peaceQUOTES

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A

Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.  Edward Abbey

Peace comes from being able to contribute the best that we have, and all that we are, toward creating a world that supports everyone. But it is also securing the space for others to contribute the best that they have and all that they are.  Hafsat Abiola

Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice.  Lord Acton

I am more and more convinced that Man is a dangerous creature, and that power whether vested in many or a few is ever grasping, and like the grave cries give, give. The great fish swallow up the small, and he who is most strenuous for the Rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of Government. You tell me of degrees of perfection to which Humane Nature is capable of arriving, and I believe it, but at the same time lament that our admiration should arise from the scarcity of the instances.  Abigail Adams

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.  John Quincy Adams

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.  Jane Addams

Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world.  Jane Addams

Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.   Jane Addams

We slowly learn that life consists of processes as well as results, and that failure may come quite as easily from ignoring the adequacy of one’s method as from selfish or ignoble aims.  Jane Addams

War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man.  Alfred Adler

To all those who walk the path of human cooperation war must appear loathsome and inhuman.  Alfred Adler

It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.  Alfred Adler

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.  Aesop

Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters.  African Proverb

In every child who is born, no matter what circumstances, and of no matter what parents, the potentiality of the human race is born again: and in him, too, once more, and of each of us, our terrific responsibility toward human life; toward the utmost idea of goodness, of the horror of terror, and of God.  James Agee

Snowflakes, leaves, humans, plants, raindrops, stars, molecules, microscopic entities all come in communities. The singular cannot in reality exist.  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.  Paula Gunn Allen

How can one not speak about war, poverty, and inequality when people who suffer from these afflictions don’t have a voice to speak?  Isabel Allende

We live in an era where masses of people come and go across a hostile planet, desolate and violent. Refugees, emigrants, exiles, deportees. We are a tragic contingent.  Isabel Allende

Let us plant dates even though those who plant them will never eat them. We must live by the love of what we will never see. This is the secret discipline. It is a refusal to let the creative act be dissolved away in immediate sense experience, and a stubborn commitment to the future of our grandchildren. Such disciplined love is what has given prophets, revolutionaries, and saints the courage to die for the future they envisaged. They make their own bodies the seed of their highest hope.   Ruben Alves, Tomorrow’s Child

Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.  Martin Amis

No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger that its weakest people, and 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 might otherwise.  Marian Anderson

Fear is a disease that eats away at logic and makes man inhuman.  Marian Anderson

Prayer begins where human capacity ends.  Marian Anderson

We cannot change the past, but we can change our attitude toward it. Uproot guilt and plant forgiveness. Tear out arrogance and seed humility. Exchange love for hate — thereby, making the present comfortable and the future promising.  Maya Angelou

Effective action is always unjust.  Maya Angelou

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.  Maya Angelou

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.  Maya Angelou

There is no trust more sacred than the one the world holds with children. There is no duty more important than ensuring that their rights are respected, that their welfare is protected, that their lives are free from fear and want and that they grow up in peace.  Kofi A. Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations

If you see good in people, you radiate a harmonious loving energy which uplifts those who are around you. If you can maintain this habit, this energy will turn into a steady flow of love.  Annamalai Swami

Peace begins when the hungry are fed.  Anonymous

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it stands than to anything on which it is poured.  Anonymous

In the struggle rewards are few.
In the fact, I know of only two loving friends and living dreams.
These rewards are not so few it seems.  Anonymous

God is on everyone’s side — and in the last analysis, he is on the side with plenty of money and large armies.  Jean Anouilh

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.  Susan B. Anthony

Peace is the work of justice indirectly, in so far as justice removes the obstacles to peace; but it is the work of charity (love) directly, since charity, according to its very notion, causes peace.  Thomas Aquinas

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.  Corazon Aquino

Reconciliation should be accompanied by justice, otherwise it will not last. While we all hope for peace it shouldn’t be peace at any cost but peace based on principle, on justice.  Corazon Aquino

The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.  Diane Arbus

The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrong-doer.  Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotional populist appeal that wins out unless good men and women stand as a vanguard against abuse.  Hannah Arendt

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.  Hannah Arendt

War has become a luxury that only small nations can afford.  Hannah Arendt

Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.  Hannah Arendt

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power’s disappearance.  Hannah Arendt

Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but anti-political, perhaps the most powerful of all anti-political human forces.  Hannah Arendt

No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.  Hannah Arendt

Peace is not the product of a victory or a command. It has no finishing line, no final deadline, no fixed definition of achievement. Peace is a never-ending process, the work of many decisions.  Oscar Arias

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.  Aristotle

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.  Isaac Asimov

Peace at home, peace in the world.  Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

I and the people know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done,
Do Evil in return.    W.H. Auden

In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?  St. Augustine

Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor. A pirate, from St. Augustine’s “City of God”

B

We should take care, in inculcating patriotism into our boys and girls, that is a patriotism above the narrow sentiment which usually stops at one’s country, and thus inspires jealousy and enmity in dealing with others… Our patriotism should be of the wider, nobler kind which recognises justice and reasonableness in the claims of others and which lead our country into comradeship with…the other nations of the world. The first step to this end is to develop peace and goodwill within our borders, by training our youth of both sexes to its practice as their habit of life, so that the jealousies of town against town, class against class and sect against sect no longer exist; and then to extend this good feeling beyond our frontiers towards our neighbours.  Lord Baden-Powell

All the lessons of history in four sentences:
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power.
The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.
The bee fertilizes the flower it robs.
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.    Charles A. Beard

That’s all nonviolence is — organized love.  Joan Baez

The only thing that’s been a worse flop than the organization of nonviolence has been the organization of violence.  Joan Baez

If it’s natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?  Joan Baez

The point of nonviolence is to build a floor, a strong new floor, beneath which we can no longer sink. A platform which stands a few feet above napalm, torture, exploitation, poison gas, A and H bombs, the works. Give man a decent place to stand.  Joan Baez

Action is the antidote to despair.  Joan Baez

The easiest kind of relationship is with ten thousand people, the hardest is with one.  Joan Baez

Hungry people cannot be good at learning or producing anything, except perhaps violence.  Pearl Bailey

There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used…Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they though of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed.  Gil Bailie

War would end if the dead could return.  Stanley Baldwin

Politics should be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.  Lucille Ball

The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens.  Baha’ullah

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.  Russell Baker

When someone steals another’s clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.  Basil the Great

If you live alone, whose feet will you wash?  St. Basil

Most higher education is devoted to affirming the traditions and origins of an existing elite and transmitting them to new members.  Mary Catherine Bateson

Sharing is sometimes more demanding than giving.  Mary Catherine Bateson

When any relationship is characterized by difference, particularly a disparity in power, there remains a tendency to model it on the parent-child-relationship. Even protectiveness and benevolence toward the poor, toward minorities, and especially toward women have involved equating them with children.  Mary Catherine Bateson

There is but one evil, war. All the other proclaimed evils such as hate, greed, descrimination, and jealousy are only sub-categories of it.  José Barreiro

Youth is the first victim of war; the first fruit of peace.It takes 20 years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only 20 seconds of war to destroy him.  King Baudouin I, King of Belgium

The problems of this world are so gigantic that some are paralysed by their own uncertainty. Courage and wisdom are needed to reach out above this sense of helplessness. Desire for vengeance against deeds of hatred offers no solution. An eye for an eye makes the world blind. If we wish to choose the other path, we will have to search for ways to break the spiral of animosity. To fight evil one must also recognize one’s own responsibility. The values for which we stand must be expressed in the way we think of, and how we deal with, our fellow humans   HM Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands

The fragrance always remains in the hand that gives the rose.  Heda Bejar

We used to have a War Office, but now we have a Ministry of Defence, nuclear bombs are now described as deterrents, innocent civilians killed in war are now described as collateral damage and military incompetence leading to US bombers killing British soldiers is cosily described as friendly fire. Those who are in favour of peace are described as mavericks and troublemakers, whereas the real militants are those who want the war.  Tony Benn

The finger pulls the trigger, but the trigger may also be pulling the finger.  Dr. Leonard Berkowitz

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

The God of life summons us to life; more, to be lifegivers, especially toward those who lie under the heel of the powers.  Daniel Berrigan

Sometime in your life, hope that you might see one starved man, the look on his face when the bread finally arrives. Hope that you might have baked it or bought or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on his face, for your meeting his eyes across a piece of bread, you might be willing to lose a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little, even.  Daniel Berrigan, SJ

If we are serious about peace, then we must work for it as ardently, seriously, continuously, carefully, and bravely as we have ever prepared for war.  Wendell Berry

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.  Annie Besant

I leave you love. I leave you hope. I leave you the challenge of developing confidence in one another. I leave you respect for the use of power. I leave you faith. I leave you racial dignity.  Mary McLeod Bethune

Faith is the first factor in a life devoted to service. Without it, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.  Mary McLeod Bethune

If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves. We should, therefore, protest openly everything … that smacks of discrimination or slander.  Mary McLeod Bethune

The human mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with a similar energy.  W.H. Beveridge, British Economist

There never has been a war yet which, if the facts had been put calmly before the ordinary folk, could not have been prevented … The common man, I think, is the great protection against war.  Ernest Bevin

