Tim DeChristopher Quotes

Spirituality has to play an important role, particularly in resistance movements. The institutions we are fighting against - corporations and governments - use alienation as one of their primary weapons. A big part of their messaging is intended to make people feel separated from each other, which disempowers them, which makes them ever easier to exploit. This is really a spiritual weapon they are using. It isolates people and breaks their spirit.

I don't think a worship of nature is necessary to mount a really strong defense of the environment.

Part of the reason I embrace nonviolence is that it's the most effective thing we can do. It's a more advanced tactic than violence. If people who engage in violence want to escalate their tactics, they would escalate to nonviolence.

Being forcefully rattled out of our consumer mentality - our addiction to comfort and convenience can create an opportunity for us [people] to reconnect with what we really value and with the qualities of life that really can sustain us - which include reconnecting with our roles as citizens, community members, and human beings.

The reality is not that I lack respect for the law; it's that I have greater respect for justice.

We need actions that are really coming from people's souls.

Until our leaders take seriously their responsibility to pass on a healthy and just world to the next generation, I will continue this fight.

Dealing with our negative emotions is a crucial preparatory step to taking effective action. You have to grapple with the hard stuff, with the hard realities of the world. This builds your confidence that you can handle those intense situations when they arise.

Our security doesn't come from turning away from the hard stuff; it comes from the knowledge that we can handle it.

It wasn't until I started reading the history of religion that I understood that the definition of Christianity has shifted in many different directions over time, and the mainstream view today certainly doesn't have any exclusive ownership of what being a Christian means. Realizing that freed me to use the terminology without needing to be tied down to it.

If we're constantly suppressing our strong, heavy emotions - like fear and anger and outrage and sadness - it weakens us. But when we're not afraid to confront the hard emotions - when we don't turn away from the pain and the suffering of the world - it builds the confidence that we can do whatever we need to do.

Civil disobedience is an act of love.

What one person can do is to plant the seeds of love and outrage in the hearts of a movement. And if those hearts are fertile ground, those seeds of love and outrage will grow into a revolution.

I would never go to jail to protect animals or plants or wilderness. For me, it's about the people.

If we want to change that status quo, we might have to work outside of those rules because the legal pathways available to us have been structured precisely to make sure we don't make any substantial change.

We think we have no power when in fact we have more than enough power.

Alienation is perhaps the most effective tool of control in America, and every reminder of our real connectedness weakens that tool.

In West Virginia, we've been extracting coal longer than anyone else. And after one hundred and fifty years of making other people rich, West Virginia is almost dead last among the states in per capita income, education rates and life expectancy. And it's not an anomaly. The areas with the richest fossil fuel resources, whether coal in West Virginia and Kentucky, or oil in Louisiana and Mississippi, are the areas with the lowest standards of living. In part, this is a necessity of the industry. The only way to convince someone to blow up their backyard or poison their water is to make sure they are so desperate that they have no other option.