“Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote that you cannot commit an act of violence against a non-sentient object. Back in 1986, the Green Party of Canada tried to toss me out of the Party for sinking whaling ships on the ground that it was a violent act. I pointed out that the Green Party of Canada supported violence when it was convenient politically — for example they supported and continue to support abortion which is, like it or not, a violent act, certainly more violent than sinking some metal into the sea. Violence is not violent when we justify it, be it abortion, or war, or eating meat for example. I support abortion but I'm not a hypocrite about it — it's violent, I accept that. Every American taxpayer accepts the violence that their tax-dollars fund.”

— Paul Watson

When asked how he addressed accusations of property destruction as being a violent act. Taken from an interview given to the environmentalist magazine, Resistance: Journal of the Earth Liberation Movement http://www.resistancemagazine.org/

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Nov. 22, 2021. History

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Canadian environmental activist 1950

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Press Conference on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 1994, Washington D.C. (23 June 1994)
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“Yeah, I've got violence in me, but no negative violence. My violence is the violence of the free man who refuses to knuckle under. Creation is violent. Life is violent. Birth is a violent process. Tempests and earthquakes are violent movements of nature. My violence is the violence of life. It is not violence against nature, like the violence of the state, which sends your kids to the slaughterhouse, deadens your minds, and drives out your souls!”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

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“We will state (at an all-party meeting if it is called) that we support Section 377 because we believe that homosexuality is an unnatural act and cannot be supported.”

Rajnath Singh (1951) Indian politician

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“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

“Non-violent resistance activities cannot succeed against an enemy that is able freely to use violence.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Chronicles of Dissent, December 13, 1989 http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/interviews/db-8912.html
Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s
Context: Non-violent resistance activities cannot succeed against an enemy that is able freely to use violence. That's pretty obvious. You can't have non-violent resistance against the Nazis in a concentration camp, to take an extreme case...

“It is an unfailing maxim, that if policy enjoins an act of violence, its execution must never be entrusted to the violent.”

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The Thirty Years War

“Non-violent resistance activities cannot succeed against an enemy that is able freely to use violence. That's pretty obvious. You can't have non-violent resistance against the Nazis in a concentration camp, to take an extreme case...”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Chronicles of Dissent, December 13, 1989 https://web.archive.org/web/20000829081348/http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/interviews/db-8912.html
Quotes 1960s–1980s, 1980s

“I commend the Judge that seems fine and ingenious, so it tend to right and equity. And I condemn them, that either out of pleasure to shew a subtil wit will destroy, or out of incuriousness or negligence will not labour to support the act of the party by the art or act of the law.”

Sir Henry Hobart, 1st Baronet (1554–1625) English politician

Pits v. James (1614), Lord Hobart's Rep. 124-125

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

1960s, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)
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“Our Party supports and will continue to support peoples fighting for their freedom. In so doing, the Soviet Union does not look for advantages, does not hunt for concessions, does not seek political domination and is not after military bases. We act as we are bid by our revolutionary conscience, our communist convictions.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Cited in Ussr: For Peace Against Aggression http://leninist.biz/en/1976/UFPAA243/5.1-Against.Spread.of.Fascist.Aggression

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