War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.  Ernest Bevin

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.  Marie Beyle

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.  Steven Biko

The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.  Black Elk

Can I see another’s woe, and not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another’s grief, and not seek for kind relief?   William Blake

A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.  Arthur Block

Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.  Leon Bloy

Do you know what astonished me most in the world? The inability of force to create anything. In the long run the sword is always beaten by the spirit. Soldiers usually win battles and generals get the credit for them. You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war. If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots.  Napoleon Bonaparte

The followers of Christ have been called to peace. . . . And they must not only have peace but make it. And to that end they renounce all violence and tumult. In the cause of Christ nothing is to be gained by such methods . . . . His disciples keep the peace by choosing to endure suffering themselves rather than inflict it on others. They maintain fellowship where others would break it off. They renounce hatred and wrong. In so doing they overcome evil with good, and establish the peace of God in the midst of a world of war and hate.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship)

Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear rather than too much. Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now. Christian should take a stronger stand in favor of the weak rather than considering first the possible right of the strong.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Sermon on II Cor. 12:9)

There remains an experience of incomparable value . . . to see the great events of world history from below; from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled —- in short, from the perspective of those who suffer . . . to look with new eyes on matters great and small.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Letters and Papers from Prison)

So long as we eat our bread together, we shall have sufficient even for the least. Not until one person desires to keep his own bread for himself does hunger ensue.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Life Together)

When you’re finally up on the moon, looking back at the earth, all these differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend and you’re going to get a concept that maybe this is really one world and why the hell can’t we learn to live together like decent people?  Frank Borman

There is no time left for anything but to make peace work a dimension of our every waking activity.  Elise Boulding

We do not inherit the earth from our fathers. We borrow it from our children.  David Bower

Violence in the voice is often only the death rattle of reason in the throat.  John Boyes

We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.  General Omar Bradley

The pens which write against disarmament are made with the same steel from which guns are made.  Aristide Briand, French statesman, Nobel Peace Prize, 1926

The pacifist’s task today is to find a method of helping and healing which provides a revolutionary constructive substitute for war.  Vera Brittain, 1964

All that a pacifist can undertake — but it is a very great deal — is to refuse to kill, injure or otherwise cause suffering to another human creature, and untiringly to order his life by the rule of love though others may be captured by hate.  Vera Brittain, 1964

Peace is that state in which fear of any kind is unknown.  John Buchan

You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.  Pearl S Buck

When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail.  Pearl S Buck

None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.  Pearl S Buck

To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death.  Pearl S Buck

In separateness lies the world’s great misery; in compassion lies the world’s true strength. Buddha

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned.  Buddha

Better than a thousand hollow words,
Is one word that brings peace.  Buddha

Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity.  Buddha

He who can control his rising anger as a coachman controls his carriage at full speed, this man I call a good driver; others merely hold the reins.  Gautama Buddha

Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality–not as we expect it to be but as it is–is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.  (Carl) Frederick Buechner

. . . [T]o live not with hands clenched to grasp, to strike, to hold tight to a life that is always slipping away the more tightly we hold it, but . . . to live with the hands stretched out both to give and receive with gladness.  (Carl) Frederick Buechner

Beneath the rule of men entirely great
The pen is mightier than the sword.  Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

Peace, to have meaning for many who have only known suffering in both peace and war, must be translated into bread or rice, shelter, health and education, as well as freedom and human dignity.  Ralph Bunche

To suggest that war can prevent war is a base play on words and a despicable form of warmongering. The objective of any who sincerely believe in peace clearly must be to exhaust every honorable recourse in the effort to save the peace. The world has had ample evidence that war begets only conditions that beget further war.  Ralph Bunche

There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders.  Ralph Bunche

The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.  Edmund Burke

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.  Judith Butler

C

When my enemies stop hissing, I shall know I’m slipping. Maria Callas

When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist.  Archbishop Helder Camara

God looks unjust but is not. God asks more from those who more is given. They are not greater or better; they have greater responsibility. They must give more service. Live to serve.  Dom Helder Camara

It is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.  Albert Camus

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives, that it is inside ourselves.  Albert Camus

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.  Albert Camus

I guess every generation is doomed to fight its war…suffer the loss of the same old illusions, and learn the same old lessons on its own.  Phillip Caputo

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?  George Carlin

We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.  Jimmy Carter

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against each other.  Thomas Carlyle

To kill a man will be considered as disgusting [in the twentieth century] as we in this day consider it disgusting to eat one.  Andrew Carnegie, 1900

Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is–whether its victim is human or animal–we cannot expect things to be much better in this world… We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity. Rachel Carson

The love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?  Pablo Casals

Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.  Pablo Casals

I think that if you shake the tree, you ought to be around when the fruit falls to pick it up.  Mary Cassatt

Where there is great love there are always miracles.  Willa Cather

Looking for peace is like looking for a turtle with a mustache: You won’t be able to find it. But when your heart is ready, peace will come looking for you.  Ajahn Chah

Nonviolence is really tough. You don’t practice nonviolence at conferences; you practice it on picket-lines.  César Chávez

Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.  César Chávez

The first principle of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating.  César Chávez

The non-violent technique does not depend for its success on the goodwill of the oppressor, but rather on the unfailing assistance of God.  César Chávez

There is no such thing as defeat in non-violence.  César Chávez

You know, if people are not pacifists, it’s not their fault. It’s because society puts them in that spot. You’ve got to change it. You don’t just change a man – you’ve got to change his environment as you do it.  César Chávez

Through Gandhi and my own life experience, I have learned about nonviolence. I believe that human life is a very special gift from God, and that no one has a right to take that away in any cause, however just. I am convinced that nonviolence is more powerful than violence.  César Chávez

Non-violence exacts a very high price from one who practices it. But once you are able to meet that demand then you can do most things.  César Chávez

Non-violence is a very powerful weapon. Most people don’t understand the power of non-violence and tend to be amazed by the whole idea. Those who have been involved in bringing about change and see the difference between violence and non-violence are firmly committed to a lifetime of non-violence, not because it is easy or because it is cowardly, but because it is an effective and very powerful way.  César Chávez

Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours.  César Chávez

Non-violence is not inaction. It is not discussion. It is not for the timid or weak…Non-violence is hard work. It is the willingness to sacrifice. It is the patience to win.  César Chávez

Violence just hurts those who are already hurt…Instead of exposing the brutality of the oppressor, it justifies it.  César Chávez

We are convinced that non-violence is more powerful than violence. We are convinced that non-violence supports you if you have a just and moral cause…If you use violence, you have to sell part of yourself for that violence. Then you are no longer a master of your own struggle.  César Chávez

The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people.  César Chávez

We have created not a Brave New World, but a vulgar marketplace, where human attributes come with a price tag.  Linda Chavez

In all of his suffering, as in all of his life and ministry, Jesus refused to defend himself with force or with violence. He endured violence and cruelty so that God’s love might be fully manifest and the world might be reconciled to the One from whom it had become estranged. Even at his death, Jesus cried for forgiveness for those who were executioners: “Father, forgive them”  The Challenge of Peace

We look forward to the time when the power to love will replace the love of power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.  William Ellery Channing

I do not look on a human being as a machine, made to be kept in action by a foreign force, to accomplish an unvarying succession of motions, to do a fixed amount of work, and then to fall to pieces at death, but as a being of free spiritual powers; and I place little value on any culture but that which aims to bring out these, and to give them perpetual impulse and expansion.  William Ellery Channing

Angels can fly because they take themselves so lightly.  G.K. Chesterton

A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over…is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.  G.K. Chesterton

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.  Lydia Maria Child

If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed for.  Chinese Proverb

There are three truths: my truth, your truth and the truth.  Chinese Proverb

The question is not, do we go to church; the question is, have we been converted. The crux of Christianity is not whether or not we give donations to popular charities but whether or not we are really committed to the poor.  Joan Chittester, OSB

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.  Agatha Christie

The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.  Pema Chodron

We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves.  Pema Chodron

If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.  Pema Chodron

Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live.  Pema Chodron

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others.
Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.  Pema Chodron

Sports plays a societal role in engendering jingoist and chauvinist attitudes. They’re designed to organize a community to be committed to their gladiators.  Noam Chomsky

The miracle of the wicked is reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.  Winston Churchill

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.  Winston Churchill

The sinews of war are infinite money.  Marcus Tullius Cicero

I have great belief in the fact that whenever there is chaos, it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift.  Septima Poinsette Clark

War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost limits.  Major General Carl von Clausewitz, 1832

No government can love a child, and no policy can substitute for a family’s care. But at the same time, government can either support or undermine families as they cope with moral, social and economic stresses of caring for children.  Hillary Rodham Clinton

Can it be that a generation of school children is growing up heedless of the simple truth that the Pentagon’s central role for many years has been to buy weapons that don’t work, against threats that don’t exist?  Alexander Cockburn

The cause of violence is not ignorance. It is self-interest. .  .. Only reverence can restrain violence — reverence for human life and the environment .  Rev. William Sloan Coffin, Jr.

A spiritual person tries less to be godly than to be deeply human.  Rev. William Sloan Coffin, Jr.

