Barbara Deming
Barbara Deming
Barbara Demingwas an American feminist and advocate of nonviolent social change...
christian jesus love-you
Manliness has been defined as assertion of the self. Womanliness has been defined as the nurturing of selves other than our own - even if we quite lose our own in the process. (Women are supposed to find in this loss their true fulfillment.) But every individual person is born both to assert herself or himself and to act out a sympathy for others trying to find themselves - in Christian terms, meant to love one's self as one loves others ... Jesus never taught that we should split up that commandment - assigning 'love yourself' to men, 'love others' to women. But society has tried to.
vengeance
Vengeance is not the point: change is.
thinking choices enemy
I think the only choice that will enable us to hold to our vision. . . is one that abandons the concept of naming enemies and adopts a concept familiar to the nonviolent tradition: naming behavior that is oppressive.
american-author longer might punishment restraint
But if institutions of restraint might still be necessary, they should no longer be institutions of punishment at the same time.
american-author good people prisons reason restraint surely wanting
After the revolution, surely the only good reason for institutions that could still be called prisons - because they take people and place them under restraint - is this reason: wanting to keep people from harming others.
american-author concern help itself society
After the revolution, when one person injures another, society would concern itself most immediately to give help to the person who has been injured.
american-author behavior choice concept enable enemies familiar hold
I think the only choice that will enable us to hold to our vision... is one that abandons the concept of naming enemies and adopts a concept familiar to the nonviolent tradition: naming behavior that is oppressive.
giving emotion masters
The point is to change one's life. The point is not to give some vent to the emotions that have been destroying one; the point is so to act that one can master them now.
peace real diversity
The longer we listen to one another - with real attention - the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories and not simply opinions.
determination anger thinking
Our task, of course, is to transmute the anger that is affliction into the anger that is determination to bring about change. I think, in fact, that one could give that as a definition of revolution.
strength movement liberation
A liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.
peace effectiveness wife
Gandhi once declared that it was his wife who unwittingly taught him the effectiveness of nonviolence. Who better than women should know that battles can be won without resort to physical strength? Who better than we should know all the power that resides in noncooperation?
spiritual pulse stranger
Our own pulse beats in every stranger's throat.
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.