HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PEACEMAKERS!

January 2, 1928
Daisaku Ikeda
Men and women who know the brutal reality of war, who know that war strips people of their very humanity, must unite in a new global partnership for peace.

January 3, 1935
Millard Fuller
For a community to be whole and healthy, it must be based on people’s love and concern for each other.

January 4, 1746
Benjamin Rush
Freedom can exist only in the society of knowledge. Without learning, men are incapable of knowing their rights, and where learning is confined to a few people, liberty can be neither equal nor universal.

January 5, 1853
Olympia Brown
He who never sacrificed a present to a future good or a personal to a general one can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.

January 6, 1878
Carl Sandburg
Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.

January 7, 1891
Zora Neale Hurston
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.

January 8, 1885
AJ Muste
There is no way to peace; peace is the way.

January 9, 1959
Rigoberta Menchu Tum
Este mundo no va a cambiar a menos que estemos dispuestos a cambiar nosotros mismos.

January 9, 1941
Joan Baez
That’s all nonviolence is—organized love.

January 10, 1834
Lord Acton
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

January 10, 1864
George Washington Carver
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.

January 11, 1885
Alice Paul
When you put your hand to the plow, you can’t put it down until you get to the end of the row.

January 11, 1887
Aldo Leopold
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

January 11, 1954
Kailash Satyarthi
If you decide to stand up against such social evils, you have to be fully prepared—not just physically or mentally, but also spiritually.

January 11, 1907
Abraham Joshua Heschel
A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture.

January 11, 1943
Jim Hightower
Politics isn’t about left versus right; it’s about top versus bottom.

January 12, 1729
Edmund Burke
It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

January 12, 1863
Swami Vivekananda
Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.

January 14, 1875
Albert Schweitzer
Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

January 14, 1892
Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

January 15, 1889
A. Philip Randolph
A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.

January 15, 1929
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

January 16, 1933
Susan Sontag
The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.

January 17, 1706
Benjamin Franklin
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

January 17, 1914
William Stafford
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give–yes or no, or maybe–
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

January 17, 1942
Mohammed Ali
Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams – they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do – they all contain truths.

January 18, 1882
A.A. Milne
You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.

January 18, 1910
Kenneth Boulding
The purpose of our growth in life is to bring us into unity with the universe into which we are born, to make us aware that we are not lonely individual meteors hurtling blindly through an abysmal dark, but living parts of a living whole.

January 19, 1720
John Woolman
Wealth is attended with power, by which bargains and proceedings, contrary to universal righteousness, are supported; and hence oppression, carried on with worldly policy and order, clothes itself with the name of justice and becomes like a seed of discord in the soul.

January 19, 1895
Lewis Mumford
War vies with magic in its efforts to get something for nothing.

January 21, 1561
Francis Bacon
Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

January 22, 1909
U Thant
The concept of peaceful coexistence has been criticized by many who do not see the need to make the world safe for diversity. I wonder if they have ever paused to ask themselves the question: What is the alternative to coexistence?

January 22, 1930
Hildegard Goss-Mayr
The first essential characteristic of nonviolent action is that it is creative.

January 24, 1932
Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.

January 25, 1933
Corazon Aquino
It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.

January 26, 1930
Thomas Gumbleton
Jeremiah, because he was preaching against [war] — and notice the terms, because I’ve heard these same terms used today:”Oh, don’t speak against the war. It’s too hurtful to our troops who are over there.” That’s what they accused Jeremiah of: “You’re causing a morale problem,” so, “Get rid of him. Throw him into a cistern where he’s going to starve to death.” (Jeremiah 38)

January 26, 1944
Angela Davis
Radical simply means ‘grasping things at the root.’

January 27, 1872
Learned Hand
In the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.

January 27, 1934
Federico Mayor Zaragoza
We must construct a new set of values and attitudes to replace the culture of war which, for centuries, has been influencing the course of civilization. Winning peace means the triumph of our pledge to establish, on a democratic basis, a new social framework of tolerance and generosity from which no one will feel excluded.

January 27, 1938
Roy Bourgeois
Just down the road here is a school, the School of the Americas. It’s a combat school. Most of the courses revolve around what they call counter insurgency warfare. Who are the insurgents? We have to ask that question. They are the poor. They are the people in Latin America who call for reform. They are the landless peasants who are hungry. They are health care workers, human rights advocates, labor organizers, they become the insurgents, they’re seen as El Enimigo, the Enemy. And they are those who become the targets of those who learn their lessons at the School of the Americas.

January 27, 1944
Mairead Corrigan
If we want to reap the harvest of peace and justice in the future, we will have to sow seeds of nonviolence, here and now, in the present.

January 28, 1853
Jose Marti
A genuine man goes to the roots. To be a radical is no more than that: to go to the roots.

January 29, 1927
Edward Abbey
Society is like a stew. If you don’t stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.

January 30, 1909
Saul David Alinsky
As an organizer I start where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be.

January 31, 1903
Donald Soper
Peace is the fruit of justice and can grow on no other tree. It is impossible to graft it on to a society which is unjust.

January 31, 1915
Thomas Merton
What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.

February 1, 1902
Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun? Or does it explode?

February 1, 1972
Leymah Gbowee
I always tell people, anger is like liquid. It’s fluid, it’s like water. You put it in a container and it takes the shape of that container.

February 3, 1909
Simone Weil
Violence is a force . . . that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing. Exercised to the limit it turns man into a thing in the most literal sense; it makes a corpse of him.

February 4, 1906
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer. February 4, 1913 Rosa Parks I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.

February 6, 1961
Asha Hagi Elmi
It has always been the case in all armed conflicts that women and children are the first and last victims of war, though war is neither their decision nor their desire.

February 6, 1890
Khān Abdul Ghaffār Khān
Today’s world is traveling in some strange direction. You see that the world is going toward destruction and violence. And the specialty of violence is to create hatred among people and to create fear. I am a believer in nonviolence and I say that no peace or tranquility will descend upon the people of the world until nonviolence is practiced, because nonviolence is love and it stirs courage in people.

February 7, 1909
Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara
When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist.

February 7, 1979
Tawakkol Karman
All ideologies, beliefs, laws and charters produced by the march of humanity through all stages of its development and growth, as well as all divine messages and religions, without exception, oblige us to support oppressed people, be they groups or individuals. Supporting an oppressed person is not only required because of his need for support, but also because injustice against one person is injustice against all mankind.

February 8, 1819
John Ruskin
Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

February 9, 1737
Thomas Paine
I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace.

February 9, 1940
John M. Coetzee
In order to be cruel we have to close our hearts to the suffering of the other.

February 9, 1944
Alice Walker
Artists have a responsibility to speak and to act when governments fail, and if we don’t do that, we really deserve the world we get.

February 10, 1898
Bertolt Brecht
Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.

February 10, 1910
Georges Pire
There is perhaps no surer road to peace than the one that starts from little islands and oases of genuine kindness, islands and oases constantly growing in number and being continually joined together until eventually they ring the world.

February 10, 1944
Frances Moore Lappé
We’re the first people on our planet to have real choice: we can continue killing each other, wiping out other species, spoiling our nest. Yet on every continent a revolution in human dignity is emerging. It is re-knitting community and our ties to the earth. So we do have a choice. We can choose death; or we can choose life.

February 11, 1885
Muriel Lester
The doctrine of the Cross – self-giving, self-suffering, forgiveness – is the exact opposite of the doctrine of armies and navies. We must chose between the sword and the Cross.

February 11, 1892
Lydia Maria Child
The cure for all the ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows, and the crimes of humanity, all lie in the one word ‘love’. It is the divine vitality that everywhere produces and restores life.

February 11, 1916
Florynce Kennedy
Sweetie, if you’re not living on the edge, then you’re taking up space.

February 12, 1809
Charles Darwin
In the long history of humankind, those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.

February 14, 1817
Frederick Douglass
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.

February 15, 1564
Galileo
The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

February 15, 1820
Susan B Anthony
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.

February 16, 1948
Eckhart Tolle
Prejudice of any kind implies that you are identified with the thinking mind. It means you don’t see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence.

February 18, 1934
Audre Lorde
When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.

February 19, 1833
Élie Ducommun
To live not for oneself, but for others This is happiness here below.

February 20, 1901
René Jules Dubos
Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.

February 21, 1936 Barbara Jordan What a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap.

February 21, 1940
John Robert Lewis
If you’re not hopeful and optimistic, then you just give up. You have to take the long hard look and just believe that if you’re consistent, you will succeed.

February 22, 1819
James Russell Lowell
In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade’s no easier to make than an oak.

February 23, 1868
W.E.B. DuBois
Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody’s slavery.

February 24, 1934
Mahbub-ul-Haq
We need to ask the leaders of the Third World, and ask them bluntly, why they insist on spending $130 billion each year on the military when even a quarter of this expenditure can finance their entire essential social agenda. And we must ask them why they insist on having six soldiers for every one doctor when their people are dying of ordinary diseases, from internal disintegration, not from external aggression, from many threats to human security, not any threats to territorial security.