To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice.  Confucius

I believe we are on the edge of a quantum leap into a whole new way of organizing and living as a human family.  Mairead Corrigan Maguire

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.  Joseph Conrad

War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace with justice.  Norman Cousins

Nothing is more powerful than an individual acting out their conscience, thus helping bring the collective conscience to life.  Norman Cousins

We know how to organize warfare, but do we know how to act when confronted with peace?  Jacques-Yves Cousteau

The idea of absolute freedom is fiction. It’s based on the idea of an independent self. But, in fact, there’s no such thing. There’s no self without other people. There’s no self without sunlight. There’s no self without dew. And water. And bees to pollinate the food we eat….So the idea of behaving in a way that doesn’t acknowledge those reciprocal relationships is not really freedom, it’s indulgence.  Peter Coyote

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, “Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don’t believe?”  Quentin Crisp

We are, each of us angels with only one wing; and we can only fly by embracing one another.  Luciano de Crescenzo

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.  Davy Crockett

No one is so foolish as to prefer to peace, war, in which, instead of sons burying their fathers, fathers bury their sons.  Croesus, King of Lydia, in Herodotus’ The Persian Wars

God and the politicians willing, the United States can declare peace upon the world, and win it.  Ely Culbertson

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.  e.e.Cummings

D

Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free.  The Dalai Lama

Courage is like — it’s a habitus, a habit, a virtue: you get it by courageous acts. It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging.  Mary Daly

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.  Dante

Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places! I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.  Leonardo Da Vinci

Not only do . . . rulers keep many millions of men whose only trade is war, but these must be supported in worse than useless idleness by the labor of the poor. Still other millions are trained to war and are ever ready to answer to their master’s call, to desert their homes and trades and offer up their lives to satisfy the vain ambitions of the ruler of the state. Millions more must give their strength and lives to build forts and ships, make guns and cannon and all the modern implements of war. Apart from any moral question of the right of man to slay his fellow man, all this great burden rests upon the poor. The vast expense of war comes from the production of the land and must serve to weaken and impair its industrial strength.  Clarence Darrow, Resist Not Evil

You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom. You can only be free if I am free.  Clarence Darrow

Common experience shows how much rarer is moral courage than physical bravery. A thousand men will march to the mouth of the cannon where one man will dare espouse an unpopular cause . . . True courage and manhood come from the consciousness of the right attitude toward the world, the faith in one’s purpose, and the sufficiency of one’s own approval as a justification for one’s own acts.  Clarence Darrow, Resist Not Evil

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

It is penance to work, to give oneself to others, to endure the pinpricks of community living.  Dorothy Day

An act of love, a voluntary taking on oneself of some of the pain of the world, increases the courage and love and hope of all.  Dorothy Day

No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.  Dorothy Day

We plant seeds that will flower as results in our lives, so best to remove the weeds of anger, avarice, envy and doubt, that peace and abundance may manifest for all.  Dorothy Day

Young people say, What is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at at time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action in the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes.  Dorothy Day, 1963

We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.  Dorothy Day, 1963

If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.  Moshe Dayan

The life of “peace” is both an inner journey toward a disarmed heart and a public journey toward a disarmed world. This difficult but beautiful journey gives infinite meaning and fulfillment to life itself because our lives become a gift for the whole human race. With peace as the beginning, middle, and end of life, life makes sense.  John Dear

Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.  Teilhard de Chardin

God, make me so uncomfortable that I will do the very thing I fear.  Ruby Dee

War stirs in men’s hearts the mud of their worst instincts. It puts a premium on violence, nourishes hatred, and gives free rein to cupidity. It crushes the weak, exalts the unworthy, and bolsters tyranny .. .Time and time again it has destroyed all ordered living, devastated hope, and put the prophets to death.  Charles DeGaulle

Very few people chose war. They chose selfishness and the result was war. Each of us, individually and nationally, must choose: total love or total war.  Dave Dellinger

Nobody was born nonviolent. No one was born charitable. None of us comes to these things by nature but only by conversion. The first duty of the nonviolent community is helping its members work upon themselves and come to conversion.  Lanza del Vasto

Our children are not born to hate, they are raised to hate.  Thomas della Peruta

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.  Alexis de Tocqueville

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.  Barbara Deming

Gandhi once declared that it was his wife who unwittingly taught him the effectiveness of nonviolence. Who better than women should know that battles can be won without resort to physical strength? Who better than we should know all the power that resides in noncooperation?  Barbara Deming

What is the revolution that we need? We need to dissolve the lie that some people have a right to think of other people as their property. And we need at last to form a circle that includes us all, in which all of us are seen as equal… We do not belong to the other, but our lives are linked; we belong in a circle of others.  Barbara Deming

To resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek. The most effective action both resorts to power and engages conscience. Nonviolent actions does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences. Nor does it have to petition those in power to do something about a situation. It can face the authorities with a new fact and say: Accept this new situation which we have created.  Barbara Deming

Let not your zeal to share your principles entice you beyond your borders.  Marquis de Sade

Is it not a strange blindness on our part to teach publicly the techniques of warfare and to reward with medals those who prove to be the most adroit killers?  Marquis de Sade

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.  Marquis de Sade

A solid rock is not disturbed by the wind; even so, a wise person is not agitated by praise or blame.  Dhammapada

Love the fellow of the resurrection, scooping up the dust and chanting “Live!”  Emily Dickinson

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.  Denis Diderot

Justice is truth in action.  Benjamin Disraeli

No man is an island entire of itself … any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.  John Donne

At some ideas you stand perplexed, especially at the sight of human sins, uncertain whether to combat it by force or by human love. Always decide, “I will combat it with human love.” If you make up your mind about that once and for all, you can conquer the whole world. Loving humility is a terrible force; it is the strongest of all things and there is nothing like it.  Dostoyevsky – The Brothers Karamazov

The first thing to be disrupted by our committment to nonviolence will be not the system but our own lives.  James Douglass

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.  Frederick Douglass

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.  Peter Drucker

Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.  W.E.B. Dubois

Mankind will never win lasting peace so long as men use their full resources only in tasks of war. While we are yet at peace, let us mobilize the potentialities, particularly the moral and spiritual potentialities, which we usually reserve for war.  John Foster Dulles, War or Peace 1950

So long as little children are allowed to suffer, there is no true love in this world.  Isadora Duncan

Those for whom peace is no more than a dream are asleep to the future.  Jack DuVall

Sexism is the foundation on which all tyranny is built. Every social form of hierarchy and abuse is modeled on male-over-female domination.  Andrea Dworkin

Men are rewarded for learning the practice of violence in virtually any sphere of activity by money, admiration, recognition, respect, and the genuflection of others honoring their sacred and proven masculinity. In male culture, police are heroic and so are outlaws; males who enforce standards are heroic and so are those who violate them.  Andrea Dworkin

Institutionalized in sports, the military, acculturated sexuality, the history and mythology of heroism, violence is taught to boys until they becomes its advocates.  Andrea Dworkin

E

What good is it to me that Mary gave birth to the son of God fourteen hundred years ago, and I do not also give birth to the Son of God in my time and in my culture? We are all meant to be mothers of God. God is always needing to be born.  Meister Eckhart

If we think we have ours and don’t owe any time or money or effort to help those left behind, then we are a part of the problem rather than the solution to the fraying social fabric that threatens all Americans.  Marian Wright Edelman

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.  Marian Wright Edelman

The challenge of social justice is to evoke a sense of community that we need to make our nation a better place, just as we make it a safer place.  Marian Wright Edelman

We do not have a money problem in America. We have a values and priorities problem.  Marian Wright Edelman

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.  Thomas Edison

There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.  Thomas Edison

The pioneers of a warless world are the young men (and women) who refuse military service.  Albert Einstein

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.  Albert Einstein

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.  Albert Einstein

We must be prepared to make heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war. There is no task that is more important or closer to my heart.  Albert Einstein

Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.  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.  Albert Einstein

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.  Albert Einstein

Surely it is not true blessedness to be free of sorrow while there is sorrow and sin in the world. Sorrow is a part of love and love does not seek to throw it off.  George Eliot

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.  Dwight D. Eisenhower

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.  Dwight D. Eisenhower

Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.  Dwight D. Eisenhower

May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.  Dwight D. Eisenhower

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.  Dwight D. Eisenhower

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.  George Eliot

There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it.  Havelock Ellis

The ideal weapons system is built in 435 congressional districts and it doesn’t matter whether it works or not.  Alain C. Enthoven

If you kill one person you are a murderer If you kill ten people you are a monster If you kill ten thousand you are a national hero.  Vassilis Epaminondou

War is sweet to those who haven’t tasted it.   Dulce bellum inexpertis.  Desiderius Erasmus

F

Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash, your picture in the paper nor money in the bank, neither. Just refuse to bear them.  William Faulkner

No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by agreement or by emotional appeal.  Marilyn Ferguson

It’s not so much that we’re afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it’s that place in between that we fear . . . . It’s like being between trapezes. It’s Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold on to.  Marilyn Ferguson

History has a long-range perspective. It ultimately passes stern judgment on tyrants and vindicates those who fought, suffered, were imprisoned, and died for human freedom, against political oppression and economic slavery.  Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine, and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilize savage and senile and paranoidal peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells or metal mines.  John T. Flynn, As We Go Marching

The absence of risk is a sure sign of mediocrity.  Charles de Foucauld

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids both rich and poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.  Anatole France

