“Each situation has to be evaluated separately, for all are different. In general, I believe in non-violent direct action, which involve organizing large numbers of people, whereas too often violent uprisings are the product of a small group. If enough people are organized, violence can be minimized in bringing about social change.”

— Howard Zinn

ZNet forum reply (26 May 1999) http://forum.zmag.org/~ZNetCmt/read?224,7
Context: I am not an absolute pacifist, because I can't rule out the possibility that under some, carefully defined circumstances, some degree of violence may be justified, if it is focused directly at a great evil. Slave revolts are justified, and if John Brown had really succeeded in arousing such revolts throughout the South, it would have been much preferable to losing 600,000 lives in the Civil War, where the makers of the war — unlike slave rebels — would not have as their first priority the plight of the black slaves, as shown by the betrayal of black interests after the war. Again, the Zapatista uprising seems justified to me, but some armed struggles that start for a good cause get out of hand and the ensuing violence becomes indiscriminate. Each situation has to be evaluated separately, for all are different. In general, I believe in non-violent direct action, which involve organizing large numbers of people, whereas too often violent uprisings are the product of a small group. If enough people are organized, violence can be minimized in bringing about social change.

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Howard Zinn 69

author and historian 1922–2010

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

Source: "Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Long Wall Method of Coal-Getting", 1951, p. 14

“A society organized and run on the basis of complete nonviolence would be the purest anarchy… That State is perfect and non-violent where the people are governed the least.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Harijan (21 July 1940)
1940s

“But there is another way. And that is to organize mass non-violent resistance based on the principle of love.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (November 1957)
Context: But there is another way. And that is to organize mass non-violent resistance based on the principle of love. It seems to me that this is the only way as our eyes look to the future. As we look out across the years and across the generations, let us develop and move right here. We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way.

“It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our breasts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Non-Violence in Peace and War p. 254 http://books.google.com/books?id=F3ofAAAAIAAJ&q=%22cloak+of%22&pg=PA254 (1948); also in Gandhi on Non-violence: Selected Texts from Mohandas K. Gandhi's Non-Violence in Peace and War (1965) edited by Thomas Merton; this has also appeared in paraphrased form as "if there is violence in our hearts."
1940s

“The basic problem of social organization is how to co-ordinate the economic activities of large numbers of people.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Source: (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, p. 12

“Nobody who has lived through the rise of the violent anti-Semitism which led to Hitler can refuse Mrs. Thatcher admiration for her courageous and outspoken warning. When I grew up in Vienna the established Jewish families were a generally respected group and all decent people would frown upon the occasional anti-Jewish outbursts of a few popular politicians. It was the sudden influx of large numbers of Galician and Polish Jews [during World War I] … which in a short period changed the attitude. They were too visibly different to be readily absorbed.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

Letter to The Times after Thatcher claimed that British people were afraid of being "swamped" by people of a different culture. (11 February 1978), p. 15
1960s–1970s