Barbara Deming

Nonviolent tactics can move into action on our behalf men not naturally inclined to act for us. ”

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. ”

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. ”

This is the heart of my argument: We can put more pressure on the antagonist for whom we show human concern. ”

All prisons that have existed in our society to date put people away as no human being should ever be put away. ”

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. ”

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. ”

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. ”