Gene Sharp famous quotes

03-28-2025

Further, democratic negotiators, or foreign negotiation specialists accepted to assist in the negotiations, may in a single stroke provide the dictators with the domestic and international legitimacy that they had been previously denied because of their seizure of the state, human rights violations, and brutalities. Without that desperately needed legitimacy, the dictators cannot continue to rule indefinitely.
-- Gene Sharp

#Rights #Brutality #May
By placing confidence in violent means, one has chosen the very type of struggle with which the oppressors nearly always have superiority.
-- Gene Sharp

#Struggle #Mean #Violent
You have a chance of learning -- if you want to and youre not arrogant.
-- Gene Sharp

#Want #Arrogant #Chance
Nonviolent action involves opposing the opponent's power, including his police & 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.
-- Gene Sharp

#Military #Mean #Power
Dictatorships are never as strong as they think they are, and people are never as weak as they think they are.
-- Gene Sharp

#Strong #Sacrifice #Thinking
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.
-- Gene Sharp

#Fall #Hard Work #Long
Dictators are not in the business of allowing elections that could remove them from their thrones.
-- Gene Sharp

#Thrones #Election #Dictator
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.
-- Gene Sharp

#Determination #Reflection #Government
Nonviolent struggle is the most powerful means available to those struggling for freedom.
-- Gene Sharp

#Powerful #Struggle #Mean
Thereâ€™s one thing thatâ€™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 doesnâ€™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 heâ€™s forced into it, and disintegration when the regime simply falls apart. Thereâ€™s nobody left with enough power to resign.
-- Gene Sharp

#Mistake #Fall #Thinking
Contrary to popular opinion, even totalitarian dictatorships are dependent on the population and the societies they rule.
-- Gene Sharp

#Population #Opinion #Dictatorship
That is straight out of Gandhi. If people are not afraid of the dictatorship, that dictatorship is in big trouble. â€¦ If you fight with violence, you are fighting with your enemyâ€™s best weapon, and you may be a brave but dead hero.
-- Gene Sharp

#Hero #Fighting #People
As soon as you choose to fight with violence you're choosing to fight against your opponents best weapons and you have to be smarter than that,
-- Gene Sharp

#Fighting #Weapons #Violence
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
-- Gene Sharp

#Strong #Defense #Pressure
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 â€ªâ€Žterrorism or â€ª#civil warâ€¬, and are preserving "â€ªlawâ€¬ and â€ªâ€Žorderâ€¬
-- Gene Sharp

#Country #War #Order
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.
-- Gene Sharp

#Army #Sacrifice #Government
Dictatorships usually exist primarily because of the internal power distribution in the home country. The population and society are too weak to cause the dictatorship serious problems, wealth and power are concentrated in too few hands. Although dictatorships may benefit from or be somewhat weakened by international actions, their continuation is dependent primarily on internal factors.
-- Gene Sharp

#Country #Home #Hands
Some foreign states will act against a dictatorship only to gain their own economic, political, or military control over the country.
-- Gene Sharp

#Country #Military #Political
Whatever promises offered by dictators in any negotiated settlement, no one should ever forget that the dictators may promise anything to secure submission from their democratic opponents, and then brazenly violate those same agreements.
-- Gene Sharp

#Agreement #Promise #May

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