"All violence, all that is dreary and..." - Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson
All violence, all that is dreary and repels, is not power, but the absence of power.
More by Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The world is plentiful with honey, but only the humble bee can collect it.”
“Don't choose the better person, choose the person who makes a better you.”
“Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever.”
More on Power
“Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.”
“I need to get everything straight. I'm not involved in a power struggle between black and white.”
“Capitalism under democracy has a further advantage: its enemies, even when it is attacked, are scattered and weak, and it is usually easily able to array one half of them against the other half, and thus dispose of both.”
More on Violence
“Civil disobedience is not only the natural right of a people, especially when they have no effective voice in their own Government, but that it is also a substitute for violence or armed rebellion.”
“Pick up any history book, and I suggest you begin with studying the 20th century, and you will find that a large part of the history of our species has all the characteristics we would normally associate with a nightmare or an insane hallucination.”
“A civilization based on nonviolence must be different from that organized for violence.”