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 DemingA liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.
Barbara DemingThe 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 DemingThe 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 DemingOf 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 DemingManliness has been defined as assertion of the self. Womanliness has been defined as the nurturing of selves other than our own - even if we quite lose our own in the process. (Women are supposed to find in this loss their true fulfillment.) But every individual person is born both to assert herself or himself and to act out a sympathy for others trying to find themselves - in Christian terms, meant to love one's self as one loves others ... Jesus never taught that we should split up that commandment - assigning 'love yourself' to men, 'love others' to women. But society has tried to.
Barbara Deming