That is straight out of Gandhi. If people are not afraid of the dictatorship, that dictatorship is in big trouble. … If you fight with violence, you are fighting with your enemy’s best weapon, and you may be a brave but dead hero.

The fall of one regime does not bring in a utopia. Rather, it opens the way for hard work and long efforts to build more just social, economic,and political relationships and the eradication of other forms of injustices and oppression.

Nonviolent action involves opposing the opponent's power, including his police and military capacity, not with the weapons chosen by him but by quite different means. Repression by the opponent is used against his own power position in a kind of political "ju-jitsu" and the very sources of his power thus reduced or removed, with the result that his political and military position is seriously weakened or destroyed.

That is straight out of Gandhi. If people are not afraid of the dictatorship, that dictatorship is in big trouble. … If you fight with violence, you are fighting with your enemy’s best weapon, and you may be a brave but dead hero.

Contrary to popular opinion, even totalitarian dictatorships are dependent on the population and the societies they rule.

The degree of liberty or tyranny in any government is, it follows, in large degree a reflection of the relative determination of the subjects to be free and their willingness and ability to resist efforts to enslave them.

So, he reasoned, if you can identify the sources of a government's power - people working in civil service, police and judges, even the army - then you know what a dictatorship depends on for its existence.