35+ Barbara Deming Quotes On Education, Success And Continuous Improvement

Barbara Deming was an American author, feminist and activist who wrote about social issues such as race, gender and class. She was a prominent member of the New York radical feminist movement in the 1960s and 70s, and was an early advocate for lesbian rights. Her most well-known works include We Are All Part of One Another: A Barbara Deming Reader and Revolution and Equilibrium. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Barbara Deming on leadership, education, life.

Top 10 Barbara Deming Quotes

1. Our task, of course, is to transmute the anger that is affliction into the anger that is determination to bring about change. I think, in fact, that one could give that as a definition of revolution.
2. This is the heart of my argument: We can put more pressure on the antagonist for whom we show human concern.
3. Vengeance is not the point; change is. But the trouble is that in most people's minds the thought of victory and the thought of punishing the enemy coincide.
4. There should be no censorship of mail.
5. A great many of us must move from words to acts - from words of dissent to acts of disobedience.
6. Nonviolent tactics can move into action on our behalf men not naturally inclined to act for us.
7. Nonviolent action does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences.
8. I learned always to trust my own deep sense of what I should do, and not just obediently trust the judgment of others - even others better than I am.
9. Punishment cannot heal spirits, can only break them.
10. The injunction that we should love our neighbors as ourselves means to us equally that we should love ourselves as we love our neighbors.

Barbara Deming Short Quotes

• Vengeance is not the point: change is.
• Our own pulse beats in every stranger's throat.
• We cannot live without our lives
• A liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.
• Think first of the action that is right to take, think later about coping with one's fears.
• Let me be really here, here in this place and this time where I am.
• Surely all of us are nerved by one another, catch courage from one another.

Barbara Deming Quotes About Resort

Gandhi once declared that it was his wife who unwittingly taught him the effectiveness of nonviolence. Who better than women should know that battles can be won without resort to physical strength? Who better than we should know all the power that resides in noncooperation? — Barbara Deming

To resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek. The most effective action both resorts to power and engages conscience. — Barbara Deming

To resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek. — Barbara Deming

Barbara Deming Famous Quotes And Sayings

The free man must be born before freedom can be won, and the brotherly man must be born before full brotherhood can be won. It will come into being only if we build it out of our very muscle and bone - by trying to act it out. — Barbara Deming

After the revolution, it might very well remain necessary to place people where they could not do harm to others. But the one under restraint should be cut off from the rest of society as little as possible. — Barbara Deming

People may find it more comfortable to listen to us if we equivocate, but in the long run only words that discomfort them are going to change our situation. — Barbara Deming

All prisons that have existed in our society to date put people away as no human being should ever be put away. — Barbara Deming

The point is to change one's life. The point is not to give some vent to the emotions that have been destroying one; the point is so to act that one can master them now. — Barbara Deming

I think the only choice that will enable us to hold to our vision. . . is one that abandons the concept of naming enemies and adopts a concept familiar to the nonviolent tradition: naming behavior that is oppressive. — Barbara Deming

What is the revolution that we need? We need to dissolve the lie that some people have a right to think of other people as their property. And we need at last to form a circle that includes us all, in which all of us are seen as equal... We do not belong to the other, but our lives are linked; we belong in a circle of others. — Barbara Deming

there is clearly a kind of anger that is healthy. It is the concentration of one's whole being in the determination: this must change. — Barbara Deming

After the revolution, let us hope, prisons simply would not exist - if by prisons we mean places that could be experienced by the men and women in them at all as every place that goes by that name now is bound to be experienced. — Barbara Deming

We learn best to listen to our own voices if we are listening at the same time to other women-whose stories, for all our differences, turn out, if we listen well, to be our stories also. — Barbara Deming

We believe, in fact, that the one act of respect has little force unless matched by the other - in balance with it... The acting out of that dual respect I would name as precisely the source of our power. — Barbara Deming

Nonviolent actions are by their nature androgynous. In them the two impulses that have long been treated as distinct, 'masculine' and 'feminine,' the impulse of self-assertion and the impulse of sympathy, are clearly joined; the very genius of nonviolence, in fact, is that it demonstrates them to be indivisible, and so restores human community. — Barbara Deming

most Americans are in deep awe of things-as-they-are. Even with everything this obviously out of control, they still tell themselves that those in authority must know what they are doing, and must be describing our condition to us as it really is; they still take it for granted that somehow what is, what is done, must make sense, can't really be insane. These assumptions exercise a tyranny over their minds. — Barbara Deming

It is one thing to be able to state the price the antagonist paid, another to be able to count you own real gains. — Barbara Deming

Of course it can be said of jails, too, that they try - by punishing the troublesome - to deter others. No doubt, in certain instances this deterrence actually works. But generally speaking it fails conspicuously. — Barbara Deming

Life Lessons by Barbara Deming

1. Barbara Deming taught the importance of taking risks and standing up for what you believe in, even in the face of opposition.
2. She also emphasized the power of community and collaboration, believing that collective action is essential for social change.
3. Finally, Deming encouraged self-reflection and growth, emphasizing the importance of understanding one's own motivations and biases.