Quotes & Sayings About Non Resistance

True happiness isn't a disruption-free life, its learning to recognize the ever-present contentment amidst the disruptions of life. Go with the flow(non-resistance), and when you struggle, remember to be compassionate with yourself... — Maximus Freeman

The Book of Mormon proposes a new purpose for America: becoming a realm of righteousness rather than an empire of liberty. Against increasing wealth and inequality, the Book of Mormon advocates the cause of the poor. Against the subjection of the Indians, it promises the continent to the native people. Against republican government, it proposes righteous rule by judges and kings under God's law. Against a closed canon Bible and non-miraculous religion, the Book of Mormon stands for ongoing revelation, miracles and revelation to all nations. Against skepticism, it promotes belief; against nationalism, a universal Israel. It foresees disaster for the nation if the love of riches, resistance to revelation, and Gentile civilization prevail over righteousness, revelation and Israel. — Richard L. Bushman

Pacifism, to me, is primarily a way of actively struggling against injustice and inhumanity; My kind of pacifism may be called "non-violent resistance". — Dwight Macdonald

Dr. King used Gandhi's commitment to non-violence and to passive resistance. — Al Sharpton

Constructive insurgency: Is the use of legal and imaginative means of resistance to reform a system of repression. Generally through the use of a non-violent nature. — Clyde Lewis

The most powerful state for a human to be in is the state of embracing completely the reality of what is - Now. It is to say "Yes" to life, which is now and always now. There is a vast power in that "Yes," that state of inner non-resistance to what is. — Eckhart Tolle

To his enemies the householder must be a hero. Them he must resist. That is the duty of the householder. He must not sit down in a corner and weep, and talk nonsense about non-resistance. If he does not show himself a hero to his enemies he has not done his duty. — Swami Vivekananda

Don't look for peace. Don't look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender — Eckhart Tolle

Non-violent resistance implies the very opposite of weakness. Defiance combined with non-retaliatory acceptance of repression from one's opponents is active, not passive. It requires strength, and there is nothing automatic or intuitive about the resoluteness required for using non-violent methods in political struggle and the quest for Truth. — Mahatma Gandhi

It was strange to us that none of these three victims made any attempt to resist the attack. Indeed, not one inhabitant in any of these worlds considered for a moment the possibility of resistance. In every case the attitude to disaster seemed to express itself in such terms as these:
To retaliate would be to wound our communal spirit beyond cure. We choose rather to die. The theme of spirit that we have created must inevitably be broken short, whether by the ruthlessness of the invader or by our own resort to arms. It is better to be destroyed than to triumph in slaying the spirit. Such as it is, the spirit that we have achieved is fair; and it is indestructibly woven into the tissue of the cosmos. We die praising the universe in which at least such an achievement as ours can be. We die knowing that the promise of further glory outlives us in other galaxies. We die praising the Star Maker, the Star Destroyer. — Olaf Stapledon

For satyagraha and its offshoots, non-co-operation and civil resistance, are nothing but new names for the law of suffering. — Mahatma Gandhi

All happiness comes from awareness. The more we are conscious the deeper the joy. Acceptance of pain, non-resistance, courage and endurance - these open deep and perennial sources of real happiness, true bliss. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

I think the invitation offered the non-black reader is to join us in this expression of our familiarity and via that joining, come to understand that when black people come together to celebrate and rejoice in black critical thinking, we do so not to exclude or to separate, but to participate more fully in world community. However, we must first be able to dialogue with one another, to give one another subject-to-subject recognition that is an act of resistance that is part of the decolonizing, anti-racist process. — Bell Hooks

A truly nonviolent man would never live to tell the tale of atrocities. He would have laid down his life on the spot in non-violent resistance. — Mahatma Gandhi

Nothing has contributed so much to the obscuring of Christian truth in the eyes of the heathen,
and has hindered so much the diffusion of Christianity through the world, as the disregard of [non-resistance] by men calling themselves Christians, and the permission of war and violence to Christians. — Leo Tolstoy

Any government's condemnation of terrorism is only credible if it shows itself to be responsive to persistent, reasonable, closely argued, non-violent dissent. And yet, what's happening is just the opposite. The world over, non-violent resistance movements are being crushed and broken. If we do not respect and honour them, by default we privilege those who turn to violent means. — Arundhati Roy

