Quotations
Charles G. Adams
Baptist pastor, Detroit, Michigan, from essay "The Priestly Faithful and Prophetically Courageous"
Those called by God to proclaim the good news need to be both faithful and courageous. Our prophetic call, however, does not come without a cost. Managing the enmity of foes and friends requires a teachable spirit and contentment with failure. We are not usually in a very teachable mood until life has whipped us into an attitutde to learn and a willingness to change; then God can get our undivided attention.
Martin Amis
British author (1949- )
Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.
Anonymous
An observer of a U.S. atomic bomb test at Christmas Island
The birds were the things we could see all the time. They were superb specimens of life . . . really quite exquisite . . .phonomenal creatures. Albatrosses will fly for days, skimming a few inches above the surface of the water. These birds have tremendously long wings and tails . . . Watching them is a wonder . . . They were now suddenly visible through the opaque visor of my helmet. And they were smoking. Their feathers were on fire. And they were doing cartwheels . . . They were sizzling, smoking . . . absorbing such intense radiation that they were being consumed by the heat. Their feathers were on fire. They were blinded. And so far there had been no shock, none of the blast damage that we talk about when we discuss the effects of nuclear weapons. Instead there were just those smoking, twisting, hideously controted birds crashing into things.
Sinan Antoon
Iraqi poet: "A Prism: Wet with Wars," Baghdad, March 1991 (1967- )
Before we weave an autumn for tyrants we must cross this galaxy of barbed wires and keep on repeating HAPPY NEW WAR
Alexander Aris
Delivering the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech for his mother, Aung San Suu Kyi (1945- ), leader of the movement for democracy in Burma
Although my motehr is often described as a political dissident who strives by peaceful means for democratic change, we should remember that her quest is basically spiritual. As she has said: "The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit," and she has written of the "essential spiritual aims" of the struggle. The realization of this depends solely on human responsibility. At the root of that responsibility lies, and I quote, "the concept of perfection, the urge to achieve it, the intelligence to find a path towards it, and the will to follow that path if not to the ened, at least the distance needed to rise abouve individual limitation . . . "
Atharva Veda
Hindu scripture (1500-800 BCE)
Peace be to the Earth and the Air! Peace be to Heaven, peace to the Waters! By this invocation of peace may peace bring peace.
W. H. Auden
English poet (1907-1973)
I see little hope for a peaceful world until men are excluded from the realm of freign policy altogether and all decisions concerning international relations are reserved for women, preferably married ones.
Joan Baez
Folksinger, songwriter and activist (1941- )
There's a consensus out that it's OK to kill when your government decides who to kill. If you kill inside the country you get in trouble. If you kill outside the country, right time, right season, latest enemy, you get a medal.
The point of non-violence 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 humans a decent place to stand.
Ambrose Bierce
U.S. humorist and author (1842-1914)
Peace, n. In international affiars, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
Tomas Borge
Nicaraguan poet and justice minister in the revolutionary Sandinista government (1930- )
My personal revenge will be to tell you
Good morning
On a street without beggars or homeless
When instead of jailing you I suggest
You shake away the sadness there that blinds you
And when you have applied your hands in torture
Are unable to look up at what surrounds you
My personal revenge will be to give you
These hands that once you so mistreated
But have failed to take away their tenderness.
Gideon Burrows
No Nonsense Guide to the Arms Trade, 2002
Between 1996 and 2000 the world's top four suppliers of major conventional weapons, in terms of total value, were:
United States: $49 billion
Russia: $16 billion
France: $11 billion
Britain: $7 billion
Together with China ($2 billion) these are the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
Smedley E. Butler
U.S. General
I spent 33 years and four months in active service as a member of our country's most agile military force -- the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that time I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. (1935)
Cesar Chavez
Mexican-American labor activist (1927-1993)
Once people understand the strength of non-violence -- the force it generates, the love it creates, the response it brings from the total community -- they will not easily abandon it.
Alexander Cockburn
Anglo-Irish journalist (1941- )
A "just war" is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.
Ferida Durakovic
Bosnian poet (1957- )
Look here, that's the right way to look History in the face, not like you: in the crude irresponsible fragments, the sniper shot that penetrates deep into the skull, the graves already covered over by irredeemable grass.
Albert Einstein
Scientist (1879-1955)
I am an absolute pacifist . . . It is an instinctive feeling. It is a feeling that possesses me, because the murder of men is disgusting.
Dwight David Eisenhower
U.S. President and general (1890-1969)
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.
