Dwight Macdonald quote: “Pacifism, to me, is primarily a way of actively struggling against injustice and inhumanity… My kind of pacifism may be…”

“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

“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...

“I mean by pacifism, not the love of peace as a good to be secured by a definite form of action, but the belief that any form of social constraint of others or any violent action is in itself wrong, and that violence such as war must be passively resisted because to use violence to end violence would be logically self-contradictory. I oppose pacifism in this sense to the Communist belief that the only way to secure peace is by a revolutionary change in the social system, and that ruling classes resist revolution violently and must therefore be overthrown by force.”

Christopher Caudwell (1907–1937) British Marxist literary critic, journalist and writer

Studies in a Dying Culture (1938), Pacifism and Violence: A Study in Bourgeois Ethics

“You can't have non-violent resistance against the Nazis in a concentration camp”

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...

“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.

“I believe … that this Government practises a Pacific form of revised apartheid against the Indian community and should be ashamed of calling itself Christian.”

James Ah Koy (1936) Fijian politician

Maiden speech in the Senate http://www.parliament.gov.fj/hansard/viewhansard.aspx?hansardID=165&viewtype=full, 8 December 2003 (excerpts), Speech in the Senate http://www.parliament.gov.fj/hansard/viewhansard.aspx?hansardID=245&viewtype=full, 26 August 2004 (excerpts)

“Humanism is the only - I would go so far as saying the final- resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history.”

Edward Said (1935–2003) Professor of English and literature

“I have joined my people in the new spirit that moves them today, the spirit that revolts openly and boldly against injustice and expresses itself in a determined and non-violent manner.”

Albert Lutuli (1898–1967) South African politician

The Road to Freedom is via the Cross (1952)

“My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“I know the Americans are inherently disposed against us, but when they talk with us, they will see that I am not the kind of person who would shoot nuclear weapons to the south, over the Pacific or at the United States.”

Kim Jong-un (1984) 3rd Supreme Leader of North Korea

Said to Moon Jae-in during the April 2018 inter-Korean summit according to a South Korean government spokesman, as quoted in Slate https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/04/kim-jong-un-says-north-korea-will-abandon-nuclear-program-if-u-s-pledges-not-to-invade.html

“Pacifism, to me, is primarily a way of actively struggling against injustice and inhumanity… My kind of pacifism may be called "non-violent resistance."”

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