While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.  St. Francis of Assisi

Not to hurt our humble brethren (the animals) is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission–to be of service to them whenever they require it… If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.  St. Francis of Assisi

Nothing is so strong as gentleness; nothing so gentle as real strength.  St. Francis de Sales

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.  Anne Frank

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.  Viktor Frankl

I resolve to speak ill of no man whatever, not even in a matter of truth; but rather by some means excuse the faults I hear charged upon others, and upon proper occasions speak all the good I know of everybody.  Benjamin Franklin

I hope…that mankind will at length, as they call themselves reasonable creatures, have reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats; for in my opinion there never was a good war, or a bad peace.  Benjamin Franklin

You can bomb the world into pieces, but you can’t bomb it into peace.  Michael Franti

Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.  Paulo Freire

Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.  Sigmund Freud

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.  David Friedman

In all wars the object is to protect or to seize money, property and power, and there will always be wars so long as Capital rules and oppresses people.  Ernst Friedrich, War Against War (1924)

Productive work, love and thought are possible only if a person can be, when necessary, quiet and alone. To be able to listen to oneself is the necessary condition for relating oneself to others.  Erich Fromm

We are going to have to find ways of organizing ourselves cooperatively,sanely, scientifically, harmonically and in regenerative spontaneity with the rest of humanity around the earth…. 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.  Buckminster Fuller

Either war is obsolete or men are.  Buckminster Fuller

War is obsolete. We are not here to fight something or tear something down; We are here to be the example of what is possible. Any sane individual will tell you that violence is … not the way…  Buckminster Fuller

G

Change comes not from men and women changing their minds, but from the change from one generation to the next.  J. K. Galbraith

You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.  Indira Gandhi, 1971

Peace we want because there is another war to fight against poverty, disease and ignorance.  Indira Gandhi, 1966

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall —think of it, ALWAYS!  Mohandas Gandhi

I claim to be no more than an average person with less than average ability. I have not the shadow of doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.   Mohandas Gandhi

Nonviolence which is a quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.  Mohandas Gandhi

We must be the change we wish to see.  Mohandas Gandhi

We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it. The Attainment of freedom, whether for a person, a nation or a world, must be in exact proportion to the attainment of nonviolence for each.  Mohandas Gandhi

Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.  Mohandas Gandhi

I am part and parcel of the whole and cannot find God apart from the rest of humanity.  Mohandas Gandhi

Whenever you are in doubt or when the self becomes too much with you, try the following experiment: Recall the face of the poorest and most helpless person you have ever seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be for any use to him or to her . . . Then you will find your doubts and your self melting away.  Mohandas Gandhi

Poverty is the worst form of violence.  Mohandas Gandhi

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.  Mohandas Gandhi

If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed — but hate these things in yourself, not in another.  Mohandas Gandhi

Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies.  W. L. George

A peace that comes from fear and not from the heart is the opposite of peace.  Gersonides

Where is the justice of political power if it. . .marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?  Kahlil Gibran

Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer?  Kahlil Gibran

It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace.  Andre Gide

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.  Andre Gide

War doesn’t make boys men, it makes men dead.  Ken Gillespie

It is the duty of youth to bring fresh new powers to bear on Social progress. Each generation of young people should be to the world like a vast reserve force to a tired army. They should life the world forward. That is what they are for.  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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

Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time.  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see, and to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look.  From a letter written by Fra Giovanni, 1513

In the name of peace
They waged the wars
ain’t they got no shame    Nikki Giovanni, The Great Pax Whitie

We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.  Gladstone

When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In all things it is better to hope than to despair.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Our friends show us what we can do; our enemies teach us what we must do.  Goethe

If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution.  Emma Goldman

The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society.  Emma Goldman

The most violent element in society is ignorance.  Emma Goldman

Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and who therefore induce the young manhood of the whole world to do the fighting for them.  Emma Goldman

The greatest danger to our future is apathy.  Jane Goodall

Peace is a gift,
It is a gift we give to ourselves,
And then to each other.    Richard Goode Founder, “2 Billion Voices for Peace” project, Australia

Women prevent the threads of life from being broken. The finest minds have always understood the peacemaking role of women.  Mikhail Gorbachev

The maltreatment of the natural world and its impoverishment leads to the impoverishment of the human soul. It is related to the outburst of violence in human society. To save the natural world today means to save what is human in humanity.  Raisa Gorbachev

All ideologies end up killing people. If you separate love from nonviolence you turn nonviolence into an ideology, a gimmick. Structures that are not inhabited by justice and love have no liberating or reconciling force, and are never sources of life.  Jean Goss

The first essential characteristics of nonviolent action is that it is creative.  Hildegarde Goss-Mayr

I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.  Stephen Jay Gould

The two kinds of people who exist in this world [at any one time] are the decent and the indecent. Color, religion and nationality are irrelevant. Kindness, decency and behavior are what matters most. Our collective challenge, it seems, is to create a city and community where decent people of all races, ethnicities and religions can look into the faces of other decent people and see only one thing — God’s image smiling back.  Rabbi Micah Greenstein

Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it.  Germaine Greer

Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.  Germaine Greer

I expect to pass through this world but once, therefore any good that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not come this way again.  Stephen Grellett 1773-1855

We can’t become nonviolent on the basis of intellectual conviction. Commitment to nonviolence demands a very profound conversion of mind and heart. If we take the time to pray with Jesus, we too will be converted in mind and heart. It won�t work if we try to reason it out. The only way is through a change of heart, a coming into a way of being that is the way of Jesus.  Bishop Thomas Gumbleton

H

The bomb that fell on Hiroshima fell on America, too.  Hermann Hagedorn

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.  Alexander Hamilton

The pursuit of peace and progress cannot end in a few years in either victory or defeat. The pursuit of peace and progress, with its trials and errors, its successes and setbacks, can never be relaxed and never abandoned.  Dag Hammarskjold

Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible- not to have to run away.  Dag Hammarskjold

I think a pillow should be the peace symbol, not the dove. The pillow has more feathers than the dove, and it doesn’t have a beak to peck you with.  Jack Handey

If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.  Thich Nhat Hanh

In April, we cannot see sunflowers in France, so we might say the sunflowers do not exist. But the local farmers have already planted thousands of seeds, and when they look at the bare hills, they may be able to see the sunflowers already. The sunflowers are there. They lack only the conditions of sun, heat, rain and July. Just because we cannot see them does not mean that they do not exist.  Thich Nhat Hanh

The real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth.  Thich Nhat Hanh

Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.  Thich Nhat Hanh

It belongs to the very substance of nonviolence never to destroy or damage another person’s feeling of self worth, even an opponent’s. We all need, constantly, an advance of trust and affirmation.  Bernard Haring

Nuclear war is inevitable, says the pessimists; Nuclear war is impossible, says the optimists; Nuclear war is inevitable unless we make it impossible, says the realists.  Sydney J. Harris

The peace process we all aim for will not necessarily be a result of the mere signing of a treaty or agreement. It must become a matter of our everyday lives, so that peace settles and lasts and becomes supported by everybody. We therefore have to give peace all the required care and preserve it and promote it.  King Hassan II of Morocco

Genuine politics — even politics worthy of the name — the only politics I am willing to devote myself to — is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.  Vaclav Havel

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.  Lillian Hellman

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.  Ernest Hemingway

Being a pacifist between wars is as easy as being a vegetarian between meals.  Ammon Hennacy, US Labor leader

I’m not disturbing the peace. I’m disturbing the war.  Ammon Hennacy, US Labor leader

For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.  Audrey Hepburn

He that cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has a need to be forgiven.  Lord Herbert

You save your soul by saving someone else’s body.  Arthur Hertzberg

The only theology worth doing is that which inspires and transforms lives, that which empowers us to participate in creating, liberating, and blessing the world.  Carter Heyward

We ought always to deal justly, not only with those who are just to us, but likewise to those who endeavor to injure us; and this, for fear lest by rendering them evil for evil, we should fall into the same vice.  Hierocles

Those things of real worth in life are worth going to any length in love and respect to safeguard.  Julia Butterfly Hill

I really see no other solution than to turn inwards and to root out all the rottenness there. I no longer believe that we can change anything in the world until we first change ourselves. And that seems to me the only lesson to be learned from this war.  Etty Hillesum (concentration camp survivor)

A large group of us were crowded into the Gestapo hall, and at that moment the circumstances of all our lives were the same. All of us occupied the same space, the men behind the desk no less than those about to be questioned. What distinguished each of us was only our inner attitude.  Etty Hillesum (concentration camp survivor)

The only way to abolish war is to make peace heroic.  James Hinton

Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.   Eric Hoffer

I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed there would be no more war.  Abbie Hoffman

There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.  John Holmes

The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.  Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.  Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC

If we want a beloved community, we must stand for justice, have recognition for difference without attaching difference to privilege.  bell hooks

Justice demands integrity. It’s to have a moral universe — not only know what is right or wrong but to put things in perspective, weigh things. Justice is different from violence and retribution; it requires complex accounting.  bell hooks

Old men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.  Herbert C. Hoover

It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.  Grace Hopper

The most dangerous phrase in the language is, “We’ve always done it this way.”  Grace Hopper

