59 Quotes by Barbara Deming

The longer we listen to one another – with real attention – the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories and not simply opinions.

Our own pulse beats in every stranger’s throat.

To resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek.

We cannot live without our lives.

Vengeance is not the point; change is. But the trouble is that in most people’s minds the thought of victory and the thought of punishing the enemy coincide.

The point is to change one’s life. The point is not to give some vent to the emotions that have been destroying one; the point is so to act that one can master them now.

I learned always to trust my own deep sense of what I should do, and not just obediently trust the judgment of others – even others better than I am.

After the revolution, let us hope, prisons simply would not exist – if by prisons we mean places that could be experienced by the men and women in them at all as every place that goes by that name now is bound to be experienced.

Think first of the action that is right to take, think later about coping with one’s fears.