Only when we have become nonviolent towards all life will we have learned to live well with others.
Cesar ChavezNon-violence has suffered its biggest defeat in the hands of people who most want to talk about it.
Cesar ChavezThere is a great fear of our Union - a fear that I do not fully understand, but that I know is present...What is it that causes some men to act so hastily and so cruelly? It cannot be that we are so powerful. Is it so much to ask that the poorest people of the land have a measure of justice?
Cesar ChavezWe do not need to kill or destroy to win. We are a movement that builds and not destroys.
Cesar ChavezMoney is not going to organize the disadvantaged, the powerless, or the poor. We need other weapons. That's why the War on Poverty is such a miserable failure. You put out a big pot of money and all you do is fight over it. Then you run out of money and you run out of troops.
Cesar ChavezSociety is made up of groups, and as long as the smaller groups do not have the same rights and the same protection as others - I don['t care whether you call it capitalism or communism -it is not going to work. Somehow, the guys in power have to be reached by counterpower, or through a change in their hearts and minds, or change will not come.
Cesar Chavez