Humans are allergic to change.  Grace Hopper

While seeking revenge, dig two graves — one for yourself.  Doug Horton

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.  Julia Ward Howe

Peace has its victories no less than war, but it doesn’t have as many monuments to unveil.  Kin Hubbard

The goal toward which all history tends is peace, not peace through the medium of war, not peace through a process of universal intimidation, not peace through a program of mutual impoverishment, not peace by any means that leaves the world too weak or too frightened to go on fighting, but peace pure and simple based on that will to peace which has animated the overwhelming majority of mankind through countless ages. This will to peace does not arise out of a cowardly desire to preserve one’s life and property, but out of conviction that the fullest development of the highest powers of men can be achieved only in a world of peace.  Robert Maynard Hutchins

It’s a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than “try to be a little better.”  Aldous Huxley

We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it.  Thomas Huxley (1825-1895)

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It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees. Dolores Ibarruri

A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it.  William Ralph Inge

It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.  Irish Proverb

And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.  Isaiah 2:4

The wolf shall also dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.  Isaiah 11:6

Every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.  Isaiah 40:4-5

The United States of America is still run by its citizens. The government works for us. Rank imperialism and warmongering are not American traditions or values. We do not need to dominate the world. We want and need to work with other nations. We want to find solutions other than killing people. Not in our name, not with our money, not with our children’s blood.  Molly Ivins

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But the wisdom from above is pure, first of all; it is also peaceful, gentle and friendly; it is full of compassion and produces a harvest of good deals,; it is free from prejudice and hypocrisy.  James 3:17

I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man’s pride.  William James

In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.  Anna Jameson

It is reasonable that every one who asks justice should do justice.  Thomas Jefferson

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of all the world and to the community for which it stands: one people loved into existence by God, breathing an indivisible air, warmed by a sun that shines on good and bad alike, kept alive by rain that falls on the just and unjust. I commit myself to spend my life for this world for liberty and justice for all. Amen.  Mary Evelyn Jegen

If we cannot agree, let us at any rate agree to differ, but let us part as friends.  Mohammad Ali Jinnah

In the twilight of life, God will not judge us on our earthly possessions and human success, but rather on how much we have loved.  St. John of the Cross

The first casualty when war comes is truth.  Senator Hiram Johnson, 1917

The solidarity which binds all men together as members of a common family makes it impossible for wealthy nations to look with indifference upon the hunger, misery and poverty of other nations whose citizens are unable to enjoy even elementary human rights. The nations of the world are becoming more and more dependent on one another and it will not be possible to preserve a lasting peace so long as glaring economic and social imbalances persist.  Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth) 1963

All must realize that there is no hope of putting an end to the building up of armaments, nor of reducing the present stocks, nor, still less–and this is the main point–of abolishing them altogether, unless the process is complete and thorough and unless it proceeds from inner conviction: unless, that is, everyone sincerely cooperated to banish the fear and anxious expectation of war with which men are oppressed. If this is to come about, the fundamental principle on which our present peace depends must be replaced by another, which declares that the true and solid peace of nations consists not in equality of arms but in mutual trust alone. We believe that this can be brought to pass, and we consider that, since it concerns a matter not only demanded by right reason but also eminently desirable in itself, it will prove to be the source of many benefits.  Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth) 1963

Sensitivity to the immense needs of humanity brings with it a spontaneous rejection of the arms race, which is incompatible with the all out struggle against hunger, sickness, under-development and illiteracy.  Pope John Paul II

Our future on this planet, exposed as it is to nuclear annihilation, depends one one single factor: humanity must make a moral about-face.  Pope John Paul II

If development is the new name for peace, war and preparations for war are the major enemy of the healthy development of peoples. If we take the common good of all humanity as our norm, instead of individual greed, peace would be possible.  Pope John Paul II, Solicitudo Rei Socialis (On Social Concern) 1987

Condemning class struggle does not mean condemning every possible form of social conflict. Such conflicts inevitably arise and Christians must often take a position in the “struggle for social justice.” What is condemned is “total war,” which has no respect for the dignity of others (and consequently of oneself). It excludes reasonable compromise, does not pursue the common good but the good of a group, and sets out to destroy whatever stands in its way.  Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus (The Hundredth Year) 1991

The obligation to earn one’s bread presumes the right to do so. A society that denies this right cannot be justified, nor can it attain social peace.  Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus (The Hundredth Year) 1991

The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.  Lyndon Johnson

A Rattlesnake, if Cornered will become so angry it will bite itself. That is exactly what the harboring of hate and resentment against others is — a biting of oneself. We think we are harming others in holding these spites and hates, but the deeper harm is to ourselves.  E. Stanley Jones

Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.  Mother Jones

A spirit of harmony can only survive if each of us remembers, when bitterness and self-interest seem to prevail, that we share a common destiny.  Barbara Jordan

If the society today allows wrongs to go unchallenged, the impression is created that those wrongs have the approval of the majority.  Barbara Jordan

What the people want is very simple. They want an America as good as its promise.  Barbara Jordan

Justice of right is always to take precedence over might.  Barbara Jordan

We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique.  Benjamin Jowett

Respect for the rights of others means peace.  Benito Juàrez

Peace and love are ever in us, being and working; but we be not always in peace and in love.  Julian of Norwich

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Mounting an expedition to actualize a Compassionate Commonwealth of all peoples…is the great spiritual challenge of our time.  Sam Keen

Democracies die behind closed doors.  Judge Damon J. Keith

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of humans as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is not safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.  Helen Keller

I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do.  Helen Keller

I do not want the peace which passeth understanding,
I want the understanding which bringeth peace.  Helen Keller

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.  Helen Keller

Don’t agonize, organize.  Florynce Kennedy

Freedom is like taking a bath: You got to keep doing it every day.  Florynce Kennedy

Countermovements among racists and sexists and nazifiers are just as relentless as dirt on a coffee table. . . . Every housewife knows that if you don’t sooner or later dust . . . the whole place will be dirty again.  Florynce Kennedy

You’ve got to rattle your cage door. You’ve got to let them know that you’re in there, and that you want out. Make noise. Cause trouble. You may not win right away, but you’ll sure have a lot more fun.  Florynce Kennedy

Compromise does not mean cowardice.  John F. Kennedy

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.  John F. Kennedy

Aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war.  John F. Kennedy

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind…War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.  John F. Kennedy

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.  John F. Kennedy

The evils of government are directly proportional to the tolerance of the people.  Frank Kent

If peace . . . only had the music and pageantry of war, there’d be no wars.  Sophie Kerr

The belief that we some day shall be able to prevent war is to me one with the belief in the possibility of making humanity really human.  Ellen Key, 1916

Everything, everything in war is barbaric . . . But the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being.  Ellen Key, 1916

A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is your mirror.  Ken Keyes, Jr., quoted in Catholic Digest, June 2000

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.  John Maynard Keynes

The Holy Prophet Mohammed came into this world and taught us: ‘That man is a Muslim who never hurts anyone by word or deed, but who works for the benefit and happiness of God’s creatures. Belief in God is to love one’s fellow men.’  Abdul Ghaffar Khan

The Holy Prophet Mohammed came into this world and taught us: ‘That man is a Muslim who never hurts anyone by word or deed, but who works for the benefit and happiness of God’s creatures. Belief in God is to love one’s fellow men.’  Abdul Ghaffar Khan

If we just worry about the big picture, we are powerless. So my secret is to start right away doing whatever little work I can do. I try to give joy to one person in the morning, and remove the suffering of one person in the afternoon. If you and your friends do not despise the small work, a million people will remove a lot of suffering. That is the secret. Start right now.  Sister Chän Khöng

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked [on the Jericho Road] was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But…the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’  Martin Luther King, Jr.

I’d like someone to mention the day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I’d like somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day, that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try to feed the hungry . . . I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice; say that I was a drum major for peace; I was a drum major for righteousness . . . I want to leave a committed life behind.  Martin Luther King, Jr.

The ultimate measure of a person is not where one stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where one stands in times of challenge and controversy.  Martin Luther King. Jr.

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.  Martin Luther King, Jr.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.  Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.  Martin Luther King, Jr.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Martin Luther King, Jr.

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.  Martin Luther King, Jr.

One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.  Martin Luther King. Jr.

If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.  Martin Luther King, Jr.

I plan to stand by nonviolence, because I have found it to be a philosophy of life that regulates not only my dealings in the struggle for racial justice, but also my dealings with people, and with my own self.  Martin Luther King Jr.

