Some of Our Favorite Quotes
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Bringing up the subject of an education for peace in such critical times as these, when society is continually threatened by the possibility of war, may appear to be the most naïve kind of idealism. I nonetheless believe that laying the foundations for peace through education is the most effective and the most constructive way of opposing the war, since people’s needs today in no way justify armed combat, and since war offers them no hope whatsoever of bettering their lot."
- Dr. Maria Montessori, Education and Peace "Peace must first be developed within an individual. And I believe that love, compassion, and altruism are the fundamental basis for peace. Once these qualities are developed within an individual, he or she is then able to create an atmosphere of peace and harmony. This atmosphere can be expanded and extended from the individual to his family, from the family to the community and eventually to the whole world." - The Dalai Lama "The ultimate object of education should be, Gandhi said, to help create not only a balanced and harmonious individual but also a balanced and harmonious society where true justice prevails, where there is no unnatural division between the "haves" and the "have-nots," and where everybody is assured of a living wage and the right to live and the right to freedom." - Arun Gandhi "Almost always, it is the conviction that 'I am right' or 'my cause is the cause of justice' that triggers violence. That is, ...the moment propaganda does its work, violence is unleashed. And violence can be reduced by countering this propaganda." - Jacques Ellul "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 Some day children will learn words whose meanings they do not understand. Children in India will ask, "What is hunger?" Children in Hiroshima will ask, "What is an atomic bomb?" Children in Alabama will ask, "What is segregation?" And we will say to them: "These are words that no longer have meaning, so we have removed them from the dictionary." - The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. "When you cease to make a contribution you begin to die." - Eleanor Roosevelt "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." - The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. "Whatever you believe you can do, begin it; boldness has genius, power and magic in it." - Goethe "When I dare 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 "Do not fear your enemies. The worst they can do is kill you. Do not fear friends. At worst, they may betray you. Fear those who do not care; they neither kill nor betray, but betrayal and murder exists because of their silent consent." - Bruno Jasienski (Yasensky) "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anais Nin "It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing... You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result." - Mahatma Gandhi "Every day we do things, we are things, that have to do with peace. If we are aware of our lifestyle, our way of consuming, our way of looking at things, we will know how to make peace right in the moment we are alive." - Thich Nhat Hanh "First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others." -Thomas á Kempis, 1420 "Nothing can bring you peace but yourself." - Ralph Waldo Emerson "The greatest warriors are the ones who fight for peace." - Holly Near "Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace." - Albert Schweitzer "With malice toward none, with charity for all, ...let us strive on to finish the work we are in, ...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." - Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1865 "Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people." - Jawaharlal Nehru "The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith." - John Foster Dulles "The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens." - Baha'ullah, prophet and founder of the Baha'i Faith "If you begin the day with love in your heart, peace in your nerves, and truth in your mind, you not only benefit by their presence but also bring them to others, to your family and friends, and to all those whose destiny draws across your path that day." - Unknown "Think not forever of yourselves, O Chiefs, nor of your own generation. Think of continuing generations of our families, think of our grandchildren and of those yet unborn, whose faces are coming from beneath the ground." - Peacemaker, founder of the Iroquois Confederacy (ca. 1000 AD) "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it." - Buddha "Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." - Chinese Proverb "I let no man drag me down so low as to make me hate him." - Booker T. Washington "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi "If we leave somebody behind for something as ridiculous as skin color, we all lose." - Janet Langert (wife of Secretary of Defense William Cohen) "Let us endeavor to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. " - Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), from Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar (1894) "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence." - Albert Einstein "Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it." - Albert Einstein "The right to search for truth implies also a duty. One must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true." - Albert Einstein "Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts." - Albert Einstein "One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world will be better for this." - Cervantes "Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so." - Bertrand Russell "There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it." - George Bernard Shaw "Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is what happened on the banks." - Will Durant, "The History of Civilization" "A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular." - Adlai Stevenson "When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." - Jonathan Swift, "Thoughts on Various Subjects" "To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting." - e. e. cummings "Rule a kingdom as though you were cooking a small fish - don't overdo it." - Lao Tzu "Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought." - Albert von Szent-Gyorgy "Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well -- he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun." - Ralph Waldo Emerson "Just because an animal is large, it doesn't mean he doesn't want kindness; however big Tigger seems to be, remember