Just a few thoughts...

Thoughts on War and Peace

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

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

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, astronaut

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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! Mahatma Gandhi

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

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

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 (1905-1961)Former UN General Secretary

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

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

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 victim)

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

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

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

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

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

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)

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

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

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

If we don't stop the bomb who will take care of the flowers? Neil J., Seattle, Age 9

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)

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. Pat Schroeder, American politician and feminist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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