Gene Sharp Quotes & Sayings

Whatever promises offered by dictators in any negotiated settlement, no one should ever forget that the dictators may promise anything to secure submission from their democratic opponents, and then brazenly violate those same agreements. — Gene Sharp

As soon as you choose to fight with violence you're choosing to fight against your opponents best weapons and you have to be smarter than that, — Gene Sharp

The foreign states may become actively involved for positive purposes only if and when the internal resistance movement has already begun shaking the dictatorship, having thereby focused international attention on the brutal nature of the regime. — Gene Sharp

Dictatorships usually exist primarily because of the internal power distribution in the home country. The population and society are too weak to cause the dictatorship serious problems, wealth and power are concentrated in too few hands. Although dictatorships may benefit from or be somewhat weakened by international actions, their continuation is dependent primarily on internal factors. — Gene Sharp

Nonviolent struggle is the most powerful means available to those struggling for freedom. — Gene Sharp

The degree of liberty or tyranny in any government is in large degree a reflection of the relative determination of the subjects to be free and their willingness and ability to resist efforts to enslave them. — Gene Sharp

Dictators are not in the business of allowing elections that could remove them from their thrones. — Gene Sharp

The fall of one regime does not bring in a utopia. Rather, it opens the way for hard work and long efforts to build more just social, economic,and political relationships and the eradication of other forms of injustices and oppression. — Gene Sharp

There's one thing that's been 'learned' maybe from Tunisia and Egypt that I think is a mistake. And that is that the existing ruler has to resign. He doesn't have to resign. You take all the supports out from under him; he falls. No matter what he wants to do. This is the distinction in the analyses between nonviolent coercion in which he has to resign, but he's forced into it, and disintegration when the regime simply falls apart. There's nobody left with enough power to resign. — Gene Sharp

That is straight out of Gandhi. If people are not afraid of the dictatorship, that dictatorship is in big trouble. ... If you fight with violence, you are fighting with your enemy's best weapon, and you may be a brave but dead hero. — Gene Sharp

There should be no romanticism that international public opinion or even international diplomatic and economic pressure can defeat a coup without determined and strong defense by the attacked society itself — Gene Sharp

Nonviolent action involves opposing the opponent's power, including his police & military capacity, not with the weapons chosen by him but by quite different means ... Repression by the opponent is used against his own power position in a kind of political " ju-jitsu " and the very sources of his power thus reduced or removed, with the result that his political and military position is seriously weakened or destroyed. — Gene Sharp

Dictatorships are never as strong as they think they are, and people are never as weak as they think they are. — Gene Sharp

By placing confidence in violent means, one has chosen the very type of struggle with which the oppressors nearly always have superiority. — Gene Sharp

Some foreign states will act against a dictatorship only to gain their own economic, political, or military control over the country. — Gene Sharp

Further, democratic negotiators, or foreign negotiation specialists accepted to assist in the negotiations, may in a single stroke provide the dictators with the domestic and international legitimacy that they had been previously denied because of their seizure of the state, human rights violations, and brutalities. Without that desperately needed legitimacy, the dictators cannot continue to rule indefinitely. — Gene Sharp

It's a nonsense assumption that you can get rid of terrorism with war. Terrorism is taking the lives of innocent people to gain your objective. War is basically the same thing on a larger scale. — Gene Sharp

So, he reasoned, if you can identify the sources of a government's power - people working in civil service, police and judges, even the army - then you know what a dictatorship depends on for its existence. — Gene Sharp

Contrary to popular opinion, even totalitarian dictatorships are dependent on the population and the societies they rule. — Gene Sharp

As Charles Stewart Parnell called out during the Irish rent strike campaign in 1879 and 1880:
It is no use relying on the Government ... You must only rely upon your own determination ... Help yourselves by standing together ... strengthen those amongst yourselves who are weak ... , band yourselves together, organize yourselves ... and you must win ...
When you have made this question ripe for settlement,then and not till then will it be settled. — Gene Sharp

Nonviolent defiance often risks serious casualities, but it seem to produce far fewer casualitie than when both sides use violence.
At the same time, presistence in nonviolent struggle contributes to much greater chance for success than if the resisters had chosen to fight a militarily-prepared opponent violence — Gene Sharp

You have a chance of learning
if you want to and youre not arrogant. — Gene Sharp