
Preface to Lear (1972; London: Methuen, 1983) p. lvii
Source: Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin
Preface to Lear (1972; London: Methuen, 1983) p. lvii
Interview in Playboy (January 1965) https://web.archive.org/web/20080706183244/http://www.playboy.com/arts-entertainment/features/mlk/04.html
1960s
Context: I met Malcolm X once in Washington, but circumstances didn't enable me to talk with him for more than a minute. He is very articulate … but I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views — at least insofar as I understand where he now stands. I don't want to seem to sound self-righteous, or absolutist, or that I think I have the only truth, the only way. Maybe he does have some of the answer. I don't know how he feels now, but I know that I have often wished that he would talk less of violence, because violence is not going to solve our problem. And in his litany of articulating the despair of the Negro without offering any positive, creative alternative, I feel that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice. Fiery, demagogic oratory in the black ghettos, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare to engage in violence, as he has done, can reap nothing but grief.
1960s, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1964)
Context: Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time — the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts… Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
“Our violence is, as you know, cartoon violence.”
Village Voice http://www.villagevoice.com/2014-01-15/film/troma-lloyd-kaufman-interview/ January 15, 2014
2014
Lessons of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1990)
Introduction to the publication of Tolstoy's A Letter to a Hindu, Indian opinion, 25 December, (1909)
1900s
Context: Leo Tolstoy's life has been devoted to replacing the method of violence for removing tyranny or securing reform by the method of nonresistance to evil. He would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in selfsuffering. He admits of no exception to whittle down this great and divine law of love. He applies it to all the problems that trouble mankind.
Statement of 1941, as quoted in A People's History (1980) by Howard Zinn, p. 416; also in The Twentieth Century : A People's History (2003) by Howard Zinn, p. 159.
“Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.”
Oscar A. Romero, The Violence of Love http://data.plough.com/ebooks/ViolenceOfLove.pdf (1977).