February 24, 1956
Judith Butler
Justice is not revenge – it’s deciding for a solution that is oriented towards peace, peace being the harder but more human way of reacting to injury. That is the very basis of the idea of rights.

February 25, 1861
Rudolph Steiner
To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being; to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world.

February 26, 1802
Victor Hugo
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

February 27, 1886
Hugo Black
There can be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has.

February 27, 1897
Marian Anderson
As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.

February 27, 1902
John Steinbeck
No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

February 27, 1934
Ralph Nader
A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity.

February 28, 1532
Michel de Montaigne
Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

February 28, 1901
Linus Pauling
Science is the search for truth, that is the effort to understand the world: it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality.

March 1, 1927 Harry Belafonte You can cage the singer but not the song. March 2, 1904 Theodore Seuss Geisel, “Dr. Seuss” Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not. March 3, 1840 Chief Joseph The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. March 5, 1870 Rosa Luxemburg Those who do not move, do not notice their chains. March 6, 1909 Stanislaw Jerzy Lec Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?

March 7, 1849
Luther Burbank
Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.

March 8, 1841 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer. March 8, 1859 Kenneth Grahame There is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. March 8, 1931 Neil Postman At its best, schooling can be about how to make a life, which is quite different from how to make a living. March 9, 1956 Sashi Tharoor The notion of ‘world leadership’ is a curiously archaic one. The very phrase is redolent of Kipling ballads and James Bondian adventures. March 11, 1952 Douglas Adams If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.

March 12, 1922
Jack Kerouac
Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.

March 12, 1932 Andrew Young Nobody black had learned anything from the ‘Letter from the Birmingham Jail’ or from the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. That was a revelation of white people. March 13, 1941 Mahmoud Darwish Exile is more than a geographical concept. You can be an exile in your homeland, in your own house, in a room. March 14, 1879 Albert Einstein I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. March 16, 1751 James Madison If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. March 17, 1912 Bayard Rustin We need in every community a group of angelic troublemakers. Our power is in our ability to make things unworkable. March 18, 1893 Wilfred Owen My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. March 18, 1922 Fred Shuttlesworth The Lord knew I lived in a hard town, so he gave me a hard head.

March 19, 1721
Tobias Smollett
Some folks are wise and some are otherwise.

March 19, 1928 Hans Küng There will be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions and no peace among the religions without dialogue March 20, 1928 Mr Rogers Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people.

March 20, 1937
Lois Lowry
Kids deserve the right to think that they can change the world.

March 21, 1806 Benito Juarez Peace is the respect for the rights of others. (El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz.) March 22, 1930 Derek Bok If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. March 24, 1938 Colman McCarthy Warmaking doesn’t stop warmaking. If it did, our problems would have stopped millennia ago. March 23, 1900 Erich Fromm The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers. March 25, 1914 Norman Borlaug You can’t build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery. March 25,  1934 Gloria Steinem If you say, I’m for equal pay, that’s a reform. But if you say. I’m a feminist, that’s a transformation of society. March 26, 1874 Robert Frost Nothing can make injustice just but mercy. March 26, 1904 Joseph Campbell A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself. March 26, 1905 Victor Frankl Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. March 27, 1886 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe God is in the details. March 31, 1927 César Chávez The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people.

April 1, 1855 Agnes Repplier It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere. April 1, 1940 Wangari Muta Maathai We owe it to ourselves and to the next generation to conserve the environment so that we can bequeath our children a sustainable world that benefits all. April 2, 1840 Emile Zola If you shut up truth, and bury it underground, it will but grow. April 3, 1934 Dame Jane Morris Goodall Chimps are very quick to have a sudden fight or aggressive episode, but they’re equally as good at reconciliation. April 4, 1928 Maya Angelou I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. April 5, 1856 Booker T. Washington There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up. April 6, 1866 Lincoln Steffens We need some great failures. Especially we ever-successful Americans – conscious, intelligent, illuminating failures. April 7, 1770 William Wordsworth The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours. April 8, 563 Buddha Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. April 8, 1938 Kofi Annan To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there. April 9, 1898 Paul Robeson As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this.

