Quotations M-Z
Dawna Markova
American scholar and author (contemporary)
I will not die an unlived life,
I will not go in fear
Of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
To allow my living to open for me,
To make me less afraid,
More accessible,
To loosen my heart
Until it becomes a wing
A torch, a promise.
Thomas Merton
From "Thomas Merton on Peace"
Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.
Alfred Nobel
Inventor of dynamite and founder of the Nobel Peace Prize (1833-1896)
My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant whole armies can be utterly destroyed, they will surely abide by golden peace.
Elizabeth O'Connor
from "Eighth Day of Creation"
The identifying of gifts brings to the fore [a] large issue in our lives -- the issue of commitment. Somehow if I name my gift and it is confirmed, I cannot "hang loose" in the same way. I would much rather be committed to God in the abstract than be committed to [God] at the point of my gifts.
Ojibway Nation, Canada
Grandfather, look at our brokenness. We know that in all creation only the human family has strayed away from the sacred way. We know we are the ones who are divided. And we are the ones who must come back together to walk in the sacred way. Grandfather, Sacred One, teach us love, compassion and honor that we may heal the earth and heal each other.
Ben Okri
Nigerian-born author and poet (1959- )
Thousands of years of loving, failing, killing, creating, surprising, oppressing, and thinking ought now to start to bear fruit, to deliver their rich harvest. Will you be at the harvest, among the gatherers of new fruits? Then you must begin today to remake your mental and spiritual world.
Parker Palmer
from "The Company of Strangers"
What God requires of those who call on God's name is responsive servanthood. God wishes to act in and through us, so Christian hope does not relieve men and women of responsibility. We are not primarily responsible for shrewd analysis of problems, for strategic selection of means, for maximizing the chances of success. We are primarily responsible for turning to God, for attempting to know and do God's will. That well may lead us into actions which are not shrewd, strategic, or successful, as the life of Jesus suggests. But as Jesus' life demonstrates, human action which is faithful to God's will can have transforming effect.
Proverbs, Arabic
They who do not find peace at home are already at war.
I challenge you to a duel. I challenge you to go in peace.
In peace time they bury us old, in war they bury them young.
Proverb, Dutch
Better keep peace than make peace.
Proverb, French
When a person finds no peace within themselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
Proverb, Russian
Make peace with people and quarrel with your sins.
Proverb, Serbo-Croatian
Peace pays what war gains.
Proverb, Uzbek
The world is wide for those who live in peace, narrow for those who quarrel.
Proverb, Yoruban
A peacemaker often receives wounds.
David Ransom
English journalist (1946- )
The Kosovo bombing was unique not because it was styled "humanitarian" but because it was the first-ever major conflict with no military casualties at all on the winning side -- absolute impunity made manifest, and a truly terrifying prospect.
Fatma Reda
Egyptian-born U.S. psychiatrist
Peace is achieved one person at a time, through a series of friendships.
Sheikh Sadi
13th century Sufi poet
Reply not roughly to smooth language, nor contend with him who knocks at peace's door.
Hakim Abu'L-Majd Majdud Sanai of Ghazna
Afghan Sufi philosopher (12th century)
Love's conqueror is he whom love conquers.
Carlos Santana
Mexican-American musician (1947- )
Peace has never come from dropping bombs. Real peace comes from enlightenment and educating people to behave more in a divine manner.
Alexander Schmemann
from "Great Lent"
Bright Sadness is the true message and gift of Lent: ... the sadness of my exile, of the waste I have made of my life; the brightness of God's presence and forgiveness, the joy of the recovered desire for God, the peace of the recovered home. Such is the climate of Lenten worship; such is its first and general impact on my soul.
George Bernard Shaw
Irish dramatist (1856-1950)
You'll never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
Dick Sheppard
Founder, Peace Pledge Union (1880-1937)
If we could learn to love, then war would be impossible, defences, bomb-proof shelters, anti-aircraft guns, armaments, treaties a ridiculous mockery, the paraphrenalia of fear we had outgrown.
Susan Sontag
American writer, on nuclear war (1933-2004)
That even an apocalypse can be made to seem part of the ordinary horizon of expectation constitutes an unparalleled violence that is being done to our sense of reality, to our humanity.
Baruch Spinoza
Dutch rationalist philosopher (1632-1677)
Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
Tom Stoppard
Czech-born British dramatist (1937- )
War is capitalism with the gloves off.