Government is violence, Christianity is meekness, non-resistance, love. And, therefore, government cannot be Christian, and a man who wishes to be a Christian must not serve government. — Leo Tolstoy

Freedom is never given to anybody, for the oppressor has you in domination because he plans to keep you there." And he went beyond Douglass to espouse a doctrine of passive, non-violent resistance. "Hate begets hate, violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness," King said. "Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. ... This is a nonviolent protest. We are depending on moral and spiritual forces. — Robert A. Caro

I am devoting my lecture in this seminar to a discussion of the possibility that we are now entering a Jewish century, a time when the spirit of the community, the non-ideological blend of the emotional and rational and the resistance to categories and forms will emerge through the forces of anti-nationalism to provide us with a new kind of society. I call this process the Judaization of Christianity because Christianity will be the vehicle through which this society becomes Jewish. — Martin A. Siegel

Each new day provides a new opportunity to allow everyone and everything to be exactly as they are. Allowance (non-judgmental, non-resistance to what is) leads the way to contentment ... — Maximus Freeman

Christ's teaching, which came to be known to men, not by means of violence and the sword," they say, "but by means of non-resistance to evil, gentleness, meekness, and peaceableness, can only be diffused through the world by the example of peace, harmony, and love among its followers. — Leo Tolstoy

Peace is non-resistance, complete acceptance, identification with all, everyone, everything. — Lester Levenson

One subtle arena of attack is in the area of pride. Praying people can become prideful about their praying. Non-participants can become prideful in their resistance. The enemy seeks to divide and conquer every initiative of prayer. — Daniel Henderson

Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means ... the need to be left. I am driven to grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics. — Kingsley Amis

Today one might be tempted to say that patriotism is the last refuge of the tribal religion dedicated to the worship of German, French, English and Russian Gods of Battles. Surely such a religion has nothing in common with the religion which counsels for the disciple non-resistance, unstinted forgiveness, and the elimination of all rancor? — Joseph Alexander Leighton

I don't think there's any way that war can have a place in peace. I think that peace is the active and difficult resistance to the temptation of war; it is the prerogative and the obligation of the injured. Peace is something that has to be vigilantly maintained; it is a vigilance, and it involves temptation, and it does not mean we as human beings are not aggressive. This is a mistaken way of understanding non-violence. — Judith Butler

The Karma-Yogi is the man who understands that the highest ideal is non-resistance, and who also knows that this non-resistance is the highest manifestation of power in actual possession, and also what is called the resisting of evil is but a step on the way towards the manifestation of this highest power, namely, non-resistance — Anonymous

Non-surrender hardens your psychological form, the shell of the ego, and so creates a strong sense of separateness. The world around you and people in particular come to be perceived as threatening. The unconscious compulsion to destroy others through judgment arises, as does the need to compete and dominate. Even nature becomes your enemy and your perceptions and interpretations are governed by fear. The mental disease that we call paranoia is only a slightly more acute form of this normal but dysfunctional state of consciousness. Not only your psychological form but also your physical form - your body - becomes hard and rigid through resistance. Tension arises in different parts of the body, and the body as a whole contracts. — Eckhart Tolle

I learnt the lesson on non-violence from my wife, when I tried to bend her to my will. Her determined resistance to my will on the one hand, and her quiet submission to the suffering my stupidity involved on the other, ultimately made me ashamed of myself and cured me of my stupidity in thinking that I was born to rule over her, and in the end she became my teacher in non-violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

But whether the resistance against government tyrants is non-violent or physically violent, the effort to overthrow state oppression qualifies as true patriotism. — Ron Paul

In 1970, Women's Lib preached universal sisterhood and resistance to "patriarchy" anywhere and in any form; today, Women's Studies, like contemporary establishment feminism generally, is meekly multicultural, treating non-Western social practices with deference even when they involve the brutal subjection of females. — Bruce Bawer

Resistance is the subtlest form of attachment. — Eric Micha'el Leventhal

Luther King gave people "the feeling that they could be bigger and stronger and more courageous than they thought they could be," Bayard Rustin said - in part because of the powerful new weapon, non-violent resistance, that had been forged on the Montgomery battlefield. — Robert A. Caro