April 10, 1778
William Hazlitt
The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

April 10, 1930 Dolores Clara Fernandez Huerta If you haven’t forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others. April 11, 1862 Charles Evans Hughes War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals. April 13, 1957 Amy Goodman War coverage should be more than a parade of retired generals and retired government flacks posing as reporters. April 14, 1889 Arnold Toynbee A life which does not go into action is a failure. April 15, 1452 Leonardo Da Vinci The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions. April 16, 1844 Anatole France The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

April 16, 1889
Charlie Chaplin
We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

April 17, 1885 Isak Dinesen The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea. April 18, 1857 Clarence Darrow No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.

April 20, 1937
George Takei
It seems to me important for a country, for a nation to certainly know about its glorious achievements but also to know where its ideals failed, in order to keep that from happening again.

April 21, 1838 John Muir I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. April 21, 1939 Helen Prejean The profound moral question is not, “Do they deserve to die?” but “Do we deserve to kill them? April 21, 1941 Juan Somavía Decent work is at the heart of the search for dignity for the individual, stability for the family and peace in the community. April 22, 1916 Yehudi Menuhin The violinist must possess the poet’s gift of piercing the protective hide which grows on propagandists, stockbrokers and slave traders, to penetrate the deeper truth which lies within. April 25, 1906 William J. Brennan, Jr. Law cannot stand aside from the social changes around it. April 25, 1908 Edward R. Murrow We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment, unpopular. April 26, 1564 William Shakespeare In time we hate that which we often fear. April 26, 1889 Ludwig Wittgenstein What is your aim in philosophy? To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle. April 27, 1927 Coretta Scott King Forgiving violence does not mean condoning violence. There are only two alternatives to forgiving violence: revenge, or adopting an attitude of never-ending bitterness and anger. For too long we have treated violence with violence, and that’s why it never ends. April 27, 1759 Mary Wollstonecraft It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world. April 30, 1933 Willie Nelson Cruelty is all out of ignorance. If you knew what was in store for you, you wouldn’t hurt anybody, because whatever you do comes back much more forceful than you send it out.

May 1, 1837
“Mother” Jones
My business is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

May 1, 1881 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. May 2, 1929 Joanna Macy Because the relationship between self and world is reciprocal, it is not a matter of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the Earth, the Earth heals us. No need to wait. As we care enough to take risks, we loosen the grip of ego and begin to come home to our true nature. May 3, 1919 Pete Seeger Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don’t. May 3, 1909 Septima Poinsette Clark I have great belief in the fact that whenever there is chaos, it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift. May 3, 1849 Jacob Riis I’d look at one of my stonecutters hammering away at the rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet, at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I knew it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before. May 5, 1813 Søren Kierkegaard Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. May 6, 1916 Tom Slick To that beautiful new world to emerge when the spectre of war has been banished forever – when the life blood now draining into armaments will, transfused into the bloodstream of the world, bring about unbelievable new progress, prosperity, health and happiness. May 7, 1861 Rabindranath Tagore You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. May 8, 1895 Fulton J. Sheen Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love? May 9, 1877 Peter Maurin If we are crazy, then it is because we refuse to be crazy in the same way that the world has gone crazy. May 9, 1921 Daniel Berrigan There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war – at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake. May 9, 1944 William (Willie) C. Velásquez Su voto es su voz. May 9, 1973 Tegla Chepkite Loroupe In a country where only men are encouraged, one must be one’s own inspiration. May 10, 1940 Wayne Dyer Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world. May 12, 1895 Jiddu Krishnamurti It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. May 16, 1929 Adrienne Rich The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet. May 18, 1872 Bertrand Russell War does not determine who is right— only who is left. May 19, 1925 Malcolm X If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything. May 20, 1907 Franz Jägerstätter Consider two things: from where, to where Then your life will have its true meaning. May 21, 1688 Alexander Pope Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see; that mercy to others I show, that mercy show to me. May 21, 1935 Walter Wink There is … no other way to God for our time but through the enemy, for loving the enemy has become the key both to human survival in the age of terror and to personal transformation. May 22, 1930 Harvey Milk The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, that my friends, is true perversion. May 22, 1943 Betty Williams We believe in taking down the barriers, but we also believe in the most energetic reconciliation among peoples by getting them to know each other, talk each other’s languages, understand each other’s fears and beliefs, getting to know each other physically, philosophically, and spiritually. It is much harder to kill your near neighbor than the thousands of unknown and hostile aliens at the other end of a nuclear missile. We have to create a world in which there are no unknown, hostile aliens at the other end of any missiles.

May 24, 1918
Coleman Young
You can’t look forward and backward at the same time.