Rabindranath Tagore
Bengali poet and philosopher (1861-1941)
Not hammer strokes, but the dance of the water sings the pebbles into perfection.
And joy is everywhere; it is in the earth's green covering of grass; in the blue serenity of the sky; in the reckless exuberance of spring; in the serene abstinence of grey winter; in the living flesh that animates our bodily frame; in the perfect poise of the human figure, noble and upright; in living; in the exercise of all our powers; in the acquisition of knowledge.
R.H. Tawney
Indian-born British Socialist intellectual (1880-1962)
Militarism is the characteristic, not of an army, but of a society.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
French Jesuit philosopher, theologian and paleontologist (1881-1955)
Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world each seek each other so that the world may come into being.
Rigoberta Menchu Tum
Guatemalan activist and 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner (1959- )
It is said that our indigenous ancestors, Mayas and Aztecs, made human sacrifices to their gods. It occurs to me to ask: How many humans have been sacrificed to the gods of capital in the last 500 years?
Peace in Guatemala is not a myth, neither is it a myth for Central America, or for the people of this continent or other continents. Rather, it is a process which requires effort and consciousness-raising around the world, especially among those in governments and in large organizations who have the power to make important decisions.
Mark Twain
American writer (1835-1910)
All war must be justthe killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity, strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it.
Desmond Tutu
from "Cry Justice!"
For many of us it is not our politics that constrains us to say and do what we do and say in opposition to apartheid and in working for a new South Africa. It is precisely our relationship with God, it is our worship, our meditation, our attendance at the Eucharist, it is these spiritual things which compel us to speak up for God, "Thus saith the Lord . . . ," to be the voice of the voiceless. For many the spiritual is utterly central to all we are and do and say.
United Nations Development Programme
If the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) were met, in the year 2015 there would be: 504 million fewer people living in poverty; 300 million fewer suffering from malnourishment; 5.4 million children's lives saved; 390,000 mothers' lives saved in childbirth; 350 million fewer people without access to safe water; 650 million fewer people with no access to sanitation; less the half the number of new HIV infections.
Annual cost of meeting the MDGs to the world: $135 billion
Cost to U.S. alone of Iraq war 2003-2007: $367 billion
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
Constitution, 1945
Since wars begin in the minds of people, it is in the minds of people that the defenses of peace must be constructed.
Alice Walker
American author (1944- )
It is said that in the Baemba tribe of South Africa, when a person acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he is placed in the center of the village, alone and unfettered. All work ceases, and every man, woman and child in the village gathers in a large circle around the accused individual. Then each person in the tribe speaks to the accused, one at a time, about all the good things the person in the center of the circle has done in his lifetime. Every incident, every experience that can be recalled with any detail and accuracy is recounted. All his positive attirbutes, good deeds, strengths and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length. The tribal ceremony often lasts several days. At the end, the tribal circle is broken, a joyous celebration takes place, and the person is symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Russian poet (1933- )
When spite is shoving you forward, making your own soul a hypocrite, toward the disgrace of a shot or a word -- don't hurry, don't do it!
Stop, O people of the Earth as you run so blindly to the next assault! Bullet, freeze as you fly from the gun, and you, bomb in mid-air, halt!
Dhyani Ywahoo
Cherokee Nation, contemporary
The Nine Precepts of the Code of Right Relationship:
1. Speak only words of truth.
2. Speak only of the good qualities of others.
3. Be confident and carry no tales.
4. Turn aside the veil of anger to release the beauty inherent in all.
5. Waste not the bounty, and want not.
6. Honor the light in all. Compare nothing; see all for its suchness.
7. Respect all life; cut away ignorance from one's own heart.
8. Neither kill nor harbor thoughts of angry nature, which destroy peace like an arrow.
9. Do it now; if you see what needs doing, do it.
Howard Zinn
American historian (1922- )
It seems that once an initial judgment has been made that a war is just, there is a tendency to stop thinking, to assume then that everything done on behalf of victory is morally acceptable. I had myself participated in the bombing of cities, without even considering whether there was any relationship between what I was doing and the elimination of facism in the world. Thus a war that apparently begins with a "good" cause -- stopping aggression, helping victims, or punishing brutality -- ends with its own aggression, creates more victims than before, and brings out more brutality than before, on both sides.
Quotations A-L
