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In half a century of trying to help prevent wars,

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there's one question that never leaves me:

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How do we deal with extreme violence

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without using force in return?

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When you're faced with brutality,

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whether it's a child facing a bully on a playground

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or domestic violence --

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or, on the streets of Syria today,

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facing tanks and shrapnel,

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what's the most effective thing to do?

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Fight back? Give in?

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Use more force?

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This question: "How do I deal with a bully

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without becoming a thug in return?"

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has been with me ever since I was a child.

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I remember I was about 13,

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glued to a grainy black and white television in my parents' living room

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as Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest,

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and kids not much older than me

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were throwing themselves at the tanks

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and getting mown down.

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And I rushed upstairs and started packing my suitcase.

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And my mother came up and said, "What on Earth are you doing?"

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And I said, "I'm going to Budapest."

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And she said, "What on Earth for?"

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And I said, "Kids are getting killed there.

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There's something terrible happening."

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And she said, "Don't be so silly."

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And I started to cry.

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And she got it, she said,

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"Okay, I see it's serious.

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You're much too young to help.

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You need training. I'll help you.

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But just unpack your suitcase."

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And so I got some training

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and went and worked in Africa during most of my 20s.

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But I realized that what I really needed to know

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I couldn't get from training courses.

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I wanted to understand

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how violence, how oppression, works.

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And what I've discovered since is this:

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Bullies use violence in three ways.

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They use political violence to intimidate,

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physical violence to terrorize

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and mental or emotional violence to undermine.

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And only very rarely in very few cases

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does it work to use more violence.

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Nelson Mandela went to jail believing in violence,

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and 27 years later

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he and his colleagues

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had slowly and carefully

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honed the skills, the incredible skills, that they needed

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to turn one of the most vicious governments the world has known

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into a democracy.

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And they did it in a total devotion to non-violence.

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They realized that using force against force

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doesn't work.

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So what does work?

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Over time I've collected about a half-dozen methods

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that do work -- of course there are many more --

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that do work and that are effective.

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And the first is

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that the change that has to take place

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has to take place here, inside me.

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It's my response, my attitude, to oppression

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that I've got control over,

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and that I can do something about.

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And what I need to develop is self-knowledge to do that.

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That means I need to know how I tick,

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when I collapse,

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where my formidable points are,

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where my weaker points are.

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When do I give in?

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What will I stand up for?

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And meditation or self-inspection

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is one of the ways -- again it's not the only one --

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it's one of the ways

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of gaining this kind of inner power.

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And my heroine here -- like Satish's --

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is Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma.

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She was leading a group of students

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on a protest in the streets of Rangoon.

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They came around a corner faced with a row of machine guns.

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And she realized straight away

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that the soldiers with their fingers shaking on the triggers

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were more scared than the student protesters behind her.

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But she told the students to sit down.

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And she walked forward with such calm and such clarity

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and such total lack of fear

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that she could walk right up to the first gun,

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put her hand on it and lower it.

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And no one got killed.

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So that's what the mastery of fear can do --

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not only faced with machine guns,

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but if you meet a knife fight in the street.

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But we have to practice.

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So what about our fear?

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I have a little mantra.

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My fear grows fat

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on the energy I feed it.

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And if it grows very big

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it probably happens.

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So we all know the three o'clock in the morning syndrome,

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when something you've been worrying about wakes you up --

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I see a lot of people --

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and for an hour you toss and turn,

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it gets worse and worse,

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and by four o'clock you're pinned to the pillow

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by a monster this big.

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The only thing to do

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is to get up, make a cup of tea

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and sit down with the fear like a child beside you.

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You're the adult.

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The fear is the child.

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And you talk to the fear

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and you ask it what it wants, what it needs.

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How can this be made better?

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How can the child feel stronger?

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And you make a plan.

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And you say, "Okay, now we're going back to sleep.

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Half-past seven, we're getting up and that's what we're going to do."

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I had one of these 3 a.m. episodes on Sunday --

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paralyzed with fear at coming to talk to you.

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(Laughter)

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So I did the thing.

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I got up, made the cup of tea, sat down with it, did it all

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and I'm here -- still partly paralyzed, but I'm here.

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(Applause)

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So that's fear. What about anger?

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Wherever there is injustice there's anger.

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But anger is like gasoline,

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and if you spray it around and somebody lights a match,

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you've got an inferno.

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But anger as an engine -- in an engine -- is powerful.

