David Dellinger Quotes

I received more genuine religious stimulation in prison than in the seminary.

I do a little of several things like writing, teaching and political organizing, but none of them as well as I would like.

I think that anybody gradually learns the things that go deeper than his own heart.

We are no longer demonstrators. We are not actors, we are now people committed to the proposition that if the government won‘t stop the war, we will stop the government.

The conflict is not between the people and the antiwar movement, but between the people and the government.

When I see you looking to me, I have to say, ‘Build your own lives.’

Very few people choose war. They choose selfishness and the result was war.

Dostoyevsky was an influence – what’s his name, the saintly priest in ‘The Brothers Karamazov,’ Father Zossima… ‘Kiss the earth,’ he‘d say. Love everything.

We have to face up to the fact that five administrations have lied to us about Vietnam.

Because I helped organize non-violent protest in Chicago, New York and Washington, I am denied the fundamental freedom to travel to London, even for the purpose of visiting my daughter.

Bernie Sanders is our Jesse Jackson only more so.

Let the Third World get some self-determination. Let the Nicaraguans make their own mistakes.

It’s my perception that more people are actively committed to human familyhood today, and to a holistic relationship with the natural universe, than at any other time in my 71 years.

A man is just as dead if he dies of malnutrition as of bullets.

I enjoy life this way, I enjoy life being in solidarity with the people who are fighting for a better world.

It doesn’t pay to pretend that Vietnam was not a criminal war.

I think the myth about the ‘silent generation‘ is just that, a myth.

I always emphasize that in the long run one can’t satisfactorily say no to war, violence and injustice unless one is simultaneously saying yes to life and love and laughter.

If the U.S. has its Vietnam… the Soviet Union has its Czechoslovakia. If the U.S. has its blacks and chicanos, then the Soviets have their Jews.

Each of us, individually and nationally, must choose: total love or total war.

I’m just a feeble old man but I represent the spirit of speaking out.

Prison is what really radicalized me most deeply. I remember thinking, my God, these people did things that were no worse than what other people do. They’re just as nice.

I have great hope, great faith in the coming generation.

Political democracy has failed in the U.S. because there hasn’t been economic democracy.

We need to think about the future, not the past.

All I have to do is look at a child‘s smile to keep going.

I believe in equality.

When people asked me what I thought when Jerry Rubin went to Wall Street, I would say, ‘I still feel palpitations of love, even if I’ve gone in one direction and he’s gone in another.’

The Yippies, their lifestyle is different from mine. But I consider Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman inspired critics of the kind of society that we have.

We have become used to the missiles being among us. We don’t think about what they can do.

Living among society’s outcasts and experiencing the brutality of America‘s prison system did more to set (or confirm) the direction of my adult life than living at Yale.

We can vote our hearts and our heads for someone who can win, Bernie Sanders.

Hemingway was a big influence – ‘A Farewell to Arms,’ though I disapproved of the later Hemingway.

It is time to stop talking about non-violence and to begin talking about force without violence.

There will be no solution in Lebanon until there is a general solution of Israel and the Palestinian people. There will be no solution until the Palestinian people have their own state.

Whatever happens to us, however unjustified, will be slight compared to what has happened already to the Vietnamese people, to the Black people in this country, to the criminals with whom we are now spending our days in the Cook County jail.

This court is in contempt of human life, dignity and justice.

The worst thing that can happen to the New Left in this country is to turn the struggle into a military struggle against the establishment.

I believe that the United States has no possible ability to pacify the Vietnamese people, win support for Thieu, win a political victory or a military victory in the air, on the ground, in the North or the South.

My position has always been to avoid violence to avoid provocation.

Americans get fooled because we think we’re trying to help the peasants down there in El Salvador, even though we’re propping up that oppressive government, among the most brutal and militaristic in the world.

Charlie Parker said, ‘Jazz comes from who you are, where you’ve been, what you’ve done. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.’ It’s the same with the revolution.

No matter how superficially fair the judge is, he is still the complete autocrat in the courtroom, and he still comes from the ruling class.

The first time I ever came to Washington was to visit Calvin Coolidge in the White House with my father.

I’m against military methods.