The free man must be born before freedom can be won, and the brotherly man must be born before full brotherhood can be won. It will come into being only if we build it out of our very muscle and bone - by trying to act it out.
From Barbara Deming
The injunction that we should love our neighbors as ourselves means to us equally that we should love ourselves as we love our neighbors.
The longer we listen to one another - with real attention - the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories and not simply opinions.
The point is to change one's life. The point is not to give some vent to the emotions that have been destroying one; the point is so to act that one can master them now.
There should be no censorship of mail.
Think first of the action that is right to take, think later about coping with one's fears.
This is the heart of my argument: We can put more pressure on the antagonist for whom we show human concern.
We believe, in fact, that the one act of respect has little force unless matched by the other - in balance with it... The acting out of that dual respect I would name as precisely the source of our power.
We learn best to listen to our own voices if we are listening at the same time to other women - whose stories, for all our differences, turn out, if we listen well, to be our stories also.
Nonviolent action does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences.
3 perspectives
2 perspectives
1 perspectives