Barbara Deming's words

"Think first of the action that is right to take, think later about coping with one's fears."

"[People] must use bold words and bold actions to rid our world of fear."

"A great many of us [must] move from words to acts - from words of dissent to acts of disobedience."

"It is my stubborn faith that if, as revolutionaries, we will wage battle without violence, we can remain very much more in control - of our selves, of the responses to us which our adversaries make, of the battle as it proceeds, and of the future we hope will issue from it."

"To resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek. The most effective action both resorts to power and engages conscience. Nonviolent actions does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences. Nor does it have to petition those in power to do something about a situation. It can face the authorities with a new fact and say: accept this new situation which we have created."

"Make it impossible for [the authority] to operate within the system as usual ... making it impossible for him simply to strike back without thought and with all his strength."

"Vengeance is not the point; change is. But the trouble is that in most [people's] minds the thought of victory and the thought of punishing the enemy coincide."

"I spoke of the need I see for us to reassure men continually as we take from them the privileges they have had so long...spoke of the need to convince them that this loss will not be as grievous as they fear, that the pleasures of relating to others as equals may really prove greater than the pleasure of relating to others as merely shadows of themselves, second selves."

"We were protesting that there is any such classification as second-class citizen."

"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."

"Many oppressed people happen to be our oppressors. So how do we act? How are we to begin? I think the only choice that will enable us to hold to our vision without being scared into wanting to retreat is one that abandons the concept of naming enemies and adopts a concept familiar to the nonviolent tradition: naming behavior that is oppressive, naming abuse of power, that is held unfairly and must be destroyed, but naming no person one whom we are willing to destroy.... "

"We [women] belong in history, too. You [men] have stolen us from ourselves. We do not exist for your pride to feed upon. We are who we are."

"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."

"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."