What is the affinity between nonviolence and democracy? This is quite an important question, because there’s an intuitive resonance between those two great concepts but many people remain enthralled by the widespread myth that “freedom” must be won and kept by force.

The entire system of war and militarism will have to be replaced by nonviolent equivalents—and they do exist—if we want our democracy to be real.

We can only use means that themselves bring back to light the meaning of the person as they work toward ends with the same purpose. Those are the means of nonviolence. They alone allow us to resist the actions of our opponents, even to point out their follies, without diminishing them as persons. Nonviolence dignifies and humanizes as it works: it humanizes those who offer it, those to whom it is offered and the “reference publics” looking on.