Violence never has and never will bring constructive change, but my life experience tells me that most change is violent.
The capitalist world could not help giving birth to the socialist, but now the socialist world should not seek to destroy by force the ground from which it grew. Under the present conditions this would be tantamount to the suicide of mankind. Socialism should ennoble that ground by its example and other indirect forms of pressure and then merge with it.
I believe that Gandhi was correct. Non-violent civil disobedience is the only way to bring about change that allows people to enjoy the change and not get killed in the process.
What I want is peaceful industrialisation.
The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling.
Gorbachev's legacy is that he called time on communism, partially against his will, but in fact, he finished it off. Without violence. Without bloodshed. Beyond that, I am struggling to think of much else in terms of real legacy.
The time must come when, great and pressing as change and betterment may be, they do not involve killing and hurting people.
I'm a very great non-violent character. I would never resort to violence to change anything.
We can surely boast of having set the world a beautiful example of a government reformed by reason alone, without bloodshed.
Of the Constitution of 1787:
Support for peaceful reform by the people themselves is the right way to promote democracy, not the use of force.
The day for progress by force has passed. From now on it will be progress by ideas or not at all.
The principle of my political life …. is, that all ameliorations and improvements in political institutions can be obtained by persevering in a perfectly peaceable and legal course, and cannot be obtained by forcible means, or if they could be got by forcible means, such means create more evils than they cure, and leave the country worse than they found it
Warhol was proof that you can be revolutionary without being militant.