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 not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It was spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Jose Figueres
President of Costa Rica, in 1948 when he abolished the army and dedicated his nation to health care and education
The army hands over the keys to the barracks, to be converted into a cultural center . . . We are the sustainers of a new world in America. Little Costa Rica offers its heart and love to civilian rule and democracy.
Indira Gandhi
Indian prime minister (1917-1984)
You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.
Monhandas Gandhi
Leader of India's freedom movement (1869-1948)
Non-violence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.
If the recognized leaders of humankind who have control over the engines of destruction were wholly to renounce their use, with full knowledge of its implications, permanent peace could be obtained. This is clearly impossible without the Great Powers of the earth renouncing their imperialistic design. This, again, seems impossible without great nations ceasing to believe in soul-destroying competition and to desire to multiply wants and, therefore, increase their material possessions.
Martha Gellhorn
U.S. journalist and author (1908-1998)
After a lifetime of war-watching, I see war as an endemic human disease, and governments the carriers.
Allen Ginsberg
U.S. poet (1926-1997)
What if someone gave a war and Nobody came? Life would ring the bells of Ecstasy and Forever be Itself again.
Raisa Gorbachev
Wife of former Russian premier Mikhail Gorbechec (1932-1999)
No war, not even to punish an aggressor, is a good thing. Today people must learn to take into account each others' interests, if only for the sake of their own survival. I do not believe that, in this system of coordinates, the point where politics and simple human morality intersect is only idealism.
Maxim Gorky
Russian playwright and novelist (1868-1936)
What can you do by killing? Nothing. You kill one dog, the master buys another -- that's all there is to it.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Vietnamese Buddhist monk (1926- )
One word, one action, or one thought can reduce another person's suffering and bring them joy. One word can give comfort and confidence, destroy doubt, help someone avoid a mistake, reconcile a conflict, or open the door to libertation. One action can save a person's life or help them take advantage of a rare opportunity. One thought can do the same, because thoughts always lead to words and actions. If love is in our heart, every thought, word and deed can bring about a miracle.
Thomas Hardy
English novelist and poet (1840-1928) from "Christmas, 1924"
"Peace upon earth!" was said.
We sing it,
And pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of mass
We've got as far as poison-gas.
Edouard Herriot
French politician (1872-1957)
When it's a question of peace, one must talk to the devil himself.
Etty Hillusum
Jewish German mystic, writer and victim of Auschwitz
Ultimately we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.
Frederic D. Huntington
Forum magazine, 1890
It is not scientific doubt, not atheism, not pantheism, not agnosticism, that in our day and in this land is likely to quench the light of the gospel. It is a proud, sensuous, selfish, luxurious, church-going, hollow-hearted prosperity.
Lao-Tzu
Chinese Taoist sage (6th century BCE)
A man with outward courage dares to die. A man with inward courage dares to live.
John F. Kennedy
U.S. President (1917-1963) on nuclear testing
We test and then they test and we have to test again. And you build up until somebody uses them.
Martin Luther King Jr.
American Civil Rights leader (1929-1968)
Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies -- or else? The chain reaction of evil -- hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
I've seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and I've seen hate on the faces of too many white sheriffs, too many white citizens' councillors, and too many Klansmen of the South to want to hate, myself; and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and say: "We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical forces with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you."
Are we seeking power for power's sake? Or are we seeking to make the world and our nation better places to live? If we seek the latter, violence can never provide the answer. The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destory. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Jiddu Krishnamurthy
Indian philosopher (1895-1986)
Put away the book, the description, the tradition, the authority, and take the journey of self-discovery. Love, and don't be caught in opinions and ideas about what love is or should be. When you love, everything will come right. Love has its own action. Love, and you will know the blessings of it. Keep away from the authority who tells you what love is and what it is not. No authority knows and he who knows cannot tell. Love, and there is understanding.
Gene LaRoque
U.S. admiral and dissident (1917- )
I hate it when they say, "He gave his life for his country." Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids. We take it away from them. They don't die for the honor and the glory of their country. We kill them.
Patrice Lumumba
First prime minister of the Congo, assassinated (1925-1961)
We are going to keep watch over the lands of our country so that they truly profit her children. We are going to restore ancient laws and make new ones which will be just and noble. We are going to put an end to suppression of free thought and see to it that all our citizens enjoy to the full the fundamental liberties foreseen in the Declaration of Human Rights. We are going to do away with all disfcrimination of every variety and assure for each and all the position to which human dignity, work and dedication entitle them. We are going to rule not by the peace of guns and bayonets but by a peace of the heart and the will.
Quotations M-Z
