Passive Resistance Quotes

“Fury spends itself pretty quickly when there's no fury facing it.”
― John Lewis, March: Book One

“Her stillness defeated his storm.”
― Chris Gardner, The Pursuit of Happyness

“It is what it is because you let it be so.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Fury spends itself pretty quickly when there's no fury facing it.”
― John Lewis

“We will be greatly misled if we feel that the problem will work itself out. Structures of evil do not crumble by passive waiting. If history teaches anything, it is that evil is recalcitrant and determined, and never voluntarily relinquishes its hold short of an almost fanatical resistance. Evil must be attacked by a counteracting persistence, by the day-to-day assault of the battering rams of justice.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Every convinced opponent of National Socialism must ask himself how he can fight against the present 'state' [Nazi Germany] in the most effective way, how he can strike it the most telling blows. Through passive resistance, without a doubt.
The imperialist ideology of force, from whatever side it comes, must be shattered for all time.”
― Sophie Scholl, Die Flugblätter der Weißen Rose (Fließtext & Original-Flugblätter) (kommentiert)

“Noviolence 2.0 (The Sonnet)

Nonviolence is not absence of violence,
Nonviolence is control over violence.
Justice doesn't mean absence of injustice,
Justice means absence of indifference.
Liberty doesn’t mean total lack of limits,
Liberty means to practice self-regulation.
Free speech doesn't mean reckless speech,
Free speech means speaking for ascension.
Order does not mean absence of chaos,
Order means presence of accountability.
Peace does not mean absence of conflicts,
Real peace comes from elimination of bigotry.
No more nonchalant nonviolence, it's a coward's way!
Awake, arise ‘n humanize, or in tomb the world will lay.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervish Advaitam: Gospel of Sacred Feminines and Holy Fathers

“I am no Gandhi, that I would rather let people be tortured by imperialist morons than raise my hand in their defense. I am no Guevara either, that I would accept the loss of innocent lives in my fight for freedom. I am a whole, accountable, thinking human being living in a world still infested with and run by cruelty and biases. Where the situation demands silence, I'll keep quiet, but if and where it demands a bulldozer, believe you me, no gun, no grenade, my bare hands will cause a riot.”
― Abhijit Naskar, High Voltage Habib: Gospel of Undoctrination

“Human Bulldozer (The Sonnet)

I am no Gandhi, that I'd sit quietly and spin a wheel,
While people suffer in the clutches of imperialism.
I am no Guevara either, that I would shoot anyone,
Who looks suspicious, in my revolution for freedom.
Gandhi and Guevara are two extremes of human struggle,
One glorifies submission, another heralds new oppression.
Neither is fit for an infant world aiming to be civilized,
For one lacks backbone, the other weaponizes assumption.
We may take a little from Gandhi, a little from Guevara,
Without rigidity we may administer them accordingly.
I am an accountable human living in a world run by biases,
So most times I'll keep quiet and act as a harmless dummy.
But whenever inhumanity goes overboard wreaking havoc,
The human bulldozer will rise to cleanse every epoch.”
― Abhijit Naskar, High Voltage Habib: Gospel of Undoctrination

“in old times, whole communities used the method of passive resistance to redress a grievance. The technique was to sit motionless in a public place, without food and exposed to the weather, until the ruler agreed to the people’s demands. Sometimes, when he was particularly tyrannical, his subjects would desert the land, leaving the ruler to live in loneliness and mend his ways. In ancient India it was considered the duty of a wise man to abandon the kingdom when all methods of weaning a king from bad ways had failed.”
― Elizabeth Harrower, The Watch Tower

“Now, we are approaching the end. Now, everything depends on finding one another again, on one person enlightening the next, always reflecting and never resting until every last person is convinced of the dire necessity of fighting against this system. If such a wave of uproar travels through the country, if there is 'something in the air', if many people get involved, then this system can be shaken off with one final tremendous effort.”
― White Rose