If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.  Anita Roddick

War is, at first, the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn’t any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone’s being worse off.  Karl Kraus

Hitler and Mussolini were only the primary spokesmen for the attitude of domination and craving for power that are in the heart of almost everyone. Until the source is cleared, there will always be confusion and hate, wars and class antagonisms.  J. Krishnamurti

If we could raise one generation with unconditional love, there would be no Hitlers. We need to teach the next generation of children from Day One that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind’s greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear..  Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say.  Maggie Kuhn

Power should not be concentrated in the hands of so few, and powerlessness in the hands of so many.  Maggie Kuhn

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.  Milan Kundera

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Most people, no doubt, when they espouse human rights, make their own mental reservations about the proper application of the word “human.”  Suzanne LaFollette

There is nothing more innately human than the tendency to transmute what has become customary into what has been divinely ordained.  Suzanne LaFollette

I hate it when they say, “He gave his life for his country.” They don’t die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them.  Rear Admiral Gene R. LaRocque

The opposite of war is not peace, it’s creation.  Jonathan Larson

If it were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of being realized, I would still say “No” to war. For one does not create human society on mounds of corpses.  Louis Lecoin, French pacifist leader

We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.  Ursula LeGuin

The power of the harasser, the abuser, the rapist depends above all on the silence of women.  Ursula LeGuin

There are no right answers to wrong questions.  Ursula LeGuin

The greatest religious problem today is how to be both a mystic and a militant; in other words how to combine the search for an expansion of inner awareness with effective social action, and how to feel one’s true identity in both.  Ursula LeGuin

Do your work as though you had a thousand years to live, & as if you were to die tomorrow.  Mother Anna Lee, founder of the Shakers

What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.  Robert E. Lee, in a letter to his wife, 1864

We tend to defend vigorously things that in our deepest hearts we are not quite certain about. If we are certain of something we know, it doesn’t need defending.  Madeleine L’Engle

It’s a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand.  Madeleine L’Engle

War is as outmoded as cannibalism, chattel slavery, blood-feuds, and dueling, an insult to God and humanity…a daily crucifixion of Christ.  Muriel Lester

God has made of one blood all nations under heaven. No man can suddenly become my enemy just because he happened to have been born on the other side of a river or a boundary line, and his government has issued an ultimatum against mine. Is it not time that we refused to fight?  Muriel Lester

Is it progress if a cannibal uses a knife and fork?  Stanislaw Lem

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.  John Lennon

War is as outmoded as cannibalism, chattel slavery, blood-feuds, and dueling, an insult to God and humanity…a daily crucifixion of Christ.  Muriel Lester

Peace as a positive condition of society, not merely as an interim between wars, is something so unknown that it casts no images on the mind’s screen.  Denise Levertov

Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.  James Levin

Fondly do we hope, ferverently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.  Abraham Lincoln

I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.  Abraham Lincoln

You are not going to get peace with millions of armed men. The chariot of peace cannot advance over a road littered with cannon.  David Lloyd

They talk about conscription as a democratic institution. Yes; so is a cemetery.  Rep. Meyer London

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.  Longfellow

The master’s tools will never destroy the master’s house.  Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.  Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

When I care to be powerful — to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.  Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional.  Max Lucado

Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace.  Luke 19:42

Peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace.  Martin Luther (1483-1546)

When asked what he would do if he knew the world would end tomorrow, Martin Luther said, “I would plant a tree.”  Martin Luther

Freedom for supporters of the government only, for members of one party only � no matter how big its membership may be � is no freedom at all. Freedom is always freedom for the man who thinks differently.  Rosa Luxemburg

The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.  Robert Lynd (1879-1949), Anglo-Irish essayist, journalist

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By doing service, heart and mind are purified — be convinced of this! To engage in service is a very powerful sadhana (spiritual discipline); do not become impatient. Rather serve your people with the utmost calm and have a kind word for everyone.  Sri Anandamayee Ma

We can work together for a better world with men and women of goodwill, those who radiate the intrinsic goodness of humankind. To do so effectively, the world needs a global ethic with values which give meaning to life experiences and, more than religious institutions and dogmas, sustain the non-material dimension of humanity. Mankind’s universal values of love, compassion, solidarity, caring and tolerance should form the basis for this global ethic which should permeate culture, politics, trade, religion and philosophy. It should also permeate the extended family of the United Nations.  Wangari Maathai

The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.  Douglas MacArthur

Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificually induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.  Douglas MacArthur

The maxim that people should not have a right till they are ready to exercise it properly, is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.  Macaulay

We shall never be able to effect physical disarmament until we have succeeded in effecting moral disarmament.  J. Ramsay MacDonald

Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.  Harold MacMillan

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.  Nelson Mandela

It is clear that the way to heal society of its violence . . . and lack of love is to replace the pyramid of domination with the circle of equality and respect.  Manitonquat

Accurst be he that first invented war.  Christopher Marlowe (Tamburlaine)

If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record that we have ever known.  General of the Army George C. Marshall, 1945

In a time of crisis, the peoples of the world must rush to get to know each other.  Jose Marti

I am a soldier of Christ and it is not permissible for me to fight.  St. Martin of Tours, 315-397

I went into the Army believing that if you want peace you must prepare for war. I now believe that if you prepare thoroughly for war you will get it.  Sir John Frederick Maurice

All social life is essentially practical. All mysterious which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of the practice.  Karl Marx

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways: the point is to change it.  Karl Marx

If we emphasize the life and works of our greatest contributors . . . people will come to realize that moral courage is bravery of the highest type, and America will be called the “Champion of Peace.”  Senator Spark Matsunaga

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.  Matthew 5:3

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.  Thomas Mann

You can’t lead anyone else further than you have gone yourself.  Gene Mauch

The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt but in spite of doubt.  Rollo May

Warmaking doesn’t stop warmaking. If it did, our problems would have stopped millennia ago.  Colman McCarthy

The earth is too small a star and we too brief a visitor upon it for anything to matter more than the struggle for peace.  Colman McCarthy

I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.  George McGovern

There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.  Marshall McLuhan

Unforgiveness does a great deal more damage to the vessel in which it is stored than the object on which it is poured.  S. I. McMillen

If you love the justice of Jesus Christ more than you fear human judgment then you will seek to do compassion. Compassion means that if I see my friend and my enemy in equal need, I shall help them both equally. Justice demands that we seek and find the stranger, the broken, the prisoner and comfort them and offer them our help. Here lies the holy compassion of God that causes the devils much distress.  Mechtild of Magdeburg

War is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality.  Senator John McCain

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world: Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.  Margaret Mead

I do not believe in using women in combat, because females are too fierce.  Margaret Mead

If one cannot state a matter clearly enough so that even an intelligent twelve-year-old can understand it, one should remain within the cloistered walls of the university and laboratory until one gets a better grasp of one’s subject matter.  Margaret Mead

Having two bathrooms ruined the capacity to co-operate. Margaret Mead

It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.  Margaret Mead

Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself.  Francis Meehan

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.  H. L. Mencken

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.  H. L. Mencken

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.  H. L. Mencken

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

Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience. The Christian fight for peace is not to be confused with defeatism.  Thomas Merton

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time, there would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed . . . I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.  Thomas Merton

The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.  Thomas Merton

Many oppressors are also oppressed. Nonviolent confrontation is the only confrontation that allows us to respond realistically to such complexity.  Jane Meyerding

No, the Lord has told us what is good. What he requires of us is this: to do what is just, to show constant love, and to live in humble fellowship with our God.  Micah 6:8

Nonviolence doesn’t always work — but violence never does.  Madge Michaels-Cyrus

If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.  Henry Miller

To wage war, you need first of all money; second, you need money, and third, you also need money.  Prince Montecuccoli

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

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

Only she who attempts the absurd can achieve the impossible.  Robin Morgan

Knowledge is power. Information is power. The secreting or hoarding of knowledge or information may be an act of tyranny camouflaged as humility.  Robin Morgan

There is a certain kind of peace that is not merely the absence of war. It is larger than that. The peace I am thinking of is not at the mercy of history’s rule, nor is it a passive surrender to the status quo. The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one — an activity that occurs most naturally, most often in the reading/writing world we live in. Accessible as it is, this particular kind of peace warrants vigilance.  Toni Morrison, The Dancing Mind (1996)

If you’re going to hold someone down you’re going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.  Toni Morrison

War vies with magic in its efforts to get something for nothing.  Lewis Mumford

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.  Edward R. Murrow

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.  John Muir

There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.  A.J. Muste

We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.  A. J. Muste

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Aye, fight! But not your neighbor. Fight rather all the things that cause you and your neighbor to fight.  Mikhail Naim

In war, there are no unwounded soldiers. José Narosky

Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely an absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.  Jawaharlal Nehru

Poetry is an act of peace. Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread.  Pablo Neruda, Memoirs (Confieso Que He Vivido: Memorias) (1974)

“They first came for the Communists and I didn’t speak up- because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up- because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn’t speak up- because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn’t speak up- because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me- and by that time no one was left to speak up.  Pastor Martin Niemoeller

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.  Friedrich Nietzche

I stand at the altar of murdered men, and, while I live, I fight their cause.  Florence Nightingale, 1856

The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don’t agree with.  Eleanor Holmes Norton

I have not been animated in my life to fight against race and sex discrimination simply because of my own identity. That would mean that one must be South African to fight apartheid, or a poor white in Appalachia to fight poverty, or Jewish to fight anti-Semitism. And I just reject that conception of how struggles should be waged.  Eleanor Holmes Norton

Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.  Henri Nouwen

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.  Henri Nouwen

There are questions of real power and then there are questions of phony authority. You have to break through the phony authority to begin to fight the real questions of power.  Karen Nussbaum

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Ultimately, peace is just not about politics. It’s about attitudes; about a sense of empathy; about breaking down the divisions that we create for ourselves in our own minds and our own hearts that don’t exist in any objective reality, but that we carry with us generation after generation.  Barack Obama

There is nothing politically right that is morally wrong.  Daniel O’Connell

 

