Barbara Deming
Barbara Deming
Barbara Demingwas an American feminist and advocate of nonviolent social change...
voice differences justice
We learn best to listen to our own voices if we are listening at the same time to other women-whose stories, for all our differences, turn out, if we listen well, to be our stories also.
peace lying thinking
What is the revolution that we need? We need to dissolve the lie that some people have a right to think of other people as their property. And we need at last to form a circle that includes us all, in which all of us are seen as equal... We do not belong to the other, but our lives are linked; we belong in a circle of others.
people needs
People who attack others need rationalizations for doing so. We undermine those rationalizations.
fear thinking firsts
Think first of the action that is right to take, think later about coping with one's fears.
people our-society prison
All prisons that have existed in our society to date put people away as no human being should ever be put away.
believe names acting
We believe, in fact, that the one act of respect has little force unless matched by the other - in balance with it... The acting out of that dual respect I would name as precisely the source of our power.
nice doe action
Nonviolent action does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences.
Surely all of us are nerved by one another, catch courage from one another.
heart pressure argument
This is the heart of my argument: We can put more pressure on the antagonist for whom we show human concern.
judgment should judgment-of-others
I learned always to trust my own deep sense of what I should do, and not just obediently trust the judgment of others - even others better than I am.
mail censorship should
There should be no censorship of mail.
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.