Healing Resistance Quotes

“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations; we fall to the level of our training.”
—Archilochus”
― Kazu Haga, Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm

“violence is the tragic expression of unmet needs.”
― Kazu Haga, Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm

“The practice of meditation has often been secularized in the West, which means it is often taught without the ethical and moral teachings of the historical spiritual teachers who originally taught the practice.”
― Kazu Haga, Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm

“In the same way that violence has been institutionalized, we can institutionalize its antidote—nonviolence. We can build institutions, structures, and policies that are constantly reinforcing a new way of relating to each other. When practices are constantly reinforcing justice, healing, accountability, forgiveness, love, and understanding, we can start changing who we are.”
― Kazu Haga, Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm

“Nonviolence comes from a long tradition of disturbing the peace and challenging the accepted norm.”
― Kazu Haga, Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm

“Sometimes it’s the words that we don’t say or the actions that we don’t take that can be a form of violence. Silence, isolation, neglect, abandonment, ignoring someone, not coming to someone’s aid when they need help, or withholding resources from someone in need can also be as hurtful as getting beaten with a stick.”
― Kazu Haga, Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm

“Bruce Lee once said, “I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick ten thousand times.”
― Kazu Haga, Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm

“We need to be real about all of our idols, past and present. It is important that we do not romanticize them or put them on pedestals where they don’t belong. No one is perfect.”
― Kazu Haga, Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm

“it’s easy to give a blanket disapproval of violence when your life is not being threatened on the daily or if your community hasn’t suffered the pain of oppression for five hundred years.”
― Kazu Haga, Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm

“One of the biggest lessons I learned in those six months was that while anger can be a powerful force to spark movements, it cannot sustain them. If we try to fuel our movements with anger, it will eventually burn us out from the inside. Anger alone is not sustainable fuel.”
― Kazu Haga, Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm