War & Peace Quote by Barbara Deming

Deming slices through a comforting confusion: that “winning” is the same as making someone else hurt. Her first sentence is almost a manifesto for disciplined political action. “Vengeance is not the point; change is” sets an ethical north star, but also signals strategy. Change is measurable in laws, institutions, daily life; vengeance is a mood. One builds coalitions, the other burns them.

The second sentence is where the blade turns. “But the trouble is…” doesn’t just diagnose a moral flaw; it names a psychological trap that derails movements from the inside. Deming understands how easily righteous anger masquerades as justice, how victory fantasies often come pre-loaded with a payout: humiliation of the opponent. The verb “coincide” is doing heavy work. It implies an almost automatic overlap in the public imagination, as if the mind can’t picture liberation without a villain’s punishment attached.

Context matters: Deming wrote as a feminist, pacifist, and civil rights activist steeped in nonviolent theory. This is the nonviolent critique of the revolutionary thrill. She’s wary of politics that treats suffering as a currency and calls it accountability. The subtext is a warning to reformers and radicals alike: if your idea of “justice” requires an enemy to be emotionally destroyed, you’re not dismantling domination; you’re rehearsing it with new casting.

It’s a line that still stings because it refuses easy catharsis. Deming asks for the harder victory: the one that changes reality without needing the enemy to bleed for it.