Popular revolt against materially strong rulers, on the other hand, may engender an almost irresistible power even if it foregoes the use of violence in the face of materially vastly superior forces. To call this “passive resistance” is certainly an ironic idea; it is one of the most active and efficient ways of action ever devised, because it cannot be countered by fighting, where there may be defeat or victory, but only by mass slaughter in which even the victor is defeated, cheated of his prize, since nobody can rule over dead men.
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
The Human Condition, Part 5, ch. 28 “Power and the Space of Appearance” (1958)
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Quotations about:
nonviolence
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It is not a threat but a fact of history that if an oppressed people’s pent-up emotions are not nonviolently released, they will be violently released. So let the Negro march. Let him make pilgrimages to city hall. Let him go on freedom rides. And above all, make an effort to understand why he must do this. For if his frustration and despair are allowed to continue piling up, millions of Negroes will seek solace and security in black-nationalist ideologies. And this, inevitably, would lead to a frightening racial nightmare.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Playboy interview (Jan 1965)
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It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
“Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” National Cathedral, Washington, DC (31 Mar 1968)
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Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, Sweden (11 Dec 1964)
Those who “abjure” violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1945-05), “Notes on Nationalism,” Polemic Magazine (1945-10)
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This seems to be the origin of the Orwell misattribution, "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." This is not found in Orwell's works (or in those of Winston Churchill, to whom the more colorful quote is sometimes attributed), but was a paraphrase of Orwell by Richard Grenier in his article "Perils of Passive Sex," Washington Times (1992-04-06).
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