Barbara Deming
Barbara Deming
Barbara Demingwas an American feminist and advocate of nonviolent social change...
mean neighbor should
The injunction that we should love our neighbors as ourselves means to us equally that we should love ourselves as we love our neighbors.
punishment spirit break
Punishment cannot heal spirits, can only break them.
jail doubt trying
Of course it can be said of jails, too, that they try - by punishing the troublesome - to deter others. No doubt, in certain instances this deterrence actually works. But generally speaking it fails conspicuously.
mean men names
After the revolution, let us hope, prisons simply would not exist - if by prisons we mean places that could be experienced by the men and women in them at all as every place that goes by that name now is bound to be experienced.
cutting people littles
After the revolution, it might very well remain necessary to place people where they could not do harm to others. But the one under restraint should be cut off from the rest of society as little as possible.
moving great-men obedience
A great many of us must move from words to acts - from words of dissent to acts of disobedience.
thinking choices enemy
I think the only choice that will enable us to hold to our vision. . . is one that abandons the concept of naming enemies and adopts a concept familiar to the nonviolent tradition: naming behavior that is oppressive.
peace effectiveness wife
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?
spiritual pulse stranger
Our own pulse beats in every stranger's throat.
strength movement liberation
A liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.
determination anger thinking
Our task, of course, is to transmute the anger that is affliction into the anger that is determination to bring about change. I think, in fact, that one could give that as a definition of revolution.
peace real diversity
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.
giving emotion masters
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.
american-author longer might punishment restraint
But if institutions of restraint might still be necessary, they should no longer be institutions of punishment at the same time.