May 25, 1803 Ralph Waldo Emerson The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war. May 27, 1819 Julia Ward Howe Ambitious people climb, but faithful people build. May 27, 1907 Rachel Carson The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery – not over nature but of ourselves. May 29, 1874 Gilbert K. Chesterton The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried. May 31, 1819 Walt Whitman The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.

June 1, 1924 William Sloane Coffin The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.     June 2, 1953 Cornel West You’ve got to be a thermostat rather than a thermometer. A thermostat shapes the climate of opinion; a thermometer just reflects it. June 3, 1906 Josephine Baker Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one’s soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood. June 4, 1948 Jim Wallis We can find common ground only by moving to higher ground. June 5, 1934 Bill Moyers What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it – as if the cause depends on you, because it does. June 6, 1935 Dalai Lama If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. June 6, 1939 Marian Wright Edelman You just need to be a flea against injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation. June 7, 1917 Gwendolyn Brooks We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond. June 8, 1928 Gustavo Gutiérrez So you say you love the poor? Name them. June 11, 1880 Jeanette Rankin You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake. June 11, 1910 Jacques Cousteau People protect what they love. June 12, 1929 Anne Frank How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. June 13, 1937 Eleanor Holmes Norton The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don’t agree with. June 14, 1811 Harriet Beecher Stowe Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good. June 16, 1931 John Shelby Spong All human beings bear God’s image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one’s being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination. June 19, 1945 Aung San Suu Kyi It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it. June 20, 1905 Lillian Hellman I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashion. June 21, 1947 Shirin Ebadi My aim is to show that those governments that violate the rights of people by invoking the name of Islam have been misusing Islam. June 22, 1898 Erich Maria Remarque A hospital alone shows what war is. June 23, 1910 Jean Anouilh One cannot weep for the entire world, it is beyond human strength. One must choose. June 24, 1900 Raphael Lemkin Our whole heritage is a product of the contributions of all nations. We can best understand this when we realize how impoverished our culture would be if the peoples doomed by Germany, such as the Jews, had not been permitted to create the Bible, or to give birth to an Einstein, a Spinoza; if the Poles had not had the opportunity to give to the world a Copernicus, a Chopin, a Curie; the Czechs, a Huss, a Dvorak; the Greeks, a Plato and a Socrates; the Russians, a Tolstoy and a Shostakovich. June 25, 1903 George Orwell All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. June 26, 1892 Pearl Buck To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death. June 27, 1880 Helen Keller I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do. June 27, 1915 Grace Lee Boggs We can begin by doing small things at the local level, like planting community gardens or looking out for our neighbors. That is how change takes place in living systems, not from above but from within, from many local actions occurring simultaneously. June 28, 1940 Muhammad Yunus Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations, hostility and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society.

July 2, 1908
Thurgood Marshall
None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody – a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns – bent down and helped us pick up our boots.

July 3, 1860
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominating the human mind.

July 4, 1946
Ron Kovic
We who have witnessed the obscenity of war and experienced its horror and terrible consequences have an obligation to rise above our pain and suffering and turn the tragedy of our lives into a triumph.

July 6, 1920
Elise Boulding
Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying. The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.

July 8, 1952
Marianne Williamson
May we not succumb to thoughts of violence and revenge today, but rather to thoughts of mercy and compassion. We are to love our enemies that they might be returned to their right minds.

July 9, 1905
Myles Horton
Nothing will change until we change — until we throw off our dependence and act for ourselves.

July 10, 1875
Mary McLeod Bethune
We have a powerful potential in out youth, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends.

July 11, 1899
E.B. White
One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.

July 12, 1817
Henry David Thoreau
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

July 12, 1895
Oscar Hammerstein
You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear.

July 12, 1904
 Pablo Neruda
Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread.

July 12, 1997
Malala Yousafzai
Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.

July 12, 1895
R. Buckminster Fuller
We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.

July 14, 1912
Woody Guthrie
This land is your land, this land is my land, From California to the New York Island. From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and me.

July 16, 1862
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett
One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.

July 16, 1946
Barbara Lee
Kids can’t see us bombing, and then listen to us talking about getting guns out of the schools. How can we tell them to solve problems without violence, if, in fact, we can’t show an ability to solve problems without violence?

July 18, 1918
Nelson Mandela
Our human compassion binds us the one to the other – not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.

July 19, 1916
Eve Merriam
I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, “Mother, what was war?”

July 21, 1911
Marshall McLuhan
There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.