that he wants as much kindness as Roo." - Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A. A. Milne "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." - Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935) "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 "Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace." - The Dalai Lama "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy fromoppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." - Thomas Paine "In Germany they came first 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." - Martin Niemoeller, German Lutheran Pastor "There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub." - Elisabeth Kubler-Ross "If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies." - Moshe Dayan "Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible." - St. Francis of Assisi "In order to change something, don't struggle to change the existing model. Create a new model, and make the old one obsolete." - Buckminster Fuller "Out Beyond Ideas Of Rightdoing And Wrongdoing There is A Field - I Will Meet You There." - Rumi "...our civilization, so addicted to knowledge, has fled from wisdom. Knowledge is very, very powerful. If it is not tempered and contoured by greater visions, like justice, compassion, beauty, grace and thinking of the next generation and seven generations to come -- then indeed, it is dangerous. Unfortunately, many of our educational systems in the West are still very dangerous places." - Matthew Fox "Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. . . Returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only love can do that." - Martin Luther King, Jr. "If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having." - Henry Miller "Everytime you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog." - Mark Twain "Peace is a civil right which makes other human rights possible. Peace is a precondition for our existence. Peace permits our continued existence." - Dennis Kucinich "I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain." - James A. Baldwin "If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war." - Pentagon official, on why the US military censored graphic footage from the first Gulf War "Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness -- and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling -- their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them." - Arundhati Roy "Being an activist means being aware of what's happening around you as well as being in touch with your feelings about it -- your rage, your sadness, your excitement, your curiosity, your feeling of helplessness, and your refusal to surrender. Being an activist means owning your desire." - Paula Allen "Stop thinking this is all there is... Realize that for every ongoing war and religious outrage and environmental devastation and bogus Iraqi attack plan, there are a thousand counter-balancing acts of staggering generosity and humanity and art and beauty happening all over the world, right now, on a breathtaking scale, from flower box to cathedral...Resist the temptation to drown in fatalism, to shake your head and sigh and just throw in the karmic towel...Realize that this is the perfect moment to change the energy of the world, to step right up and crank your personal volume; right when it all seems dark and bitter and offensive and acrimonious and conflicted and bilious...there's your opening." - Mark Morford "This Republic was founded in part because of the arrogance of a king who expected his subjects to do as they were told, without question, without hesitation. Our forefathers overthrew that tyrant and adopted a system of government where dissent is not only important, but it is also mandatory. Questioning flawed leadership is a requirement of this government. Failing to question, failing to speak out, is failing the legacy of the Founding Fathers." - Senator Robert Byrd, as part of a speech delivered on the Senate floor, April 8, 2004 "The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next." - Matthew Arnold "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 A. Edison "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Krishnamurti "Courage is the price life exacts for granting peace." - Amelia Earhart "It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons. The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children." -Admiral William Leahy (Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman) "Because we all share a wish for happiness and an identical need for love, it is possible to feel that anyone we meet, in whatever circumstances, is a brother or sister. We do not need to become religious; nor do we need to believe in an ideology. I believe that at every level of society the key to a happier more successful world is the growth of compassion. From my own limited experience I have found that the greatest inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being. It is the ultimate source of success in life. This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples: no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.." - His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama "Unless we teach our children peace, someone else will teach them violence." -Colman McCarthy "In a world where an estimated 40,000 people die every day from hunger or preventable diseases, and where the United States alone spends $2.5 billion a day - about $28,000 a second - on military programs, peace education is a rational alternative to the chaos. If we are going to give peace a chance, let's be practical and go further: give it a place in the curriculum." - Colman McCarthy "Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try, no hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people living for today, aha. You may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one. I hope someday - you'll join us, and the world will live as one. Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too. Imagine all the people Living life in peace, aha. You may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one. I hope someday - you'll join us, and the world will live as one. Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger A brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people Sharing all the world, aha. You may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one. I hope someday - you'll join us, and the world will live as one." - John Lennon Please email us your favorite quotes. Let us know what inspires you. We'll post as many as we can... |
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