Kontext: The psychological basis for the use of nonviolent methods is the simple rule that like produces like, kindness provokes kindness, as surely as injustice produces resentment and evil. It is sometimes forgotten by those whose pacifism is a spurious, namby-pamby thing that if one Biblical statement of this rule is "Do good to them that hate you" (an exhortation presumably intended for the capitalist as well as for the laborer), another statement of the same rule is, "They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind." You get from the universe what you give, with interest! What if men build a system on violence and injustice, on not doing good to those who hate them nor even to those who meekly obey and toil for them? And persist in this course through centuries of Christian history? And if, then, the oppressed raise the chant:
Abraham J. Muste: Zitate auf Englisch
"Who Has the Spiritual Atom Bomb?" in Liberation (November 1965).
"Pacifism and Class War" in The Essays of A. J. Muste (1967) edited by p. 179-85; also quoted in American Power and the New Mandarins (2002) by Noam Chomsky, p. 160.
As quoted in American Power and the New Mandarins (2002) by Noam Chomsky, p. 160.
“There is no way to peace; peace is the way.”
As quoted in "Debasing Dissent" in The New York Times (16 November 1967), p. 46; later quoted as "There is no way to peace, peace is the only way." in The Peasant's Revolt : McCarthy 1968 (1969) by William P. McDonald and Jerry G. Smoke: these statements have also become widely attributed to Mahatma Gandhi.
As quoted in American Power and the New Mandarins (2002) by Noam Chomsky, p. 160.
“In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist.”
As quoted in American Power and the New Mandarins (2002) by Noam Chomsky, p. 160.
Statement of 1941, as quoted in A People's History (1980) by Howard Zinn, p. 416; also in The Twentieth Century : A People's History (2003) by Howard Zinn, p. 159.
As quoted in Our Generation Against Nuclear War (1983) by Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos.
Saints for This Age (1962).
"Some Notes on Workers’ Education" in New International, Vol.2, No.7 http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/muste/1935/12/workereduc.htm (December 1935), p. 225.
"Pacifism and Class War" in The Essays of A. J. Muste (1967) edited by Nat Hentoff p. 179-85; also quoted in American Power and the New Mandarins (2002) by Noam Chomsky, p. 160.
