Nonviolent Change Quotes

Violence never has and never will bring constructive change, but my life experience tells me that most change is violent.

Politics is not perfect but it's the best available nonviolent means of changing how we live.

The power of a movement lies in the fact that it can indeed change the habits of people. This change is not the result of force but of dedication, of moral persuasion.

We are making our revolution slowly and by constitutional methods.

Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light.

Some believe that the only way to remove the authoritarian regime and replace it with a democratic one is through violent means. I would like to set the precedent of political change through political settlement, not through violence.

I ran because I became convinced after King was shot and killed, and Martin Luther King was one of the great heroes of my life, that politics is not perfect but it's the best available nonviolent means of changing how we live. If we don't like how we live, we can participate in the perfect most revolutionary act in a democracy, it's called voting.

...once again we face a paradox, for it appears that softening your heart and gently tending its wounds will protect you from evil. Building a fortress and defending yourself behind it will only make you more vulnerable. Healing your own heart is the single most powerful thing you can do to change the world. Your own transformation will enable you to withdraw so completely from evil that you contribute to it by not one word, one thought, or one breath. This healing process is like recovering your soul.

We can surely boast of having set the world a beautiful example of a government reformed by reason alone, without bloodshed.

Try not to change the world. You will fail. Try to love the world. Lo, the world is changed. Changed forever.

One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better

The democracy process provides for political and social change without violence.

The English are probably more capable than most peoples of making revolutionary change without bloodshed. In England, if anywhere,it would be possible to abolish poverty without destroying liberty.

In a world where change is inevitable and continuous, the need to achieve that change without violence is essential for survival.

In all our history, there is no change of government peacefully.

The vital question in agitation at the present day is a question of Education. We do not seek to establish a new order of things through violence. Any order of things established through violence, even though itself superior to the old, is still a tyranny. What we have to do is to propose, for the approval of the nation, an order of things which we believe to be superior to that now existing, and to educate men by every possible means to develop it and act in accordance with it.

If whites would vote their economic interests, not their racial fears, we the people who have the most need for change have the power to bring about that change nonviolently.

I say from time to time that the vote is precious. It's almost sacred. It is the most powerful nonviolent tool or instrument that we have in a democratic society. And we must use it.

… the peaceful turn of events

Press bravely onward! - not in vainYour generous trust in human kind;The good which bloodshed could not gainYour peaceful zeal shall find.

Actions always speak louder than words, especially when they're peaceful actions.

My opposition to the socialist and the other consists in attacking violence as a means of effecting any lasting reform.

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.

Laurel and Hardy. That's John and Yoko, and we stand a better chance under that guise, because all the serious people, like Martin Luther King, and Kennedy, and Gandhi, got shot.

Unless the gentle inherit the earth, / There will be no earth.