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If we can put our anger inside an engine,

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it can drive us forward,

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it can get us through the dreadful moments

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and it can give us real inner power.

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And I learned this in my work

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with nuclear weapon policy-makers.

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Because at the beginning I was so outraged

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at the dangers they were exposing us to

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that I just wanted to argue and blame and make them wrong.

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Totally ineffective.

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In order to develop a dialogue for change

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we have to deal with our anger.

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It's okay to be angry with the thing --

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the nuclear weapons in this case --

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but it is hopeless to be angry with the people.

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They are human beings just like us.

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And they're doing what they think is best.

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And that's the basis on which we have to talk with them.

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So that's the third one, anger.

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And it brings me to the crux

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of what's going on, or what I perceive as going on,

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in the world today,

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which is that last century was top-down power.

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It was still governments telling people what to do.

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This century there's a shift.

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It's bottom-up or grassroots power.

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It's like mushrooms coming through concrete.

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It's people joining up with people, as Bundy just said, miles away

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to bring about change.

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And Peace Direct spotted quite early on

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that local people in areas of very hot conflict

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know what to do.

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They know best what to do.

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So Peace Direct gets behind them to do that.

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And the kind of thing they're doing

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is demobilizing militias,

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rebuilding economies,

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resettling refugees,

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even liberating child soldiers.

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And they have to risk their lives almost every day

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to do this.

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And what they've realized

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is that using violence in the situations they operate in

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is not only less humane,

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but it's less effective

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than using methods that connect people with people, that rebuild.

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And I think that the U.S. military

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is finally beginning to get this.

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Up to now their counter-terrorism policy

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has been to kill insurgents at almost any cost,

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and if civilians get in the way,

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that's written as "collateral damage."

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And this is so infuriating and humiliating

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for the population of Afghanistan,

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that it makes the recruitment for al-Qaeda very easy,

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when people are so disgusted by, for example,

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the burning of the Koran.

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So the training of the troops has to change.

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And I think there are signs that it is beginning to change.

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The British military have always been much better at this.

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But there is one magnificent example for them to take their cue from,

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and that's a brilliant U.S. lieutenant colonel

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called Chris Hughes.

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And he was leading his men down the streets of Najaf --

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in Iraq actually --

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and suddenly people were pouring out of the houses on either side of the road,

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screaming, yelling, furiously angry,

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and surrounded these very young troops who were completely terrified,

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didn't know what was going on, couldn't speak Arabic.

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And Chris Hughes strode into the middle of the throng

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with his weapon above his head, pointing at the ground,

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and he said, "Kneel."

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And these huge soldiers

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with their backpacks and their body armor,

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wobbled to the ground.

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And complete silence fell.

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And after about two minutes,

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everybody moved aside and went home.

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Now that to me is wisdom in action.

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In the moment, that's what he did.

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And it's happening everywhere now.

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You don't believe me?

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Have you asked yourselves

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why and how so many dictatorships have collapsed

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over the last 30 years?

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Dictatorships in Czechoslovakia, East Germany,

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Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,

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Mali, Madagascar,

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Poland, the Philippines,

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Serbia, Slovenia, I could go on,

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and now Tunisia and Egypt.

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And this hasn't just happened.

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A lot of it is due to a book

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written by an 80-year-old man in Boston, Gene Sharp.

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He wrote a book called "From Dictatorship to Democracy"

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with 81 methodologies for non-violent resistance.

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And it's been translated into 26 languages.

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It's flown around the world.

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And it's being used by young people and older people everywhere,

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because it works and it's effective.

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So this is what gives me hope --

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not just hope, this is what makes me feel very positive right now.

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Because finally human beings are getting it.

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We're getting practical, doable methodologies

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to answer my question:

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How do we deal with a bully without becoming a thug?

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We're using the kind of skills that I've outlined:

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inner power -- the development of inner power -- through self-knowledge,

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recognizing and working with our fear,

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using anger as a fuel,

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cooperating with others,

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banding together with others,

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courage,

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and most importantly, commitment to active non-violence.

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Now I don't just believe in non-violence.

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I don't have to believe in it.

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I see evidence everywhere of how it works.

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And I see that we, ordinary people,

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can do what Aung San Suu Kyi and Ghandi and Mandela did.

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We can bring to an end

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the bloodiest century that humanity has ever known.

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And we can organize to overcome oppression

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by opening our hearts

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as well as strengthening this incredible resolve.

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And this open-heartedness is exactly what I've experienced

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in the entire organization of this gathering since I got here yesterday.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)