Gene Sharp Quotes
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By placing confidence in violent means, one has chosen the very type of struggle with which the oppressors nearly always have superiority.
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Nonviolent struggle is the most powerful means available to those struggling for freedom.
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Dictatorships are never as strong as they think they are, and people are never as weak as they think they are.
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Contrary to popular opinion, even totalitarian dictatorships are dependent on the population and the societies they rule.
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As soon as you choose to fight with violence you're choosing to fight against your opponents best weapons and you have to be smarter than that.
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You have a chance of learning -- if you want to and youre not arrogant.
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The degree of liberty or tyranny in any government is, it follows, in large degree a reflection of the relative determination of the subjects to be free and their willingness and ability to resist efforts to enslave them.
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The fall of one regime does not bring in a utopia. Rather, it opens the way for hard work and long efforts to build more just social, economic,and political relationships and the eradication of other forms of injustices and oppression.
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It's a nonsense assumption that you can get rid of terrorism with war. Terrorism is taking the lives of innocent people to gain your objective. War is basically the same thing on a larger scale.
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Nonviolent action involves opposing the opponent's power, including his police and military capacity, not with the weapons chosen by him but by quite different means. Repression by the opponent is used against his own power position in a kind of political "ju-jitsu" and the very sources of his power thus reduced or removed, with the result that his political and military position is seriously weakened or destroyed.