# Quote — Judith Butler, The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind

> It is precisely because we can destroy that we are under an obligation to know why we ought not to do it, and to summon those countervailing powers that curb our destructive capacity. Nonviolence becomes an ethical obligation by which we are bound precisely because we are bound to one another; it may well be an obligation against which we rail, in which ambivalent swings of the psyche make themselves known, but the obligation to preserve the social bond can be resolved upon without precisely resolving that ambivalence. The obligation not to destroy each other emerges from, and reflects, the vexed social form of our lives, and it leads us to reconsider whether self-preservation is not linked to preserving the lives of others.

- Author: [Judith Butler](https://www.leafyquotes.com/judith-butler.md)
- Book: [The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind](https://www.leafyquotes.com/judith-butler/the-force-of-nonviolence-an-ethico-political-bind.md)
- Page: 148
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Judith_Butler#Chapter_Three) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/judith-butler/the-force-of-nonviolence-an-ethico-political-bind/it-is-precisely

## More from this book

> We are not yet speaking about equality if we have not yet spoken about equal grievability, or the equal attribution of grievability. Grievability is a defining feature of equality. Those whose grievability is not assumed are those who suffer inequality—unequal value.

p. 108 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/judith-butler/the-force-of-nonviolence-an-ethico-political-bind/we-are-not.md)

> Nonviolence does not necessarily emerge from a pacific or calm part of the soul. Very often it is an expression of rage, indignation, and aggression.

p. 21 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/judith-butler/the-force-of-nonviolence-an-ethico-political-bind/nonviolence-does-not.md)

> The ethical stand of nonviolence has to be linked to a commitment to radical equality. And more specifically, the practice of nonviolence requires an opposition to biopolitical forms of racism and war logics that regularly distinguish lives worth safeguarding from those that are not—populations conceived as collateral damage, or as obstructions to policy and military aims.

p. 62 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/judith-butler/the-force-of-nonviolence-an-ethico-political-bind/the-ethical-stand.md)