The world cannot continue to wage war like physical giants and to seek peace like intellectual pygmies  Basil O’Connor

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.  George Orwell

In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.  George Orwell

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.  George Orwell

Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.  George Orwell

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.  George Orwell

Only when there are many people who are pools of peace, silence, understanding, will war disappear.  Osho (1931-1990)

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An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.  Thomas Paine

The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war.  Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

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

If you want peace, work for justice.  Pope Paul VI

Peace is not merely the absence of war. Nor can it be reduced solely to the maintenance of a balance of power between enemies. Nor is it brought about by dictatorship. Instead, it is rightly and appropriately called “an enterprise of justice” (Is. 32:7). Peace results from that harmony built into human society by its divine founder, and actualized by men as they thirst after ever greater justice.  Pope Paul VI, Gaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Second Vatican Council, 1965

Peace must be born of mutual trust between nations rather than imposed on them through fear of one another’s weapons. Hence everyone must labor to put an end at last to the arms race, and to make a true beginning of disarmament, not indeed a unilateral disarmament, but one proceeding at an equal pace according to agreement, and backed up by authentic and workable safeguards. … The problems of peace and disarmament have already been the subject of extensive, strenuous, and relentless examination. Together with international meeting dealing with these problems, such studies should be regarded as the first steps toward solving these serious questions. They should be promoted with even greater urgency in the hope that they will yield practical results in the future.  Pope Paul VI, Gaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Second Vatican Council, 1965

Excessive economic, social and cultural inequalities among peoples arouse tensions and conflicts, and are a danger to peace.  Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progresio (On the Development of Peoples) 1967

To wage war on misery and to struggle against injustice is to promote, along with improved conditions, the human and spiritual progress of all men, and therefore the common good of humanity. Peace cannot be limited to a mere absence of war, the result of an ever precarious balance of forces. No, peace is something that is built up day after day, in the pursuit of an order intended by God, which implies a more perfect form of justice among men.  Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progresio (On the Development of Peoples) 1967

We must have research for peace … It would embrace the outstanding problems of morality. The time has come for man’s intellect, his scientific method, to win over the immoral brutality and irrationality of war and militarism … Now we are forced to eliminate from the world forever this vestige of prehistoric barbarism, this curse to the human race.  Linus Pauling

When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.  Peace Pilgrim

Tradition is the living faith of dead people to which we must add our chapter while we have the gift of life. Traditionalism is the dead faith of living people who fear that if anything changes, the whole enterprise will crumble.  Jaroslav Pelikan

A good end sanctify evil means; not must we ever do evil, that good might come of it. We are ready to retaliate, rather than forgive or gain by love and information . . . Force may subdue, but love gains. And one that forgives first wins the laurel.  William Penn

Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.  William Penn

Let all bear in mind that a society is judged not so much by the standards attained by its more affluent and privileged members as by the quality of life which it is able to assure for its weakest members.  H.E. Javier Perez de Cuellar, Secretary General of the United Nations

Five enemies of peace inhabit with us–avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.  Petrarch

All we ask, God, is to be safe from the rain, just warm enough in winter to watch the snow with a smile, have enough to eat so that our hunger will not turn us to angry beasts, and sanity enough to make justice that will not kill our love of life.  Joseph Pinatauro

Forge thy tongue on an anvil of truth and what flies up, though it be but a spark, will have light.  Pindar

Peace with a club in hand is war.  Portuguese Proverb

If you oppress poor people, you insult the God who makes them; but kindness shown to the poor is an act of worship.  Proverbs 14:31

With each dawn, fill us with your love that we may sing and rejoice all our days. Give us joy to balance our affliction, for the times when we know misfortune.  Psalm 90:14-17

Do you want long life and happiness? Strive for peace with all your heart.  Psalm 34:12,14

Truly you have formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb. I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made; wonderful are your works.  Psalm 13:9

One more such victory and we are undone.  Pyrrhus of Epirus

For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.  Pythagoras

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In India when we meet and part we often say Namaste, which means: I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides; I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides; I honor the place in you of love, of light, of truth, of peace. I honor the place within you where if you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us. Namaste. Ram Dass

You can no more win a war than win an earthquake.  Jeanette Rankin

What one decides to do in crisis depends on one’s philosophy of life, and that philosophy cannot be changed by an incident. If one hasn’t any philosophy in crises, others make the decision.  Jeanette Rankin

You take people as far as they will go, not as far as you would like them to go.  Jeanette Rankin

There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense; for war is the slaughter of human beings, temporarily regarded as enemies, on as large a scale as possible.  Jeanette Rankin, 1929

In History, stagnant waters, whether they be the stagnant waters of custom or those of despotism, harbour no life; life is dependent on the ripples created by a few eccentric individuals. In homage to that life & vitality, the community has to brave certain perils and must countenance a measure of heresy. One must live dangerously if one wants to live at all.  Herbert Read

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.  Ronald Reagan

Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.  Ronald Reagan

No mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology.  Ronald Reagan

Cannot swords be turned to plowshares? Can we and all nations not live in peace? In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?  Ronald Reagan

A people free to choose will always choose peace.  Bernice Johnson Reagon

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

We are tethered to our kind, and may as well join hands in the struggle.  Agnes Repplier

A world of vested interests is not a world which welcomes the disruptive force of candor.  Agnes Repplier

If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.  Adrienne Rich

When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at a rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundredth blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it but all that had gone before.  Jacob Riis

I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die.  Mary Roberts Rinehart

Bless your persecutors; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Have the same attitude toward all. Put away ambitious thoughts and associate with those who are lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. Never repay injury with injury. See that your conduct is honorable in the eyes of all. If possible, live peacefully with everyone. Beloved, do not avenge yourselves; leave that to God’s wrath, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay,” says the Lord. But “If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; by doing this you will heap burning coals upon their heads.” Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good.  Romans 12:14-21

The Bible has a very meaningful expression: The Spirit makes all things new. We are those who grow old, and we want everything done to our aged standards. The Spirit is never old; the Spirit is always young.  Oscar Romero

Peace is not the product of terror or fear.
Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.
Peace is not the silent result of violent repression.
Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all.
Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity.
It is right and it is duty.  Oscar Romero

For it isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.  Eleanor Roosevelt

Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it.  Eleanor Roosevelt

What is to give light must endure the burning.  Eleanor Roosevelt

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

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official.  Theodore Roosevelt

It is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.  Theodore Roosevelt

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One who believes himself the master of others is nonetheless a greater slave than they.  Jean Jaques Rousseau

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.  Arundhati Roy

Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.  Arundhati Roy

If you are religious, then remember that this bomb is Man’s challenge to God. It’s worded quite simply: We have the power to destroy everything that You have created. If you’re not religious, then look at it this way. This world of ours is 460,000,000 years old. It could end in an afternoon.  Arundhati Roy

The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.  Muriel Rukeyser

You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil.  John Ruskin

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.  Bertrand Russell

The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked. I disbelieve this, absolutely and entirely. I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm.  Bertrand Russell

War does not determine who is right – only who is left  Bertrand Russell

One must care about a world one will never see.  Bertrand Russell

We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.  Bayard Rustin

God does not require us to achieve any of the good tasks that humanity must pursue. What God requires of us is that we not stop trying.  Bayard Rustin

S

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

You know you’ve achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Someday they’ll give a war and nobody will come.  Carl Sandburg

When the rich make war, it’s the poor that die.  Jean-Paul Sartre

A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished.  Johann Christoph Schiller

When men talk about defense, they always claim to be protecting women and children, but they never ask the women and children what they think.  Patricia Schroeder

You can’t wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time.  Patricia Schroeder

The Pledge of Allegiance says “…with liberty and justice for all.” What part of “all” don’t you understand?  Patricia Schroeder

You measure a government by how few people need help.  Patricia Schroeder

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage —to move in the opposite direction.  E. F. Schumacher

Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.  Albert Schweitzer

God grant me the courage to change the things I can, the patience to accept the things I can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference.  The Serenity Prayer

There are weapons that are simply thoughts. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy.  Rod Serling

To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man.  Michael Servetus

In this war — as in others — I am less interested in honoring the dead than in preventing the dead.  Butler Shaffer

If all the Churches of Europe closed their doors until the drums ceased rolling they would act as a most powerful reminder that though the glory of war is a famous and ancient glory, it is not the final glory of God.  George Bernard Shaw

Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind. It is the deed that teaches not the name we give it.  George Bernard Shaw

Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and pretense of reluctance.  George Bernard Shaw

You see things; and you say, “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say, “Why not?”  George Bernard Shaw

Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.  Percy Bysshe Shelley

War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight, the lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade.  Percy Bysshe Shelley

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood. . . . War is hell.  General William Tecumseh Sherman

Instead of tug o’ war, let’s play hug o’ war.  Shel Silverstein

Since we are to be conformed to the image of Christ, how can we then fight our enemies with the sword? … Spears and swords of iron we leave to those who, alas, consider human blood and swine’s blood of well-nigh equal value.   Menno Simons, 1539 A.D

Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.  Margaret Chase Smith

History writes the word ‘Reconciliation’ over all her quarrels.  Jan Smuts

All wars are fought for money.  Socrates

Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

War-making is one of the few activities that people are not supposed to view realistically; that is, with an eye to expense and practical outcome. In all-out war, expenditure is all-out, unprudent – war being defined as an emergency in which no sacrifice is excessive.  Susan Sontag

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

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The happiest people I have known have been those who gave themselves no concern about their own souls, but did their uttermost to mitigate the miseries of others.  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.  Adlai Stevenson

There is so much good in the worst of us,
and so much bad in the best of us,
that it behooves all of us
not to talk about the rest of us.  Robert Louis Stevenson

Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten. And seeing them . .. he cried, “Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?”. . . God said, “I did do something. I made you.”  Sufi Teaching

To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.  Sun Tzu

Fear less, hope more,
Whine less, breathe more,
Talk less, say more,
Hate less, love more,
And all good things are yours.   Swedish proverb

It is folly to punish your neighbor by fire when you live next door.  Publius Syrus

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A bad peace is even worse than war.  Tactitus

They make a desert and call it peace.  Tactitus

To save one life, it is as if you had saved the world.  Talmud

It is not your obligation to complete your work, but you are not at liberty to quit.  Talmud

We first fought…in the name of religion, then Communism, and now in the name of drugs and terrorism. Our excuses for global domination always change.  Serj Tankian

Sacredness of human life! The world has never believed it! It has been with life that we settled our quarrels, won wives, gold and land, defended ideas, imposed religions. We have held that a death toll was a necessary part of every human achievement, whether sport, war or industry. A moment’s rage over the horror of it, and we have sunk into indifference.  Ida Tarbell

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

The first and most imperative necessity in war is money, for money means everything else — men, guns, ammunition.  Ida Tarbell

There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the establishment and nothing more corrupting.  Alan John Percivale Taylor

All works of love are works of peace.  Mother Teresa

I don’t do great things. I do small things with great love.  Mother Teresa

I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.  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.  Mother Teresa

Do not wait for leaders. Do it alone, person to person.  Mother Teresa

I do not pray for success. I ask for faithfulness.  Mother Teresa

Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.  Mother Teresa

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.  Mother Teresa

The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty – it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There’s a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.  Mother Teresa

When we yield to discouragement it is usually because we give too much thought to the past and to the future.  St. Therese of Lisieux

Let us not be justices of the peace, but angels of peace.  St. Therese of Lisieux

Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict — alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.  Dorothy Thompson

They have not wanted Peace at all; they have wanted to be spared war — as though the absence of war was the same as peace.  Dorothy Thompson

Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.  Dorothy Thompson

Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow.  Dorothy Thompson

Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.  Dorothy Thompson

The most destructive element in the human mind is fear. Fear creates aggressiveness.  Dorothy Thompson

Fear grows in darkness; if you think there’s a bogeyman around, turn on the light.  Dorothy Thompson

Peace is the happy natural state of man; war is corruption and disgrace.  James Thompson

What good is a house, if you haven’t got a decent planet to put it on?  Henry David Thoreau

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.   Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.  Henry David Thoreau

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? 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.  Henry David Thoreau

During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade under the guise of patriotism.  Howard Thurman

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.  Alvin Toffler

Why does man have reason if he can only be influenced by violence?  Leo Tolstoy

The law of violence is not a law, but a simple fact which can only be a law when it does not meet with protest and opposition. It is like the cold, darkness and weight, which people had to put up with until recently when warmth, illumination and leverage were discovered.   Leo Tolstoy

All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what the do not want to do.  Leo Tolstoy

Men are so accustomed to maintaining external order by violence that they cannot conceive of life being possible without violence.  Leo Tolstoy

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.  Leo Tolstoy

Violence produces only something resembling justice, but it distances people from the possibility of living justly, without violence.  Leo Tolstoy

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.  Lily Tomlin

All who affirm the use of violence admit it is only a means to achieve justice and peace. But peace and justice are nonviolence…the final end of history. Those who abandon nonviolence have no sense of history. Rathy they are bypassing history, freezing history, betraying history.  André Trocmé

We shall never be able to remove suspicion and fear as potential causes of war until communication is permitted to flow, free and open, across international boundaries.  Harry S Truman

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.  Barbara Tuchman

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.  Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Always do right—this will gratify some and astonish the rest.  Mark Twain

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.  Mark Twain

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Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.  UNESCO Charter

The poor cannot be convinced that God is neutral.  Author Unknown

Watch Well over your seed-things and children
Speak wisely to them, our new children!
Henceforth they shall be your first speakers
And the peacemaking shields of your people.   Author Unknown

To preserve peace, we need weapons of smaller and men of larger caliber.  Author Unknown

Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.  Sir Peter Ustinov

V

People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.  Abigail Van Buren

World peace is us. . . .We are each walking agents of the vision of peace we carry inside us.  Kathleen Vande Kieft

Respectful dialogue, in the interest of searching for more complete truth, is considerably more productive than arguing for the purity of position.  Gerard Vanderhaar

We challenge the culture of violence when we ourselves act in the certainty that violence is no longer acceptable, that it’s tired and outdated no matter how many cling to it in the stubborn belief that it still works and that it’s still valid.  Gerard Vanderhaar

The story of the human race is characterized by efforts to get along much more than by violent disputes, although it’s the latter that make the history books. Violence is actually exceptional. The human race has survived because of cooperation, not aggression.  Gerard Vanderhaar

Peace is an environment where conflicts are resolved without violence, where people are free, not exploited, living so they can grow to their full potential.  Gerard Vanderhaar

The arms race can kill, though the weapons themselves may never be used…by their cost alone, armaments kill the poor by causing them to starve.  Vatican statement to the U.N., 1976

The soul of our country needs to be awakened . . .When leaders act contrary to conscience, we must act contrary to leaders.  Veterans Fast for Life

It is only by feeling your love that the poor will forgive you for the gifts of bread.  St. Vincent de Paul

Wars are not acts of God. They are caused by man, by man-made institutions, by the way in which man has organized his society. What man has made, man can change.  Frederick Moore Vinson, Speech at Arlington National Cemetery (Memorial Day, 1945)

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.  Voltaire

All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.  Voltaire

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.  Voltaire

[T]he essence of so-called war prosperity: it enriches some by what it takes from others. It is not rising wealth but a shifting of wealth and income.  Ludwig von Mises

War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.  Ludwig von Mises

W

Activism pays the rent on being alive and being here on the planet.  Alice Walker

It just seems clear to me that as long as we are all here, it’s pretty clear that the struggle is to share the planet, rather than divide it.  Alice Walker

The most important question in the world is, ‘Why is the child crying?’  Alice Walker

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.  Alice Walker

How sad now never to see men holding hands, while everywhere one looks they are holding guns.  Alice Walker

What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears.  Alice Walker

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.  Alice Walker

Peace will come wherever it is sincerely invited.  Alice Walker

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.  Alice Walker

War will stop when we no longer praise it, or give it any attention at all. Peace will come wherever it is sincerely invited.  Alice Walker

Anyone can love peace, but Jesus didn’t say, “Blessed are the peace-lovers.” He says peacemakers. He is referring to a life vocation, not a hobby on the sidelines of life.  Jim Wallis

They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.  Andy Warhol

Don’t ever let them pull you down so low as to hate them. (also cited as: I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.)  Booker T. Washington

Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.  George Washington

If we work in marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds and instill into them just principles, we are then engraving upon tablets which no time will efface, but will brighten and brighten to all eternity.  Daniel Webster

Obvious and inexorable oppression that cannot be overcome does not give rise to revolt but to submission.  Simone Weil

Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose.  Simone Weil

I swore never to be silent whenever 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.  Elie Weisel

What is man?
Hope turned to dust.
No.
What is man?
Dust turned to hope.  Elie Weisel

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.  Orson Welles

A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men’s lives should not stake their own.  H.G. Wells

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.  John Wesley

When I have money, I get rid of it quickly, lest it find a way into my heart.  John Wesley

Did St. Francis really preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats.  Rebecca West

War is fear cloaked in courage.  General William Westmoreland

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.  Rebecca West

The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.  E. B. White

Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew.  John Greenleaf Whittier

The dark night is over and dawn has begun. Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun! All speech, flow to music; all hearts, beat as one.  John Greenleaf Whittier

Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more.  Oscar Wilde

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.  Oscar Wilde

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.  Marianne Williamson

When an idea reaches critical mass there is no stopping the shift its presence will induce.  Marianne Williamson

Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.  Marianne Williamson

I know that you cannot hate other people without hating yourself.  Oprah Winfrey

In 1989, thirteen nations comprising 1,695,000 people experienced nonviolent revolutions that succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest expectations . . . If we add all the countries touched by major nonviolent actions in our century (the Philippines, South Africa . . . the independence movement in India . . .) the figure reaches 3,337,400,000, a staggering 65% of humanity! All this in the teeth of the assertion, endlessly repeated, that nonviolence doesn’t work in the ‘real’ world.  Walter Wink

You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims.  Harriet Woods

We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.  Virginia Woolf

May we look upon our treasure, the furniture of our houses, and our garments, and try to discover whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions.  John Woolman (1774)

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You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.  Malcolm X

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There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.  Howard Zinn

Taking the first footstep with a good thought, the second with a good word, and the third with a good deed, I entered paradise.  Zoroaster