July 23, 1917
Barbara Deming
The longer we listen to one another – with real attention – the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories and not simply opinions.

July 26, 1856
George Bernard Shaw
You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’

July 26, 1875
Carl Jung
Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

July 26, 1894
Aldous Huxley
The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

July 28, 1902
Karl Popper
We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

July 30, 1856
Gen. Smedley Butler
War is a racket. It always has been . . . A few profit—and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can’t end it by disarmament conferences. You can’t eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can’t wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.

July 31, 1957
Ingrid Washinawatok el-Issa
The current economic order—based upon an ideology that does not recognize the wealth of the natural order, that cannot place value on anything unless it is sold in the marketplace, that enshrines greed and avarice as the engines of development—is destroying the real wealth of the planet. While it pretends to create jobs and products, in reality, it is similar to burning furniture to provide heat: every bit of flame, like many of our jobs, is actually impoverishing humanity, not enriching it.

August 1, 1819
Herman Melville
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.

August 2, 1924
James Baldwin
The paradox of education is precisely this; that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

August 2, 1942
Isabel Allende 
I can promise you that women working together— linked, informed and educated— can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet.

August 3, 1905
Maggie Kuhn
Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind – even if your voice shakes.

August 5, 1850
Guy de Maupassant
Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship’s captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

August 5, 1934
Wendell Berry
Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

August 6, 1775
Daniel O’Connell
Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong.

August 7, 1903
Ralph Bunche
There are no warlike people – just warlike leaders.

August 7, 1938
Helen Caldicott
. . . only if we love nature, learn about its ills, and live accordingly will we be inspired to participate in needed legislative activities to save the earth. So my prescription for action to save the planet is: Love, learn, live, and legislate.

August 9, 1593
Izaak Walton
That which is everybody’s business is nobody’s business.

August 11, 1833
Robert Green Ingersoll
Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself.

August 12, 1867
Edith Hamilton
When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.

August 13, 1851
Felix Adler
Every outcry against the oppression of some people by other people, or against what is morally hideous is the affirmation of the principle that a human being as such is not to be violated. A human being is not to be handled as a tool but is to be respected and revered.

August 15, 1917
Archbishop Oscar Romero
Do you want to know if your Christianity is genuine? Here is the touchstone: Whom do you get along with? Who are those who criticize you? who are those who do not accept you? Who are those who flatter you?

August 16, 1911
EF Schumacher
Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility.

August 17, 1887
Marcus Garvey
Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm.

August 18, 1900
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war.

August 19, 1921
Gene Roddenberry
It has become a crusade of mine to demonstrate that TV need not be violent to be exciting.

August 20, 1886
Paul Tillich
There is no love which does not become help.

August 21, 1567
St. Francis De Sales
The bee collects honey from flowers in such a way as to do the least damage or destruction to them, and he leaves them whole, undamaged and fresh, just as he found them.

August 22, 1920
Ray Bradbury
You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

August 23, 1970
Rob Bell
Suffering, it turns out, demands profound imagination. A new future has to be conjured up because the old future isn’t there anymore.

August 25, 1913
Walt Kelly

August 25, 1918
Leonard Bernstein
This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

August 26, 1941
Barbara Ehrenreich
We need a feminism that teaches a woman to say no – not just to the date rapist or overly insistent boyfriend but, when necessary, to the military or corporate hierarchy within which she finds herself. We need a kind of feminism that aims not just to assimilate into the institutions that men have created over the centuries, but to infiltrate and subvert them.

August 27, 1910
Mother Teresa
We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

August 27, 1931
Sri Chinmoy
If the inner world is inundated with peace, then the nightmare of world war cannot even come into being.

August 28, 1828
Leo Tolstoy
Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

August 28, 1749
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

August 29,  1632
John Locke
To prejudge other men’s notions before we have looked into them is not to show their darkness but to put out our own eyes.

August 30, 1944
Molly Ivins
Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.

August 31, 1870
Maria Montessori
Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.

August 31, 1935
Eldridge Cleaver
You’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.

September 1, 1789
Marguerite Gardiner
The vices of the rich and great are mistaken for error; and those of the poor and lowly, for crimes.

September 1, 1945
Fethullah Gülen
Compassion is the beginning of being; without it everything is chaos. Everything has come into existence through compassion and by compassion it continues to exist in harmony. Every thing speaks of compassion and promises compassion. Because of this, the universe can be considered a symphony of compassion.

September 2, 1839
Henry George
What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power.

September 3, 1940
Eduardo Galeano
The purpose of torture is not getting information. It’s spreading fear.

