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

> Nonviolence is an ideal that cannot always be fully honored in the practice. To the degree that those who practice nonviolent resistance put their body in the way of an external power, they make physical contact, presenting a force against force in the process. Nonviolence does not imply the absence of force or of aggression. It is, as it were, an ethical stylization of embodiment, replete with gestures and modes of non-action, ways of becoming an obstacle, of using the solidity of the body and its proprioceptive object field to block or derail a further exercise of violence.

- 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: 22
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Judith_Butler#Introduction) ([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/nonviolence-is-an-ideal

## 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)