Barbara Deming Quotes

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.

Nonviolent action does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences.

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.

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.

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