September 5, 1905
Arthur Koestler
The most persistent sound which reverberates through man’s history is the beating of war drums.

September 6, 1860
Jane Addams
Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.

September 7, 1932
Jimmie Reid
The task of the media in a democracy is not to ease the path of those who govern, but to make life difficult for them by constant vigilance as to how they exercise the power they only hold in trust from the people.

September 8, 1886
Siegfried L Sassoon
Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land, drawing no dividend from time’s tomorrows.

September 8, 1900
Claude Pepper
If more politicians in this country were thinking about the next generation instead of the next election, it might be better for the United States and the world.

September 8, 1941
Bernie Sanders
Let us wage a moral and political war against war itself, so that we can cut military spending and use that money for human needs.

September 10, 1935
Mary Oliver
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

September 10, 1952
Medea Benjamin
It is our responsibility as global citizens to learn to communicate with those we are taught to see as enemies. For it is only when we understand each other, love each other, and think of every man and woman as our brother and sister that we will finally be on our way to ending war.

September 13, 1660
Daniel Defoe
Vice came in always at the door of necessity, not at the door of inclination.

September 14, 1934
Kate Millett
Politics is repetition. It is not change. Change is something beyond what we call politics. Change is the essence politics is supposed to be the means to bring into being.

September 15, 1890
Agatha Christie
Dogs are wise. They crawl away into a quiet corner and lick their wounds and do not rejoin the world until they are whole once more.

September 20, 1878
Upton Sinclair
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

September 21, 1866
HG Wells
Crime and bad lives are the measure of a State’s failure; all crime in the end is the crime of the community.

September 21, 1934
Leonard Cohen
Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true.

September 22, 1290
Bilbo Baggins
Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends.

September 23, 1949
Bruce Springsteen
I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream.

September 25, 1930
Shel Silverstein
I will not play tug o’ war. I’d rather play hug o’ war. Where everyone hugs instead of tugs, Where everyone giggles and rolls on the rug, Where everyone kisses, and everyone grins, and everyone cuddles, and everyone wins.

September 28, 551 BCE
Confucius
In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

September 29, 1547
Miguel de Cervantes
In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.

September 29, 1571
Michelangelo
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.

September 30, 1207
Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi
Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom.

September 30, 1928
Elie Wiesel
I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

October 1, 1847
Annie Besant
Not out of right practice comes right thinking, but out of right thinking comes right practice. It matters enormously what you think. If you think falsely, you will act mistakenly; if you think basely, your conduct will suit your thinking.

October 1, 1924
Jimmy Carter
We cannot be both the world’s leading champion of peace and the world’s leading supplier of the weapons of war.

October 2, 1868
Mohandas Gandhi
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

October 2, 1895
Groucho Marx
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

October 4, 1181
St Francis of Assisi
No one is to be called an enemy, all are your benefactors, and no one does you harm. You have no enemy except yourselves.

October 4, 1942
Bernice Johnson Reagon
There is nowhere you can go and only be with people who are like you. Give it up.

October 5, 1936
Václav Havel
Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

October 5, 1958
Neil de Grasse Tyson
Humans aren’t as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on Earth. So maybe part of our formal education should be training in empathy. Imagine how different the world would be if, in fact, that were ‘reading, writing, arithmetic, empathy.’

October 6, 1917
Fannie Lou Hamer
There is one thing you have got to learn about our movement. Three people are better than no people.

October 6, 1934
Marshall Rosenberg
All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished.

October 7, 1931
Desmond Tutu
A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.

October 7, 1934
Amiri Baraka
A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.

October 8, 1941
Jesse Jackson
Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change.

October 9, 1940
John Lennon
When you’re drowning, you don’t say ‘I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,’ you just scream.

October 9, 1950
Jody Williams
Militarists say that to gain peace we must prepare for war. I think we get what we prepare for. If we want a world where peace is valued, we must teach ourselves to believe that peace is not a ‘utopian vision’ but a real responsibility that must be worked for each and every day in small and large ways. Any one of us can contribute to building a world where peace and justice prevail.

October 10, 1895
Lin Yutang
Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.

October 11, 1884
Eleanor Roosevelt
When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

October 11, 1926
Thich Nhat Hanh
To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are happening inside you, and you know how to take care of the things that happen around you.

October 14, 1906
Johanna “Hannah” Arendt
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

October 14, 1644
William Penn
Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

October 15, 1926
Michel Foucault
Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism.

