Rashid Khalidi Quotes

Only through perils and upheavals can Nations be brought to further developments. May the present upheavals lead to a better world.

Agitation prevents rebellion, keeps the peace, and secures progress. Every step she gains is gained forever. Muskets are the weapons of animals. Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.

I think perhaps we manage our revolutions much more quietly in this country.

Believe me, the intellectual revolution is going on, and that has to come first before you see the political changes. That's where I'm very optimistic.

Revolutions are the locomotives of history.

Reform is China's second revolution.

Our people have proven their desire for continuing with reforms. We complete the march today with those who have an honest patriotic desire for more progress and reform.

The world of politics is always twenty years behind the world of thought.

You can't find your way to social reform through the forces that made social reform necessary.

The voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve.

We cannot hope to substitute armed power for the kind of political and economic social changes that offer the best resistance to Communism. If the necessary reforms have not been forthcoming over the past seven years to stop Communist subversion and rebellion, then I do not see how American combat troops can do it today.

… the most sacred right [revolution] to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.

My fear is that in general terms the evolution of the political process proceeds at the same pace as the evolution of the species and I do not myself believe that that is quite fast enough

The only way a revolution can triumph is through the force of arms.

The coming change can only come through a revolution, because the possessing class will not allow a peaceful change to take place; still we are willing to work for peace at any price, except at the price of liberty.

Nelson Mandela understood that social transformation and economic transformation go hand in hand.

I always had a desire to see change and be part of it.

Whatever else it is, the kingdom of God is decidedly not a call to violent revolution.

We are constantly being astonished these days at the amazing discoveries in the field of violence. But I maintain that far more undreamt of and seemingly impossible discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence.

I am against war, against violence, against violent revolution, for peaceful settlement of differences, for nonviolent but nevertheless radical changes. Change is needed, and violence will not really change anything: at most it will only transfer power from one set of bull-headed authorities to another.

Disobedience- that is the nobility of slaves.

One does not necessarily have to wait for a revolutionary situation: it can be created.

There must be power in the word of a satyagraha general, not the power that the possession of limitless arms gives, but the power that purifies life which strict vigilance and a ceaseless application produce.

Nonviolent action, the Negro saw, was the way to supplement, not replace, the progress of change. It was the way to divest himself of passivity without arraying himself in vindictive force.

If Swaraj is to be had by peaceful methods, it will only be attained by attention to every little detail of national life.