| "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is obsolete.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 
"Nonviolence
is really tough. You don't practice nonviolence at
conferences; you practice it on picket-lines."
-- Cesar Chavez
"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
"Behind the ostensible
government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no
allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility
to the people.
To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy
alliance
between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first
task of the
statesmanship of the day."
--Theodore Roosevelt, April
19, 1906
"So instead of loving
what you think is peace, love other [people] and love God
above all. And instead of hating the people you
think are warmakers, hate the appetites and the disorder
in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love
peace,
then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed - but hate
these things in yourself, not in another."
- Thomas Merton, from "New Seeds
of Contemplation"
I
like to believe that people in the long run are going to do
more to
promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that the
people want peace so much that one of these days governments
had better get out of the way and let them have it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
"My humanity is bound
up in yours, for we can only be human together."
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
We
suffer from an incurable malady: Hope Mahmoud
Darwish, Palestinian poet
"The best preparedness is the one that disarms the hostility of other nations
and makes friends of them."
Helen Keller
"If
there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person. If there is beauty
in the person, there will be harmony in the house. If there is harmony in the
house, there will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, there
will be peace in the world." Chinese
Proverb
"Peace,
in the sense of absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of
hunger or cold. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where people
are fed, and where individuals and nations are free." The
14th Dalai Lama
"Great
ideas, it has been said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps then,
if we listen attentively, we shall hear amid the uproar of empires and nations,
a faint flutter of wings, a gentle stirring of life and hope. Some will say that
this hope lies in a nation; others in a person. I believe rather that it is awakened,
revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every
day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history. As a result, there
shines forth fleetingly the ever-threatened truth that each and every person,
on the foundation of his or her own sufferings and joys, builds for all." Albert
Camus, The Artist and His Time
"In the hearts of people today there is a deep longing
for peace. When the true spirit of peace is thoroughly dominant, it becomes an
inner experience with unlimited possibilities. Only when this really happens--
when the spirit of peace awakens and takes possession of men's hearts, can humanity
be saved from perishing."
Albert Schweitzer
(1875-1965)
"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
"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 contibute the best that
they have and all that they are." Hafsat
Abiola
Why is it so easy for us to be willing to pick up arms
and risk our lives, and so difficult to put down those same weapons and still
risk our lives - in the cause of life? Ramzi Kysia, a young
Muslim-American peace activist
The
job of the peacemaker is to stop war, to purify the world, to get it saved from
poverty and riches, to heal the sick, to comfort the sad, to wake up those who
have not yet found God, to create joy and beauty wherever you go, to find God
in everything and everyone. Muriel
Lester
"One
is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible.
It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution.
But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change
anything for the better" Daniel Berrigan
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
"We have
assumed the name of peacemakers, but we have been, by and large, unwilling
to pay any significant price. And because we want the peace with half a
heart and half a life and will, the war, of course, continues, because
the waging of war, by its nature, is total—but the waging of peace,
by our own cowardice, is partial. So a whole will and a whole heart and
a whole national life bent toward war prevail over the mere desire for
peace….
There is no
peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of
war—at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable
to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake."
Daniel Berrigan
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
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
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, 20th-century German political philosopher and author
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds
to be good or evil.
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
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
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
The
most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
Steve Biko
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
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, Brazilian
liberation theologist
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
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
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