The majority of American writers today have chosen passive non-resistance to things as they are, producing sloughs of poetry about their personal angst and anomie, cascades of short stories and rivers of novels obsessed with the nuances of domestic relationships - suburban hanky-panky - chic boutique shopping mall literary soap opera. When they do speak out on matters of controversy they attack not the evils of our time but fellow writers who may insist on complaining. — Edward Abbey

Go with the ebbs and the flows, and allow this non-resistance to guide us to contentment. — Maximus Freeman

Renunciation - non-resistance - non-destructiveness - are the ideals to be attained through less and less worldliness, less and less resistance, less and less destructiveness. Keep the ideal in view and work towards it. None can live in the world without resistance, without destruction, without desire. The world has not come to that state yet when the ideal can be realised in society. — Swami Vivekananda

The greatness of non-violent resistance is that even as man is faced with tyranny, and the resulting suffering, he responds to hate with love, to prejudice with tolerance, to arrogance with humility, to humiliation with dignity, and to violence with reason. — Liu Xia

Every government on earth is the personification of violence and force, and yet the doctine of non-resistance is as old as human thought - even more than this, the instinct is as old as life upon the earth. — Clarence Darrow

We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess ... You will agree to this in general, for in spite of the Gospel, in spite of Quakerism, in spite of Tolstoi, you believe in fighting fire with fire, in shooting down usurpers, locking up thieves, and freezing out vagabonds and swindlers. — William James

I really believe in non-violence, but I also believe in a short of resistance that has to be respectful. — Alexandra Paul

Dare to live by letting go. — Tom Althouse

If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed. — William James

People often think the question of non-resistance to evil by force
is a theoretical one, which can be neglected. Yet this question
is presented by life itself to all men, and calls for some answer
from every thinking man. Ever since Christianity has been
outwardly professed, this question is for men in their social life
like the question which presents itself to a traveler when the
road on which he has been journeying divides into two branches.
He must go on and he cannot say: I will not think about it, but
will go on just as I did before. There was one road, now there
are two, and he must make his choice. — Leo Tolstoy

Regardless of nationality, all men are brothers. God is "our Father who art in heaven." The commandment "Thou shalt not kill" is unconditional and inexorable ... The lowly Nazarene taught us the doctrine of non-resistance, and so convinced was he of the soundness of that doctrine that he sealed his belief with death on the cross ... When human law conflicts with Divine law, my duty is clear. Conscience, my infallible guide, impels me to tell you that prison, death, or both, are infinitely preferable to joining any branch of the Army. — Ben Salmon

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

Sartre proposed that all situations be judged according to how they appeared in the eyes of those most oppressed, or those whose suffering was greatest. Martin Luther King Jr. was among the civil rights pioneers who took an interest. While working on his philosophy of non-violent resistance, he read Sartre, Heidegger and the German-American existentialist theologian Paul Tillich. — Sarah Bakewell

These Taoists' ideas have greatly influenced all our theories of action, even to those of fencing and wrestling. Jiu-jitsu, the Japanese art of self-defence, owes its name to a passage in the Tao-teking. In jiu-jitsu one seeks to draw out and exhaust the enemy's strength by non-resistance, vacuum, while conserving one's own strength for victory in the final struggle.
In art the importance of the same principle is illustrated by the value of suggestion. In leaving something unsaid the beholder is given a chance to complete the idea and thus a great masterpiece irresistibly rivets your attention until you seem to become actually a part of it. A vacuum is there for you to enter and fill up the full measure of your aesthetic emotion. — Okakura Kakuzo

...if we do not know how to defend ourselves, our women and our places of worship by force of suffering, i.e., nonviolence, we must, if we are men, be at least able to defend all these by fighting." (MLK)
"...If given a choice between violent resistance and passive acceptance, King and Gandhi both accepted violence..."
"...like violence, it [non-violent resistance] was aggressive, but it was spiritually, bot physically, so."

"...At the same time the mind and the emotions are active, actively trying to persuade the opponent to change his ways and convince him that he is mistaken and to lift him to a higher level of existence. — S. Nassir Ghaemi

My goal is not to upset the apple cart, but to make it more accessible. — Tom Althouse