October 16, 1854
Oscar Wilde
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

October 18, 1904
AJ Liebling
Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

October 19, 1720
John Woolman
Wealth is attended with power, by which bargains and proceedings, contrary to universal righteousness, are supported; and hence oppression, carried on with worldly policy and order, clothes itself with the name of justice and becomes like a seed of discord in the soul.

October 19, 1895
Lewis Mumford
War vies with magic in its efforts to get something for nothing.

October 19, 1921
Paulo Freire
Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects that must be saved from a burning building.

October 20, 1859
John Dewey
Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world in jeopardy.

October 21, 1833
Alfred Nobel
Good wishes alone will not ensure peace.

October 22, 1887
John Reed
War means an ugly mob-madness, crucifying the truth tellers, choking the artists, sidetracking reforms, revolutions, and the working of social forces.

October 22, 1913
Frank Capa
I hope to stay unemployed as a war photographer till the end of my life.

October 24, 1939
Paula Gunn Allen
I have noticed that as soon as you have soldiers the story is called history. Before their arrival it is called myth, folktale, legend, fairy tale, oral poetry, ethnography. After the soldiers arrive, it is called history.

October 25, 1881
Pablo Picasso
Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.

October 26, 1944
Emanuel Cleaver
God did not burden the United States with a diversity of backgrounds, ideals and religions, he BLESSED America with them… and we in our diversity and differences are all in this together.

October 27, 1466
Erasmus of Rotterdam
War is sweet to those who have not experienced it.

October 27, 1923
Ruby Dee
The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within — strength, courage, dignity.

October 28, 1818
Ivan Turgenev
Most people can’t understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.

October 28, 1914
Jonas Salk
Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.

October 30, 1735
John Adams
Power always thinks… that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws.

October 31, 1860
Juliet Gordon Low
Ours is a circle of friendships united by ideals.

November 2, 1773
Stephen Grellet
I shall pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

November 4, 1879
Will Rogers
It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.

November 5, 1855
Eugene V. Debs
While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

November 5, 1857
Ida Tarbell
There is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a working truth that all a man does should make for rightness and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral.

November 7, 1913
Albert Camus
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

November 8, 397
Martin of Tours
I am a soldier of Christ and it is not lawful for me to fight.

November 8, 1897
Dorothy Day
We have all known the long loneliness, and we have found that the answer is community.

November 9, 1914
Thomas Berry
The natural world is the larger sacred community to which we belong. To be alienated from this community is to become destitute in all that makes us human. To damage this community is to diminish our own existence.

November 9, 1934
Carl Sagan
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. . . For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

November 9, 1938
Yvon Chouinard
The more you know, the less you need.

November 10, 1730
Oliver Goldsmith
You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.

November 12, 1815
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.

November 14, 1944
Karen Armstrong
If we want to create a viable, peaceful world, we’ve got to integrate compassion into the gritty realities of 21st century life.

November 15, 1887
Marianne Moore
There never was a war that was not inward; I must fight till I have conquered in myself what causes war.

November 15, 1933
Theodore Roszak
People try nonviolence for a week, and when it ‘doesn’t work’ they go back to violence, which hasn’t worked for centuries.

November 16, 1930
Chinua Achebe
The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery.

November 20, 1925
Robert F Kennedy
It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

November 21, 1694
Voltaire
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

November 22, 1869
Andre Gide
One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

November 24, 1623
Baruch Spinoza
Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

November 24, 1888
Dale Carnagie
If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive.

November 24, 1961
Arundhati Roy
It’s odd how those who dismiss the peace movement as utopian, don’t hesitate to proffer the most absurdly dreamy reasons for going to war: to stamp out terrorism, install democracy, eliminate fascism, and most entertainingly, to “rid the world of evil-doers.

November 25, 1881
Pope John XXIII
True and lasting peace among nations cannot consist in the possession of an equal supply of armaments but only in mutual trust.

November 26, 1922
Charles Schulz
Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.

November 27, 1942
Jimi Hendrix
When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.

November 29, 1832
Louisa May Alcott
It takes two flints to make a fire.

November 29, 1889
C.S. Lewis
What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

November 29,  1918
Madeleine L’Engle
We have much to be judged on when he comes, slums and battlefields and insane asylums, but these are the symptoms of our illness and the result of our failures in love.

November 30, 1667
Jonathon Swift
We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

November 30, 1835
Mark Twain
The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

November 30, 1934
Shirley Chisholm
I don’t measure America by its achievement but by its potential.

November 30, 1936
Abbie Hoffman
You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.