, Indignez-vous !

“Violence and Non-Violence are not identities or morals. The same people who fight against the police have the experience and knowledge to create a park, make non-confrontational political and social demos, write a book, sing a song, play with children on the playground. The same people who make art happenings and dance in front of the police with the drums and the puppets will fight back with molotovs and stones along with the Black Block when the police come closer, and they will help their comrades to escape. The same people whom you will meet behind the barricades are the people who will organize a grocery shop with organic vegetables and fruits from the anarchist farms, and all of them participated and will participate again together in the insurrection.”
― A.G. Schwarz, We Are an Image from the Future: The Greek Revolt of December 2008