- Nonviolent struggle is not sprint but marathon. The last thing we want is a burnt-out movement 10 years before ultimate victory.
- During struggle, conflict within movement is as common as its resistance with regime. Mastery of coalition building is one step to victory.
- Nonviolent resisters succeeded in the past because their deep down belief that failure was impossible.
- In civil resistance solidarity is more important than heroism. It’s the primacy of strategy over emotions. Victory comes from the former not the latter.
- Tyranny of structureless in a movement produces vacuum that reinforces anarchic forces in resistance.
- People cannot be forced to join nonviolent movement. It is a voluntary collective experience that imparts pluralism before state becomes pluralistic.
- Activists must avoid awesomeness problem when tactics feel so right but they are not necessarily strategic.
- Governments make change? Institutions make change? People make change? Your choice will determine who you will join.
- How many people would have abstained from terrorism had they learn about effectiveness of civil resistance earlier in their life?
- Studying past nonviolent resistance is like an ancient wisdom that informs present understanding of conflict.
- Movement is like a living organism. It’s born, experiences excitement of childhood, has ups & downs of adulthood & when passes away is reborn in yet another form.
- Undemocratic systems are schizophrenic. Imprison but say people are free. Censor but say people can express themselves freely. Outlaw protest but say people can dissent.
- If regime declares a state of emergency in order to violently disperse peaceful sit-ins it lays bare the scale of its own fear & defeat.
- Revolutions happen when ordinary people decide to make them. Why then scholars look to regime & economy not people for clues to why people rebel?
- Authoritarian country – it is where the people live the lie – and know about it – and the system keeps telling them it is a truth.
- “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail” B. Franklin. Good reason why protest seldom transforms into a political movement.
See Maxims on Civil Resistance part I
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