"The quickest
way of ending a war is to lose it"
George
Orwell
"In peace sons
bury fathers, but war violates the order of nature, and fathers
bury sons."
Herodotus
"War would
end if the dead could return."
Stanley
Baldwin
"It is not
merely cruelty that leads men to love war, it is excitement."
Henry Ward
Beecher
"Laws are silent
in time of war."
Cicero
"Wars never
hurt anybody except the people who die."
Salvador
Dali
"The tragedy
of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst."
Henry Fosdick
"There was
never a good war or a bad peace."
Benjamin
Franklin
"War makes
good history but peace is poor reading."
Thomas
Hardy
"Our chiefs
are killed...The little children are freezing to death. My people...
have no blankets, no food...My heart is sick and sad...I will
fight no more forever."
Chief Joseph
"How good bad
music and bad reasons sound when we march against an enemy."
Nietzsche
"When women
have a voice in national and international affairs, wars will
cease forever."
Augusta
Stowe-Gullen
"At the
approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with
equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the
man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding
it; the other even more reasonable says that it is too painful
and harassing to think of the danger, since it is not a man's
power to provide for everything and escape from the general march
of events'; and that it is therefore better to turn aside from
the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is
pleassant. in solitude a man generally yields to the first voice;
in society to the second."
Leo Tolstoy
War & Peace
"Peace starts
with a smile"
Mother
Teresa
"Love
is the only force capable of turning an enemy into a friend."
Martin
Luther King, Jr.
"If
humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable. he lived, thought,
and acted, inspired by the vision of humanity evolving toward
a world of peace and harmony. We may ignore him at our own risk".
Martin
Luther King, Jr.
"The
principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths
of two opposites - acquiescence and violence - while avoiding
the extremes and immoralities of both. The nonviolent resister
agress with the person who acquisces that one should not be
physically agressive toward his opponent; but he balances the
equation by agreeing with the person of violence that evil must
be resisted. He avoids the nonresistance of the former and the
violent resistance of the latter. With nonviolent resistance,
no invidual or group need to submit to any wrong, nor need anyone
resort to violence in order to right a wrong."
Martin
Luther King, Jr.
"The
nonviolent approach does not immediately change the heart of
the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts and souls
of those committed to it. It gives them new self-respect; it
calls up resources of strength and courage that they did not
know they had. Finally it reaches the opponent and so stirs
his conscience that reconciliation becomes a reality."
Martin
Luther King, Jr.
"One
of the most persistent ambiguities that we face is that everybody
talks about peace as a goal. However, it does not take sharpest-eyed
sophistication to discern that while everbody talks about peace,
peace has become practically nobodys' business among the power-wielders.
Many men cry Peace! Peace! but they refuse to do the things
that make for peace."
Martin
Luther King, Jr.
Can one have
love? If we could, love would need to be a thing, a substance
that one can have, own, possess. The truth is, there is no such
thing as "love." "Love" is an abstraction,
perhaps a goddess or an alien being, although nobody has ever
seen this goddess. In reality, there exists only the act of
loving. To love is a productive activity. It implies caring
for, knowing, responding, affirming, enjoying: the person, the
tree, the painting, the idea. It means bringing tolife, increasing
his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and self
increasing. from To Have or to Be?
Erich
Fromm
Non-cooperation
with evil is a sacred duty.
Mahatma
Gandhi
In the secret
of my heart I am in perpetual quarrel with God that He should
allow such things [as the war] to go on. My non-violence seems
almost impotent. But the answer comes at the end of the daily
quarrel that neither God nor non-violence is impotent. Impotence
is in men. I must try on without losing faith even though I
may break in the attempt.
Mahatma
Gandhi
"Whether
humanity will consiously follow the law of love, I do not know.
But that need not distrub me. The law will work just as the
law of gravitation works, whether we accept it or not. The person
who discovered the law of love was a far greater scientist than
any of our modern scientists. Only our explorations have not
gone far enought and so it is not possible for everyone to seel
all its workings."
Mahatma
Gandhi
"For a bowl
of water give a goodly meal;
For a kindly greeting bow thou down with zeal;
For a simple penny pay thou back with gold;
If thy life be rescued, life do not withhold.
Thus the words and actions of the wise regard;
Every little service tenfold they reward.
But the truly noble know all men as one,
And return with gladness good for evil done.
Mahatma
Gandhi
"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
War spares
not the brave but the cowardly.
Anacreon,
The Greek Anthology, Book 7, Epigram 160
"We
can all do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities
and all frustrations and all disappointments."
Abraham
Heshel
"We
frail humans are at one time capable of the greatest good and,
at the same time, capable of the greatest evil. Change will
only come about when each of us takes up the daily struggle
ourselves to be more forgiving, compassionate, loving, and above
all joyful in the knowledge that, by some miracle of grace,
we can change as those around us can change too.
Maíread
Maguire
"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
"Laws
and conditions that tend to debase human personality - a God-given
force - be they brought by the State or individuals, must be
relentlessly opposed in the spirit of defiance shown by St.
Peter when he said to the rulers of his day: 'Shall we obey
God or man?'"
Albert
Luthuli
"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
"I would
say that I'm a nonviolent soldier. In place of weapons of violence,
you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor,
every faculty available to you...because no one has the right
to take the life of another human being."
Joan
Baez
"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
"Generally
speaking, the first nonviolent act is not fasting, but dialogue.
The other side, the adversary, is recognized as a person, he
is taken out of his anonymity and exists in his own right, for
what he really is, a person. To engage someone in dialogue is
to recognize him, have faith in him. At every step in the nonviolent
struggle, at every level we try tirelessly to establish a dialogue,
or reestablish it if it has broken down. When I say 'the other
side,' that could be a group of persons or a government."
Hildegard
Goos-Mayr
"The
essence of nonviolence is love. Out of love and the willingness
to act selflessly, strategies, tactics, and techniques for a
nonviolent struggle arise naturally. Nonviolence is not a dogma;
it is a process."
Thich
Nhat Hanh
"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
"Nothing
could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon
and left one unexpended effort which might have saved the world."
Jane
Addams
"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 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
"Never think
that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a
crime"
Ernest
Hemingway
"Be not angry
that you cannot make others as you wish them to be,
since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be."
Thomas
A. Kempis
"We know
the truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart."
Blaise
Pascal, Pensées
"One cannot
simultaneously prepare for war and create peace."
Anon
"We, the
peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding
generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime
has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith
in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the
human person, in the equal right of men and women and of nations
large and small....And for these ends to practice tolerance
and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors...have
resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims."
Preamble,
Charter of the United Nations
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