By placing confidence in violent means, one has chosen the very type of struggle with which the oppressors nearly always have superiority.

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

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.

There should be no romanticism that international public opinion or even international diplomatic and economic pressure can defeat a coup without determined and strong defense by the attacked society itself

Dictatorships are never as strong as they think they are, and people are never as weak as they think they are.

There’s one thing that’s been 'learned' maybe from Tunisia and Egypt that I think is a mistake. And that is that the existing ruler has to resign. He doesn’t have to resign. You take all the supports out from under him; he falls. No matter what he wants to do. This is the distinction in the analyses between nonviolent coercion in which he has to resign, but he’s forced into it, and disintegration when the regime simply falls apart. There’s nobody left with enough power to resign.

Violence by the defenders will be used by the putschists to justify overwhelming repression which they want to use anyhow. It will be used to CLAIM that the putschists are saving the country from ‪‎terrorism or ‪#civil war‬, and are preserving "‪law‬ and ‪‎order‬