Aldo Capitini

““The fact is that we have realized that in labour disputes the use of violence plays into the hands of the ruling classes justifying the reaction of the military and discrediting the forces from below. Besides the refusal to use violence achieves the possibility of establishing even international solidarities of a very wide range”.”

“And you mother still close to me,”

“I wanted to go away, in the midst of something entirely different,”

“From a high tower I have looked to the four points of the horizon.”

“I am reborn when I say a * “thou”.”

“Beyond the tragic blows and the brooding over violence,”

“Oh special day, unveil your essence which redeems –”

“To confess to freedom, the highest habit;”

“From here the sure beginning of infinity,”

“The true synthesis is only with the unforeseen.”

““I conceive the essential relationship between God and the world to be not one of power and violence, as might think the primitive man, who worships physical strength and imagines that it is a superior power shaking the earth with earthquakes or hurling a thunderbolt through space; it is nearness, something which might seem insignificant but which brings spiritual awareness.””

““This spiritual freedom, the opposite of insensitivity or laziness, freedom to suffer and to know error, is the nearness and very redemption of God.””

““God involves continuous awareness of finiteness, supreme capacity to feel grief, the renouncing of divine attributes in order to become pure giving, infinite love, redemption and consolation.””

““Thus God is not to be lived in contemplation but in acts, in actual practice. In giving of our best, in the intrinsic value of every act, God descends as person and strengthens us.””

““Grief like anything else – like a stone – is content only; God gives us the form, that serenity, purity and self-possession with which to surround and live grief.””

““Even the death we feel approaching is not absolute but only incidental. At that moment we perform yet another act. The act is the form, the way in which death is faced.””

““Always implicit in religion is thus a confession of finiteness and limitation. We experience this limitation when we weep, our lament arising from our inability to love fully.””

““Thus the more readily we accept grief, the deeper in us the awakening of the love which is not attachment but a positive serenity, pure and full of faith, the infinite in a loving act, even though in bitterness and tears.””

““In my inner self, where is duality, I am heard.””

““If I conceive God as existing separately from the world my ideal will be likewise; but if God is nearness to the world I will stay at my post. My spiritual life will then consist in continually relating my particular personality to the centre of all personalities. The world is not everything, but neither is it nothing, it is a multiplicity of finite beings for whom God is absolute nearness.””

““By now the idea is spreading that revolutions so far are not enough and we must develop a revolution which will remedy their faults and go a step forward. This new revolution is the open revolution”.”

““The open revolution changes also the spirit of man, the relationship between man and man, because it changes the method of struggle. Therefore it brings a total transformation of power economy and nature”.”

““The important thing is to understand that in the struggle for freedom and Socialism the uniting revolutionary element was violence (which then was impairing the freedom and Socialism); now instead we add as the revolutionary uniting element this passion for nonviolent activity open to total liberation”.”

““The person who is dedicated to nonviolence is more active than anyone, because he does not only want to overcome indifference and hatred, weariness and egoism within himself, but he wants to overcome anything which divides and hurts all people and therefore the person dedicated to nonviolence does not accept society as it is”.”

““Nonviolence does good to those who practice it and receive it: it makes each other better, lifts them up, unites them.””

““History must change and today we see our problems in a different light, we say that our revolution today here and straightaway has something different, because it is made together with everybody, with our spirit united to everyone, even those not here, it is revolution for everybody and with everybody, not excluding and not destroying for ever, and not eternally damning anyone. It is a choral revolution.””

““This is the reason why we are not satisfied with a small or a big partial reform, because we want a total change. And if we do our utmost to use pure means and to maintain an honest and loving conscience, this will be the offer we can make and the guarantee that we can have that a total liberation will take place.””

““If we cannot take away all the grief, all the evil, all the death, we will start with loving everyone, trying ourselves not to give the grief, the evil, the death, with the faith that the rest of the grief, evil and death will disappear.””

““We try to transform our spirits using nonviolent means towards everybody; and this love and sacrifice gives us the guarantee that what we cannot change with our own human strength will be changed by the future, by the infinite, by nature, by God (according to the various faiths, it doesn’t matter; what matters is this opening beyond our actual forces, in the name of love for everybody, of the honesty, of the purity of the values on which conscience feeds).””

““We must become better and make ourselves present”

““Nonviolence is opening to the existence, freedom and development of every being””

““The two main directions of modern ethics with their affirmation of the importance of individual conscience and the extension of moral concern for all rational beings, as worthy of equal rights, imply a hard struggle to deny absolute value to ecclesiastical or state institutions.”

““Even using self determination we should establish a rule to help us gain validity. It is true that it is us who examine our conscience, but a prolonged education in the perception of values makes our conscience a better tool for decision. It is also very important to think of our action as being valid for all, as if everyone in our place should act this way.””

““Citizens must feel that their obedience or disobedience is not a private but a public fact in the interest of everyone and that it must be made widely known.The freedom of association and expression is the first duty/right of every citizen, because it is the way to learn and to teach.”